The Kraken and other poems: Tennyson
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Celebrating the month of Octo-ber.
Lord Alfred Tennyson shared a profound literary kinship with the Romantic movement. As George Saintsbury says, "Spenser begot Keats and Keats begot Tennyson, and Tennyson begot all the rest." Tennyson's later poems, in particular, explore what might be called "Romantic consciousness": where the frontiers of mind and body intersect, breeding myths, monsters, fairies, and the supernatural.
Melville's prose, particularly in his magnificent descriptions of scenery, the sea, cloud and land, resembles the Tennysonian verse, and possesses the glowing richness, exquisite coloring and rapid, unexpected turn of phrase that distinguishes the Poet Laureate.
"The Kraken" is an example of Tennyson's obvious affinity for the mysteries of the sea. In it, he imagines a mythological sea-beast derived from Norse legends.
"Mariana" is a poem about the heartbreak and loneliness of an abandoned lover. It depicts the title character's melancholy in a continuum with her Gothic surroundings. Melville paid homage to this character in his short story, "The Piazza."
"The Two Voices" is an autobiographical poem written by Tennyson during a bout of depression. It takes its cue from the Cave of Despair from Book 1 of Spenser's Faerie Queene.
For this meetup, we will read a selection of some of Tennyson's best-loved poems:
- The Kraken
- Claribel
- Lilian
- Mariana
- Mariana in the South
- The Sea-Fairies
- The Merman
- The Mermaid
- The Lady of Shalott
- The Lotos Eaters
- Crossing the Bar
- Break, break, break
- Sea Dreams
- The Sailor Boy
- The Voyage
- The Day-Dream
- The Two Voices
For convenience, these poems have been compiled here: ~33pp
Or they can be found throughout The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson, here:
Supplemental:
- Tennyson: The Favoured Subject
- Eric G Wilson's Commentary on "Mariana"
Extracts:
- “Yours are strange fancies, Marianna.” ("The Piazza")
- "But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!" (Moby-Dick, 23)
- "...man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side; the country..." (Moby-Dick, 94)
This meetup is part in a series on Muses and Monsters.