In Memoriam (Tennyson) Essay Example for Free

In Memoriam (Tennyson) Essay The poem is not, nonetheless, merely a way to express personal grief. Even though the â€Å"I† of In Memoriam is at times totally linked with the poet. Tennyson, the poet himself alleged that it is recurrently proposed to symbolize how the human race expresses and communicates through him. The individual sorrow and uncertainty became a microcosm for the distress being beared by the men and women of the 19th century who had been moving away from faith in traditional religion, as the evolvements in science were getting on to the ending that as such there was no divine hand which existed to guide. The speaker actually gets troubled through the loss he has beared but he gradually consents to the notion that, regardless of the external signs of confusion, and disorder the world actually becoming a better place to live in; his friend Hallam enters in to be seen as a messenger of a superior reace which will show way to humankind to lead them to God. Tennyson shifts alternately from insensitive misery to self-awareness and gets too see that writing poetry is an antidote for pain. Poems 9 through 17 make up a cluster amalgamated by the poet’s thought on the arrival of Hallam’s body through the ship from Italy. A calmer anguish now encompasses his heart. This anguish due to grief gradually make the mind even firmer, but the more deeper the sorrows are than words keep closed within in his heart. He commences on not to display his emotions openly but as he should (Richard, 2004). As a consequence, In Memoriam portrays the chief Victorian clash of science and faith to be the true work of its era; Tennyson’s effort to settle any sort of doubts that are based on religion which take birth from his not public sorrow and the outcomes of pre-Darwinian theories which are associated to succession were cut down by thinkers of his time as a reasonable landmark. The cyclic modification in the turn from personal anguish and desolation to the bigger vision of the public and apprehension for wider, social problems that can be seen in this poem reveal Tennyson’s mounting reception of and settlement with the issues of his age. As the elegy gets to its ending, the poet becomes more strongly influenced. His love, even though was seen on their preceding earthly association, is â€Å"vaster passion† which is now that Hallam’s incidence is spiritual and subtle through God and nature. The elegy ends up with the self-assured statement of the poet which shows that the living are real and will supplementarily move humanity’s measures and of the faith in its real sense that will not be highlighted only after death. Form The poem is not, nonetheless, merely a way to express personal grief. Even though the â€Å"I† of In Memoriam is at times totally linked with the poet. Tennyson, the poet himself alleged that it is recurrently proposed to symbolize how the human race expresses and communicates through him. The individual sorrow and uncertainty became a microcosm for the distress being beared by the men and women of the 19th century who had been moving away from faith in traditional religion, as the evolvements in science were getting on to the ending that as such there was no divine hand which existed to guide. The speaker actually gets troubled through the loss he has beared but he gradually consents to the notion that, regardless of the external signs of confusion, and disorder the world actually becoming a better place to live in; his friend Hallam enters in to be seen as a messenger of a superior reace which will show way to humankind to lead them to God. As a consequence, In Memoriam portrays the chief Victorian clash of science and faith to be the true work of its era; Tennyson’s effort to settle any sort of doubts that are based on religion which take birth from his not public sorrow and the outcomes of pre-Darwinian theories which are associated to succession were cut down by thinkers of his time as a reasonable landmark. The cyclic modification in the turn from personal anguish and desolation to the bigger vision of the public and apprehension for wider, social problems that can be seen in this poem reveal Tennyson’s mounting reception of and settlement with the issues of his age (Matthew, 2002). Style Tennyson shifts alternately from insensitive misery to self-awareness and gets too see that writing poetry is an antidote for pain. Poems 9 through 17 make up a cluster amalgamated by the poet’s thought on the arrival of Hallam’s body through the ship from Italy. A calmer anguish now encompasses his heart. This anguish due to grief gradually make the mind even firmer, but the more deeper the sorrows are than words keep closed within in his heart. He commences on not to display his emotions openly but as he should. As the elegy gets to its ending, the poet becomes more strongly influenced. His love, even though was seen on their preceding earthly association, is â€Å"vaster passion† which is now that Hallam’s incidence is spiritual and subtle through God and nature. The elegy ends up with the self-assured statement of the poet which shows that the living are real and will supplementarily move humanity’s measures and of the faith in its real sense that will not be highlighted only after death. Because I Could Not Stop for Death Form The tone, or the emotional position of the speaker in this particular poem, is highly significant and the deception in â€Å"Because I could not stop for Death.† Although the theme is related to death, it is not a serious sad thing to talk over. In disagreement, Death is shown to be equal to a wooer in which emerges as fundamentally a fable, with abstractions constantly incarnate. overwhelmed by Death’s consideration and patience, the speaker responds by adding to her aside her work and free time (Vendler, 2004). One sees many of Dickinson’s typical devices at work: the tightly patterned form, based on an undefined subject, the riddle-like puzzle of defining that subject, the shifting of mood from apparent observation to horror, the grotesque images couched in emotionally distant language. All this delineates that experience, that confrontation with God, with nature, with the self, with one’s own mind which is the center of Dickinson’s best poetry. Whether her work looks inward or outward, the subject matter is a confrontation leading to awareness, and part of the terror is that for Dickinson there is never any mediating middle ground; she confronts herself in relation to an abyss beyond. There is no society, no community to make that experience palatable in any but the most grotesque sense of the word, the awful tasting of uncontrollable fear. The second third of the poem changes the proportions. Although the experience is not actually any of the four things she has mentioned above, it is like them all; but now death, the first, is given seven lines, night three, frost only two, and fire is squeezed out altogether. It is like death because she has, after all, seen figures arranged like her own; now her life is â€Å"shaven,/ And fitted to a frame.† It is like night when everything that â€Å"ticked† — again mechanical imagery for a natural phenomenon — has stopped, and like frosts, which in early autumn morns â€Å"Repeal the Beating Ground.† Her vocabulary startles once more: The ground beats with life, but the frost can void it; â€Å"repeal† suggests the law, but nature’s laws are here completely nullified. Finally, in the last stanza, the metaphor shifts completely, and the experience is compared to something new: drowning at sea. It is â€Å"stopless† but â€Å"cool†; the agony that so often marks Dickinson’s poetry may be appropriate to the persona, but nothing around her, neither people nor nature, seems to note it. Most important, there is neither chance nor means of rescue; there is no report of land. Any of these conditions would justify despair, but for the poet, this climatic experience is so chaotic that even despair is not justified, for there is no word of land to despair of reaching. Style Death is a mostly a concern of Dickinson’s poetry. Usually in order to make means of exploration, she will surely check that its objectification all the way through a persona who has already died. The truth is that life is short and death is long. Perhaps in this sobering truth one may find that Dickinson’s poem is as much about life about how one ought to redeem it from the banal as it is about death(Laurence, 2004). One sees many of Dickinson’s typical devices at work: the tightly patterned form, based on an undefined subject, the riddle-like puzzle of defining that subject, the shifting of mood from apparent observation to horror, the grotesque images couched in emotionally distant language. All this delineates that experience, that confrontation with God, with nature, with the self, with one’s own mind which is the center of Dickinson’s best poetry. Whether her work looks inward or outward, the subject matter is a confrontation leading to awareness, and part of the terror is that for Dickinson there is never any mediating middle ground; she confronts herself in relation to an abyss beyond. There is no society, no community to make that experience palatable in any but the most grotesque sense of the word, the awful tasting of uncontrollable fear. The second third of the poem changes the proportions. Although the experience is not actually any of the four things she has mentioned above, it is like them all; but now death, the first, is given seven lines, night three, frost only two, and fire is squeezed out altogether. It is like death because she has, after all, seen figures arranged like her own; now her life is â€Å"shaven,/ And fitted to a frame.† It is like night when everything that â€Å"ticked† — again mechanical imagery for a natural phenomenon — has stopped, and like frosts, which in early autumn morns â€Å"Repeal the Beating Ground.† Her vocabulary startles once more: The ground beats with life, but the frost can void it; â€Å"repeal† suggests the law, but nature’s laws are here completely nullified. Finally, in the last stanza, the metaphor shifts completely, and the experience is compared to something new: drowning at sea. It is â€Å"stopless† but â€Å"cool†; the agony that so often marks Dickinson’s poetry may be appropriate to the persona, but nothing around her, neither people nor nature, seems to note it. Most important, there is neither chance nor means of rescue; there is no report of land. Any of these conditions would justify despair, but for the poet, this climatic experience is so chaotic that even despair is not justified, for there is no word of land to despair of reaching. Content Death appears personified in this poem as a courtly beau who gently insists that the speaker put aside both â€Å"labor† and â€Å"leisure.† He arrives in his carriage, having stopped for her because she could not have stopped for him, and he even submits to a chaperone, â€Å"Immortality,† for the length of their outing together. It was not Death, for I stood up† Riddling becomes less straightforward, but no less central, in such a representative Dickinson poem as â€Å"It was not Death, for I stood up† (#510), in which many of her themes and techniques appear. The first third of the poem, two stanzas of the six, suggest what the â€Å"it† is not: death, night, frost, or fire. Each is presented in a couplet, but even in those pairs of lines, Dickinson manages to disconcert her reader. It is not death, for the persona is standing upright, the difference between life and death reduced to one of posture. Nor is it night, for the bells are chimin g noon — but Dickinson’s image for that fact is also unnatural. The bells are mouths, their clappers tongues, which are â€Å"Put out†; personification here does not have the effect of making the bells more human, but of making them grotesque, breaking down as it does the barriers between such normally discrete worlds as the mechanical and the human, a distinction that Dickinson often dissolves. Moreover, the notion of the bells sticking out their tongues suggests their contemptuous attitude toward man. In stanza two, it is not frost because hot winds are crawling on the persona’s flesh. The hackneyed phrase is reversed, so it is not coolness, but heat that makes flesh crawl, and not the flesh itself that crawls, but the winds upon it; nor is it fire, for the persona’s marble feet â€Å"Could keep a Chancel, cool.† Again, the persona is dehumanized, now grotesquely marble. While accomplishing this, Dickinson has also begun her inclusion of sense data, pervasive in the first part of the poem, so that the confrontation is not only intellectual and emotional but physical as well (Hood, 2000). The second third of the poem changes the proportions. Although the experience is not actually any of the four things she has mentioned above, it is like them all; but now death, the first, is given seven lines, night three, frost only two, and fire is squeezed out altogether. It is like death because she has, after all, seen figures arranged like her own; now her life is â€Å"shaven,/ And fitted to a frame.† It is like night when everything that â€Å"ticked† — again mechanical imagery for a natural phenomenon — has stopped, and like frosts, which in early autumn morns â€Å"Repeal the Beating Ground.† Her vocabulary startles once more: The ground beats with life, but the frost can void it; â€Å"repeal† suggests the law, but nature’s laws are here completely nullified. Finally, in the last stanza, the metaphor shifts completely, and the experience is compared to something new: drowning at sea. It is â€Å"stopless† but â€Å"cool†; the agony that so often marks Dickinson’s poetry may be appropriate to the persona, but nothing around her, neither people nor nature, seems to note it. Most important, there is neither chance nor means of rescue; there is no report of land. Any of these conditions would justify despair, but for the poet, this climatic experience is so chaotic that even despair is not justified, for there is no word of land to despair of reaching. Thus, one sees many of Dickinson’s typical devices at work: the tightly patterned form, based on an undefined subject, the riddle-like puzzle of defining that subject, the shifting of mood from apparent observation to horror, the grotesque images couched in emotionally distant language. All this delineates that experience, that confrontation with God, with nature, with the self, with one’s own mind which is the center of Dickinson’s best poetry. Whether her work looks inward or outward, the subject matter is a confrontation leading to awareness, and part of the terror is that for Dickinson there is never any mediating middle ground; she confronts herself in relation to an abyss beyond. There is no society, no community to make that experience palatable in any but the most grotesque sense of the word, the awful tasting of uncontrollable fear (Barton ,2008) Conclusion In this paper we have analysed two brilliant works of poetry, one In Memoriam by Tennyson as compared to Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Dickinson. We have analysed both the works in terms of their content, form and style and evaluate how they have been done by their respective writers. References Barton, A. (2008). Tennyson’s Name: Identity and Responsibility in the Poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate,. Hood, J. (2000). Divining Desire: Tennyson and the Poetics of Transcendence. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, Laurence. M. (2004). W. Alfred Tennyson: The Critical Legacy. Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, Matthew, C.( 2002). The Consolation of Otherness: The Male Love Elegy in Milton, Gray, and Tennyson. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland,. Richard,B. (2004). Experience and Faith: The Late-Romantic Imagination of Emily Dickinson. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, Lundin, Roger. Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2004. Vendler, H. (2004). Hennessey. Poets Thinking: Pope, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.