Victorians! discussion

Still plenty to discuss in the earlier sections, and of course the discussion threads on them remain active, but meanwhile here’s the next section for those ready also to move forward.

This section contains one of the longest cantos, canto 85, with the repetition of that earlier couplet from canto 27:

'Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all—

Has his understanding of this thought changed from then to now?

In canto 27 it is the closing couplet, the conclusion of his thought in that canto. Here it is in the opening stanza, reflecting back to his earlier use of it:

This truth came borne with bier and pall,
I felt it, when I sorrow'd most,

Back in canto 27 he was still in the first stages of grief, with the bier and pall still fresh and sorrowing most. The sorrow now is somewhat softened, and he is able to reconsider the value even of a lost love. He seems more reflective here, no longer in wild grief, but now still in sadness but in more sober thought. Having loved and lost, he is now able to ask, is that to be the only love of my life, or is there life after first love, is it possible to not forget but still move forward?

whether love for him have drain'd
My capabilities of love;

He reflects back, more soberly, on Hallam’s death:

My blood an even tenor kept,
Till on mine ear this message falls,
That in Vienna's fatal walls
God's finger touch'd him, and he slept.

But now he can think about Hallam in the afterlife where before his own grief overwhelmed any other thoughts:

The great Intelligences fair
That range above our mortal state,
In circle round the blessed gate,
Received and gave him welcome there;

And led him thro' the blissful climes,
And show'd him in the fountain fresh
All knowledge that the sons of flesh
Shall gather in the cycled times.

I find it interesting that the central focus of Heaven for him is “the great Intelligences."

From there, he becomes almost mystical:

Whatever way my days decline,
I felt and feel, tho' left alone,
His being working in mine own,
The footsteps of his life in mine;

And with that, he also seems to be reaching a level of acceptance:

And so my passion hath not swerved
To works of weakness, but I find
An image comforting the mind,
And in my grief a strength reserved.

And he is ready to return to life, not forgetting, of course, but not living solely in the past:

I woo your love: I count it crime
To mourn for any overmuch;
I, the divided half of such
A friendship as had master'd Time;
...
Now looking to some settled end,
That these things pass, and I shall prove
A meeting somewhere, love with love,
I crave your pardon, O my friend;

I count all of this as progress. How about you?

Everyman wrote: "This section contains one of the longest cantos, canto 85, with the repetition of that earlier couplet from canto 27:

'Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all—.."

Just to check, isn't canto 85 in the previous reading section?

Everyman wrote: "And he is ready to return to life, not forgetting, of course, but not living solely in the past."

In Canto 95 after the rest of his friends disappear and he is left with the longed for vision of Arthur,:

The dead man touch'd me from the past,
And all at once it seem'd at last
The living soul was flash'd on mine,

Is it significant that he then at the end of the Canto hears the breeze saying:

The dawn, the dawn," and died away;
And East and West, without a breath,
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death,
To broaden into boundless day.

The repetition of 'the dawn' symbolises renewal, and by ending on 'the boundless day' there is a sense of hope and possibilities.
Does communing with his past enable him to accept it and move forward with happiness in the friendship he experienced rather than mourning the past?

I am reading the poem a mixture of online and in an old book without notes, so I'm afraid I am missing lots of the nuances, so I am looking forward to finally catching up with reading all the comments in this discussion.

Clari wrote: "Just to check, isn't canto 85 in the previous reading section?"

You are, of course, right; I had read back a bit to prepare for this week, and crossed the boundaries. But since we had already read that, it wasn't a spoiler. Whew!

Clari wrote: "I am reading the poem a mixture of online and in an old book without notes, so I'm afraid I am missing lots of the nuances, ."

This is a poem which is so strongly autobiographical that it can be difficult to understand fully without a fairly close knowledge of Tennyson's (and Hallam's) life. There are many indirect references to aspects such as Hallam's literary writing, Hallam's engagement to Tennyson's sister, the Tennyson family moving (as I mention in the next topic but starts in this one at canto 100), etc.

However, even without understanding all those nuances, and I miss many of them even with some knowledge of Tennyson's life, I find the poem quite powerful. I can understand why Queen Victoria, after Albert's death, went back to the poem often for consolation in her grief. In fact, she copied sections of the poem into her album consolativum, a notebook of excerpts which she and her household transcribed to offer solace after Prince Albert's death. I had known about her love for the poem, but this album consolativum is new to me; I discovered it on the website if the British Library, along with a transcript of portions of the album.

https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/qu...

Click on the Transcript to see the index, and on View Images to see some of the actual pages in her (or an aide's? there are different writings on different pages) handwriting. But most likely some of the handwriting is actually hers.

Section 95: (There does not seem to be a consensus out there as to what to call the sections. In my old edition, my first year prof called them "lyrics". In this discussion, we are using the word "canto". Most other references I have looked at call them "sections".) Anyway, in #95: My first reading was very literal--a lovely summer evening on the lawn with friends. When the friends go to bed, the mourner is left alone, and wanting to be closer to his dead friend, he brings out old letters, which put him in a bit of a trance, or dream state, from which he is awakened by the dawn. A truly beautiful description of the dawn after staying up all night: [the dawn]

And suck'd from out the distant gloom
A breeze began to tremble o'er
The large leaves of the sycamore,
And fluctuate all the still perfume,

I can feel and see it so vividly!

My old notes tell me that this is the central lyric (section) of the whole poem. That here the mourner begins to see more clearly. And then there is the reference to Genesis 41:26--the Pharaoh's dream of the "white kine". Perhaps implying that all the good memories have been stored, and are available to get the mourner through the hard times.

Yes--I did feel this to be a turning point--acceptance and more. Gratitude for the experience of having known the loved one.

The only mention of women I have noticed is when the mourner compares himself to a woman, and always to illustrate how vastly inferior the mourner is to his loved one. Section XCVII is a very vivid example of this. And of my spirit as of a wife. And this wife, a simile for the mourner, is a very poor creature indeed.

She knows but matters of the house,
And he, he knows a thousand things.

Read with today's eyes, a man calling himself a wife and a widow would indicate a homosexual relationship, but it seems that was not the case here. And I read that the elegy classically was a male tradition--a male poet mourning and praising another male poet, so I suppose the absence of women is part of that tradition. Still, considering the fact that Tennyson's sister Emily was really the one widowed, I find something missing when the mourner makes himself the widow.

Everyman wrote: "This is a poem which is so strongly autobiographical that it can be difficult to understand fully without a fairly close knowledge of Tennyson's (and Hallam's) life. "

Thank you for the links, there are so many amazing resources online.

I bought an annotated kindle version of the poem in the end, although the notes certainly aren't as good as ones people are helpfully mentioning from their own editions, it does give a little insight into the poem which helps.

Ginny wrote: "The only mention of women I have noticed is when the mourner compares himself to a woman, and always to illustrate how vastly inferior the mourner is to his loved one. Section XCVII is a very vivid..."

I found it very interesting that Tennyson called himself a widow, I thought maybe grief unmanned him .
I think he doesn't mention women as, despite the universal themes, it does seem very personal in his loss of his friend to himself. Maybe he thought he couldn't talk in depth about how others felt about losing Arthur as that would be trespassing on their emotions? He talks often about words being inadequate to express his own mourning, so perhaps it would be even more difficult to try and compose a poem also encompassing his sister's and Arthur's other friends and family's loss?