The age of Tennyson was a period of tension between European nations, an outcome of
the
political and historical residue of the Napoleonic Wars. Tennyson himself had an abiding antipathy
towards the French. He was born in the aftermath of Napoleonic empire building, and this episode
of Gallic aggression continued to colour British attitudes towards Europe throughout his lifetime.
Suspicions about French intentions under Napoleon III, nephew of Napoleon Buonapart,
began to
surface in the 1850s. In France, the name Napoleon was still synonymous with glory and empire
and Napoleon III longed to restore France to a position of dominance in Europe. In this regard he
sought to disrupt the international order that had been established after the continental wars to
prevent French aggression. Russia was now the foremost keeper of this order and Napoleon III,
seeking to weaken her position, instigated a conflict with Russia in the Near East in the spring of
1850. By January 1852, the poet Coventry
Patmore had persuaded nineteen friends to form the first
Rifle Club as part of a nation- wide army of volunteers to repel, as he put it later, 'the threats
of the
French colonels and by suspicions of the intentions of Louis- Napoléon'.
Patmore went public on January 22nd, in a letter to The Times, which was read by Tennyson
who
was inspired to compose five poems against the state of affairs in France. These were published in
The Examiner under the pseudonym 'Merlin'. The following stanza from The Penny-wise captured
the spirit of the renewed invasion panic
'O where is he,
the simple fool,
Who says that wars are over?
What bloody portent flashes there,
Across the straits of Dover?'
However, the national mood changed when on October 4th 1853 the Sultan of Turkey declared
war
on Russia and at the end of March the following year, the British found themselves allied with
France and Turkey fighting the Russian army in the Crimea. The aim of the alliance was to prevent
Russia assimilating the vast Turkish provinces of Europe and Asia. Even British India was thought
to be at stake. The need to resist Russia was plain to most British observers and Tennyson was
activated to speak out against the widespread dislike of the Russian police state declaring Czar
Nicholas I the "icy Muscovite" and "o'ergrown Barbarian of the East".
The Crimean War, which occurred from 1853 to 1856, was a typical conflict in that
many shots
were fired, men injured and lives lost. The jingoism, heroism and patriotism of battle was one of
Tennyson's poetic themes, and is well illustrated with respect to the Crimean conflict in 'The
Charge of the Light Brigade'. On the other hand, the underlying plight of the men comprising the
British Army of the Crimea suffering from famine and disease was central to domestic and social
discourse at Farringford.
The see-saw relationship between France and Britain continued after the Treaty of
Paris in 1856
brought the war to an end. Only a few years later Tennyson found his marital home of Farringford
on the Isle of Wight was on a potential battlefront being only a stone's throw from Palmerston's new
fortifications erected in 1863 against a possible French invasion. The battery had been constructed
above Freshwater at the tip of the spit of downland overlooking The Needles. Osborne House, the
Isle of Wight holiday retreat of the Empress of India, was also a constant local reminder of British
force of arms, as was the coming and going of men-o-war through the Solent. From time to time
Tennyson's house reverberated with practice cannonades and the local sergeant was invited over to
drill his young boys, who came to glorify militarism.
Nevertheless, the strong patriotic streak in Tennyson's character did not blind him
to the futility of
war. Also, the concept of aggression
was beginning to be seen as part of human nature with
substantial biological underpinnings perceived as running counter to many worthy social and
political views. Male assertiveness
is a clear theme in Darwin's writing. In The
Descent of Man
(1871), Darwin wrote: "Man is the rival of other men; he delights in competition, and this leads
to
ambition which passes too easily into selfishness" He saw men as showing "higher energy,
perseverance, and courage" than women in the pursuit of "eminence" and "victory".
This theme is one of several metaphorical threads developed in Tennyson's 'Idylls
of the King'. The
great work, which was composed in episodes through most of Tennyson's life, ostensibly followed
the legendary exploits of King Arthur and his knights, but was really concerned with articulating the
regular appearance of evil in human relationships, individual and tribal. King Arthur's reason for
action throughout the Idylls is belief in an ultimate moral order wherein good must finally prevail.
Here, Tennyson was asserting, as it happens under the banner of Christianity, that a set of global
principles has to be established in order to unify, stabilise and give meaning to human societies.
The eventual death of Arthur amidst the ruins of his life's project to establish moral unity,
symbolises the seemingly endless cycle of human conflict, which sees social order repeatedly
descend into chaos. It is not only war that is futile but the very efforts of humankind to mount 'a
war to end all wars'.
The sequel of to-day
unsolders all
The goodliest fellowship
of famous knights
Whereof this world
holds record. Such a sleep
They sleep- the
men I loved. I think that we
Shall never more,
or at any future time,
Delight our souls
with talk of knightly deeds,
Walking about the
gardens and the halls
Of Camelot, as in
the days that were.
Conflict, as a flaw in the social evolution of Homo sapiens, was gathered to a head
in Tennyson's
poem, 'The Voyage of Maeldune'. This work was inspired by the legendary odyssey of the 8th
century Irish tribe of Finn and its encounters with a series of mythical islands in a western
boundless sea.
Tennyson's Maeldune sets sail to avenge the murder of his father, and the experiences
of the Chief
and his men are a metaphor for humanity's quest for happiness, doomed from the start because of
the inevitable destructive forces of tribalism. The group repeatedly find their heart's desire in a
random island-hopping adventure. They glimpse happiness in the fertility and beauty of nature's
realm on land and sea, inexhaustible sustenance without labour and sex on demand, but each time
they have to sail away because partaking of the bounty would, and did, inevitably lead to an
incomprehensible frenzy of anger and destruction.
And we came to the
Bounteous Isle, where the heavens lean low on the land,
And ever at dawn
from the cloud glitter'd o'er us a sunbright hand,
Then it open'd and
dropt at the side of each man, as he rose from his rest,
Bread enough for
his need till the labourless day dipt under the West;
And we wander'd
about it and thro' it. O never was time so good!
And we sang of the
triumphs of Finn, and the boast of our ancient blood,
And we gazed at
the wandering wave as we sat by the gurgle of springs,
And we chanted the
songs of the Bards and the glories of fairy kings;
But at length we
began to be weary, to sigh, and to stretch and yawn,
Till we hated the
Bounteous Isle and the sunbright hand of the dawn,
For there was not
an enemy near, but the whole green Isle was our own,
And we took to playing
at ball, and we took to throwing the stone,
And we took to playing
at battle, but that was a perilous play,
For the passion
of battle was in us, we slew and we sail'd away.
The message of the very instability of the quest is reinforced by the poem's strange
fractured metre
and forced rhyming. Their final encounter is with an aged saintly colleague of St Brendan who
advised them to rise above the fruitless outcomes of tribalism.
His fathers have
slain thy fathers in war or in single strife,
Thy fathers have
slain his fathers, each taken a life for a life,
Thy father had slain
his father, how long shall the murder last?
Go back to the Isle
of Finn and suffer the Past to be Past.'
Here is a metaphor for human wisdom that only comes to people and nations with the
passage of
time. Maeldune, taking this advice, eventually arrives home in the 12th stanza:
And we came to the
Isle we were blown from, and thereon the shore was he,
The man that had
slain my father. I saw him and let him be.
O weary was I of
the travel, the trouble, the strife and the sin,
When I landed again,
with a tithe of my men, on the Isle of Finn.
We are left with the conviction that the quest for tribal revenge actually only ebbs
with time. The
chances are high that it will begin another useless, destructive surge with the next generation.
It is said that a certain degree of dissatisfaction with our present circumstances
is necessary to
stimulate us to exertion, and thus to enable us to secure future comfort. But in truth
dissatisfaction appears to be a flaw in the hard wiring of the human brain, which in the face of
plenty is responsible for our aggressive search for the bigger and better, today the driver being
boredom with the out of date soap powder, domestic partner or holiday destination.
Oliver Goldsmith had hit this target in the mid-18th century, when the British were
first beginning to
embark on the ship of consumerism:
'If frugality
were established in the state, and if our expenses were laid out to meet needs
rather than superfluities of life, there might be fewer wants, and even fewer pleasures, but
infinitely more happiness'.
However, once committed to the industrial pathway of economic development Tennyson
sees that
humankind, for better or worse, is in it for the long run. He believed that as yet we are only partially
made to accomplish the necessary social adaptations required to live harmoniously in the new age
of plenty. But, he concludes in 'The Making of Man' that evolution will eventually ensure the survival
of aggression- free humanity well within the period calculated for the running down of the solar
system.
Where is one that,
born of woman, altogether can escape
From the lower world
within him, moods of tiger, or of ape?
Man as yet is being
made, and ere the crowning Age of ages,
Shall not æon
after æon pass and touch him into shape?
All about him shadow
still, but, while the races flower and fade,
Prophet-eyes may
catch a glory slowly gaining on the shade,
Till the peoples
all are one, and all their voices blend in choric
Hallelujah to the
Maker 'It is finish'd. Man is made.'
But what lies beyond the
end of solar time? Tennyson's answer is encoded in the last poem he
ever wrote, 'The Dreamer', at the age of 83.
On a midnight in
midwinter when all but the winds were dead,
'The meek shall
inherit the earth' was a Scripture that rang thro' his head,
Till he dream'd
that a Voice of the Earth went wailingly past him and said:
'I am losing the light of my Youth
And the Vision that led me of old,
And I clash with an iron Truth,
When I make for an Age of gold,
And I would that my race were run,
For teeming with liars, and madmen, and knaves,
And wearied of Autocrats, Anarchs, and Slaves,
And darken'd with doubts of a Faith that saves,
And crimson with battles, and hollow with graves,
To the wail of my winds, and the moan of my waves
I whirl, and I follow the Sun.'
Was it only the
wind of the Night shrilling out Desolation and wrong
Thro' a dream of
the dark? Yet he thought that he answer'd her wail with a song-
Moaning your losses, O Earth,
Heart-weary and overdone!
But all's well that ends well,
Whirl, and follow the Sun!
He is racing from heaven to heaven
And less will be lost than won,
For all's well that ends well,
Whirl, and follow the Sun!
The Reign of the Meek upon earth,
O weary one, has it begun?
But all's well that ends well,
Whirl, and follow the Sun!
For moans will have grown sphere-music
Or ever your race be run
And all's well that ends well,
Whirl, and follow the Sun!
Was Tennyson, in the person
of dreamer, expressing his belief in the eventual benificent
evolutionary outcome of a cosmic consciousness that would be a shared property of humanity?
This appears to have been the view of the the medical doctor Richard Bucke. In his book Cosmic
Consciousness, published in 1902, Buck tried to make sense of a personal mystical experience
he underwent at the age of 35 in relation to those described by others, including Tennyson, and
Tennyson's mentor William Blake.
"The person,
suddenly, without warning, has a sense of being immersed in a flame, or rose-
colored cloud, or perhaps rather a sense that the mind is itself filled with such a cloud of
haze.
At the same instant
he is, as it were, bathed in an emotion of joy, assurance, triumph,
'salvation.'The last word is not strictly correct if taken in its ordinary sense, for the feeling,
when fully developed, is not that a particular act of salvation is effected, but that no special
'salvation' is needed, the scheme upon which the world is built being itself sufficient. It is
this ecstasy, far beyond any that belongs to the merely self conscious life, with which the
poets, as such, especially occupy themselves: As Gautama, in his discourses, preserved
in the 'Suttas'; Jesus in the 'Parables'; Paul in the 'Epistles'; Dante at the end of the
'Purgatorio' and beginning of 'Paradiso'; 'Shakespeare' in the 'Sonnets'; Balzac in 'Seraphita';
Whitman in the 'Leaves'; Edward Carpenter in 'Towards Democracy'; leaving to the singers
the pleasures and pains, loves and hates, joys and sorrows, peace and war, life and death,
of self conscious man; though the poets may treat of these, too, but from the new point of
view, as expressed in the 'Leaves'; 'I will never again mention love or death inside a house'
[193:75]—that is, from the old point of view, with the old connotations.
Simultaneously or
instantly following the above sense and emotional experiences there
comes to the person an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe. Like a flash
there is presented to his consciousness a clear conception (a vision) in outline of the
meaning and drift of the universe. He does not come to believe merely; but he sees and
knows that the cosmos, which to the self conscious mind seems made up of dead matter,
is in fact far otherwise—is in very truth a living presence. He sees that instead of men being,
as it were, patches of life scattered through an infinite sea of non-living substance, they are
in reality specks of relative death in an infinite ocean of life. He sees that the life which is in
man is eternal, as all life is eternal; that the soul of man is as immortal as God is; that the
universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the
good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love, and that
the happiness of every individual is in the long run absolutely certain. The person who
passes through this experience will learn in the few minutes, or even moments, of its
continuance more than in months or years of study, and he will learn much that no study
ever taught or can teach."
According to Bucke, cosmic consciousness was the final
stage of the evolution of human
conscious at the level of the Divine and the next stage of human evolution incorporating all aspects
of unity and Love.
The primary stage was the appearance of the simple consciousness
of animals - awareness at the
basest level of existence, which was followed in human evolution by the collective consciousness
of humanity, an awareness of existence with purpose, incorporating the divine in seminal forms
such as art, literature and music.
