>4
Art for Art
preciosiryof being evencontainable.
containscan escapethe scandalous
Yet, though the bowl may be cracked,the pot broken, the urn smashed,
the shapewhich remains,evenif just'shards',will continue to express
the senseof music, or beauty,set againstthe hard truth. Celan'sPoetry
haveconsistedof 'musicalfragments',
may increasingly,after 'Todesfuge]
broken bits of a vision which it can hardly bearto recall,but the music
does not thereforestop. The cello comes in behind pain, just as, in
that early, bitterly beautiful, guilry poem, 'Todesfugelthe death fugue
goeson and on, the playersunableto do anything elseexcept'sing now
and play'.
C\,
to break through all the conditions of comely form,
recovering,touch by touch, a loveliness...
lVaher Pater
The only aristocraryis neverto touch ...
FernandoPessoa
3
Touchitg Forms: Tennyson
and Aestheticism
'Art for Art's sake! Hail, truest Lord of Hell!' (III. 12. l)t Tennyson's uninspired squib is a rare outburst on a subject which
engrossedmany of his contemporaries.BerweenVictorian aestheticism and Victoria's Laureate there is a marked stand-off, a silence
broken only here and there by skirmisheson both sides.Tennyson
never refersto Pater in his letters,owned none of his books, though
he certainly read and marked some of his essaysin journals.2 Pater, for his part, is oddly circumspectabout Tennyson. In the essay
on 'Sryle' he praisesthe poet's eclectic mix of 'savoursome'Latin
and 'Racy Saxon monosyllables' which are, significantly, 'close ro
us as touch and sight'.3 Otherwise, quotations from Tennyson are
dropped anonymously. 'The blot upon the brain lThat will show itself without', from 'Maud', turns up unacknowledgedin the essay
I All quotations from Tennyson's poetry are taken from The Poemsof Tennyson,ed.
ChristopherRicks,2nd edn, 3 vols.(London:Longmans,1987),and arecited in the text.
2 See Tennyson in Lincoln: A Catalogue of the Collections in the ResearchCentre,
compiled by Nancie Campbell,2 vols. (Lincoln: Tennyson Sociery, 1971-3), ii.38,
n. 4558. Gerhard Joseph discussessimilarities betweenTennyson and Pater in Tennyson
and the Text: The W'eauer\Shuttle (Cambridge: Cambridge Universiry Press,1992).
3
'i/alter Pater,'Sqyle',in Appreciations(London: Macmillan, 1910), 5-38, 16.
Tennysonand Aestheticism
56
on 'Coleridge'+ as an example of modern sceptical thinking, while
the two 'handfuls of white dust' from 'The Lotos-Eaters'are recalled
in Marius the Epicurean.5Some inhibition made Pater reticent about
Tennyson.
The same was not true of Swinburne, who pesteredthe Laureate
with copiesof his own Poems,as well as adulation and defamation. In
o.re pla-e, in his reply to Buchanan's'FleshlySchool' article,he takes
a cheekysideswipeat Tennyson,claiming that in 'Merlin and Vivien'
the Laureate far surpassed'the author of Mademoisellede Maupin or
the author of the Fleursdu Mal' in 'sensualimmoraliry'.6 Interestingly,
somethirry yearsbefore,Leigh Hunt had criticized the 1842 volume for
If Swinburnerelishedthe disreputable
relyingon feelings'toosensual'.7
associationwith Gautier and Baudelaire,Tennyson's own reported
of his poem 'Lucretius',''What a mess
comment on the sexualpassages
little Swinburnewould have made of this',8 hints at a certain envious
rivalry with that self-proclaimed'Lord of Hell'.
Tennyson's place in Victorian poetry has often been too monumental for its own good. An easy target for the enfants terriblesof
his time, Swinburne and \(ilde, he was, for modernist rebels,also a
mockablegrandee:the stupidestpoet, Lawn Tennyson,someonewho'd
blundered.Ne,r.rtheless,the sound of Tennyson rings on in their ears
and their writings. Stephen Daedalus'wet-dream verse' 'Are you not
tDearyof ardent ways',smixes Tennysonian wearins55-'I\4y life is full
of *."ry days'(I. 383. l)-with Nineties' lust. StevieSmith is haunted
by his 'sea-sad,loamishly-sad'r0sounds,which give all her work an
undertow of Victorian melancholy.Yeats,in 'The Tragic Generation',
attacksTennyson for'moral valuesthat were not aesthetic',but in the
sameparagraphrecalls'those islands'where 'beaury,certain forms of
a \Talter Pater, 'Coleridge', in Appreciations,65 - 104, 98.
5 '0ZalterParer,Marius the Epiciiean,2vols. (London: Macmillan, 1910)' ii. 100.
6 A. C. Swinburne, from jnder the Microscope(1872), quoted in Tennyson:The
Critical Heritage, ed. John D. Jump (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967),
3 r8 -2 r,3 2 r.
z Leigh Hunt, review (1842), in Jump, ed., 126-36,128s qu"oted in Oscar Browning, Memories of Sixty Years (London: Bodley Head,
t 9 to ),1 r7 .
Penguin,
e JamesJoyce,A Portraitof tbeArtist asa YoungMan (Harmondsworth:
1960),223.
ro SrevieSmith,Nouelon Yellow
Penguin,1951)'19.
Paper(Harmondsworth:
Tennysonand Aestheticism
57
sensuous
loveliness
wereseparated
from all the generalpurposesof life'.1I
Tennyson'ssenseof shorelines,of islandsbeyond or after life, might
well have beenin Years'smind alongsidethoseof Spenserand Keats.'I
am hauntedby numberlessislands,and many a Danaan shore',12Yeats
writes in 'The \7hite Birds', echoing,perhapsnot coincidentally,the
metre of Tennyson's own rrish imrama, 'The voyage of Maeldune':
'And we came to the Silent Isle that we never had touched at before'
(III. 63. 11). To 'touch at' someisland,with that little extraeffort and
reachof having ro 'touch at' land, is a rypicallyTennysonian landing. It
suggeststhe difficulry and delay of getting there, as if it neededa small
final push: 'at'. If 'certain forms of sensuousloveliness'are similarly
islanded in early Yeats, this is becauseTennyson, as well as orhers,
was there before. The paradox of Tennyson is that he managed to
be both victoria's Laureate,official and moral, and perhapsthe most
powerful, undeclaredvoice of English aestheticismar the same time.
Listed along with Swinburne, Rossetti,Morris, and \7ilde in one of
the first books on the subject, The AestheticMouementin England by
'w'alter Hamilton,r3
ir is Tennyson who is also remembered,as late
as 1950 by Richard Aldington, as 'for a time the chief masrerof the
aesthetes ' . l 4
The key to this unofficial repurarion is, as critics like Mcluhan
and Bloomr5 have pointed out, Arthur Hallam. Hallam was rhere ar
the beginning, announcing Tennyson's place in l83l as a 'Poet of
sensation'-2
p661 motivated by nothing more than 'the desire of
beaury' or by 'the energetic principle of love for the beautiful'. For
Hallam, 'Poems, chiefly Lyrical'is an example of 'the spirit of modern
proetry',which is marked by'melancholy'and a'rerurn of the mind upon
itself'.16The phrase 'art for art's sake', with its return of the idea on itself,
I 's7'. B. Yeats,Autobiographiu,ed. Villiam H. O'Donnell and Douglas
N.
'
Archibald(NewYork:Scribner,1999),242.
12 \(/. B. Yeats,'The\x/hite Birds',in The variorumEditionof thepoems
of \v. B.
)'rats,ed.PeterAllt andRussell
K. Alspach(NewYork:Macmillan,1957),lz2.'
r'Walter Hamilton, TheAesthetic
Moaement
in England(London,lg82), 41.
ta
intro. RichardAldington (Lonfrom theAesthetis,
.
_TheReligionof Be1u4tSelections
,lrrrr:Heinemann,l95O),34.
Poetry',in CriticalEssays
on tbe
'5 H. M. Mcluhan,.'Tennysonand Picturesque
I'tletqof Tennyson,
ed.JohnKillham(London:Roudedge
& Keganpaul, 1960i G7_85;
I terold Bloom, 'Tennyson,Hallam, and RomanticTraditiof , in TheRingersin the
Iou,er:Studiu in RomanticTradition(Chicago:Universiqyof Chicagopreis, l97l),
I i 5 -5 4 .
1.6
Henry Hallam,Remains
in verseandProse(London:John Murray, 1863),
_{r1hur
, , ) 4;2
9 7 ;3 0 2 .
5n
Tennysonand Aestheticism
was not yet current in England, at least not in that precise formulation.
Its first recorded use is in 7854, with the translation of Victor Cousin's
Lectures on the True, the Beautiful and the Good, in which 'art for art's
sake'r7 is separated from religion and moraliry. Hallam's advocacy of
beauty for beaury's sake, and his definition of moderniry as 'melancholy'
and introspective, pitch the argument in exactly the key it will take later
in the century. Pater's own account of modern poetry's 'inexhaustible
discontent, languor, and home-sickness, that endlessregret,'18might be
echoing Hallam's self-returning'melancholy'. Certainly, the continuing
visibiliryof Hallam's reviewin the rwo main publications of the Remains,
in 1834 and 1863, but also in that rare edition edited by Le Gallienne
forJohn Lane in 1893, kept Tennyson's aestheticist reputation alive. It
may have been this last edition that Yeats was remembering when he
referred to 'what the younger Hallam called the Aesthetic School'.re In
fact Hallam does not use the term 'Aesthetic', but the Paterian slip is
a sign of the extent to which, by 1909, Hallam had been recruited to
the aestheticist cause. Le Gallienne, for instance, praises his review as
'one of the early examples in England of that aesthetic criticism which is
now so generally accepted amongst us'.2oThe continued publication of
the Remains not only kept Hallam's death present, audibly in the very
title of the book, but also, paradoxically, kept Tennyson, the aesthetic
poet, alive.
A review which was almost as important as Hallam's was George
Brimley's essayof 1855. This, interestingly, contains the first recorded
use in English of the term 'aestheticism'. "'The Lotos-Eaters"', he
remarks, 'carriesTennyson's tendency to pure aestheticismto an extreme
point.' He is using the word in its relatively recent senseof a philosophy
of the beautiful, separated from moraliry or use, rather than in the strict
sense of sensuous perception. If 'The Lotos-Eaters' invites to a voyage
which will soon become a cult expedition to the land of the senses,it
is Brimley's description of it, as a rype of 'pure aestheticism', which
resonantly recruits the poem to a new cause. 'In some poems the artistic
beaury seemsgiven more for its own sake than for any moral', he helpfully
explains. Hinting, here, at art for art's sake, he nonetheless ends up in a
t7 Quotedin L. M. Findlay,'The Introductionof the Phrase"Art for Art's Sake"
(July 1973),246-8,247.
into English',
Notesand Queries,2l8
r8 Pater,'Coleridge',
104.
re Yeats,Autobiographies,361
.
20 ThePoemsof Artbur HenryHallam, Togetheruith bisEssayon theLyricalPoemsof
Alfvd Tennlson,
ed.fuchardLe Gallienne(London:Elkin Matthews,1893),p. xxxiv.
Tennyson and Aestheticism
59
roundabourwaydisparagingthe early poemsand praising In Memoriam
Forits human and moral interest:'Poetryand passion ,roblerand wiser
"r.
than stoicismor Epicureanism',he concludes.Brimleyoffers
an exposure
and an apology at the sametime. He exposesTennlrson,saesrh;ticism
and Epicureanismas youthful mannerisms,soon ro be abandoned,,
but meanwhilelavishesattention on thosepoemswhich affectthem. In
particular,he indulgesthe sonorouseffectsof 'The Lotos-Eaters',
wriring,
in one place,that its'rhythmical language... takesthe formativeimpulJe
of the.feeling,asfallingwater doesof the forcesthat draw it into fl"rhi.rg
"
curve'.21In that one sentence
he evokesTennyson'sformativeemotiona]
landscape:the valley of Caut eretz,with its cararactsand streams,and
makesit serveasthe landscapeof creativiry,of that'rhythmical language'
which t_akesshape, or form, directly from feeling. Forming, dtti"'g,
and flashing are words that Tennyson reworks thioughout [i, nr. i,
if to unlock from rhem some secrersource of
The 'pure
-e"ii.rg.
aestheticism'of 'The Lotos-Earers'is connected,for
Brimley, with that
unforming form of the warerfallwhich, like rhythm, marks ihe physical
'impulse' of writing and connectsit with feeling.
The po.-;, echoeffects,its suspenseof movement, its islanding self-coniainm.nt and
return of soundson themselves,
hassomethingto do, Brimley seemsro
perceive,with a formativescenewhich is alsothe sceneof artisticform.
All alongthevalley,srreamthat flashest
white,
Deepening
thy voicewith the deepening
of thenighr,
All alongthevalley,wherethy watersflow,
I walkedwith oneI lovedtwo and thirry yearsago.
( r r .618.1_4)
Thirry-one yearslater, to be precise,Tennyson wasstill returning to a
rememberedscene,with its flash of water which becomes,in r.trorl.ct,
a suddenmemory. 'ln the Valley of Cauteretz',writren more than ten
yearsafter the publication of In Memoriam and thirry-one yearsafter
that first visit with Hallam, is a reminder of just how formativea scene
this wasin Tennyson'slife. Those'watersthat fashestwhite' havelessto
do with nature than with a human presence,loved and remembered.If
the verbal echo is of 'wordsworth's 'fash upon that inward eye
l\which
is the blissof solitude',22it is noticeablethat Tennyson'sflashpointsof
tt,9..o.g:-Brimley'^Alfred
Pggrr', in cambridge
(cambridge:
Essays
lg.nnyson's
^
Cambridge
Universiry
Press,
I B55),226- B| ; 237; 241; 279; 237'.
22 william \Tordsworth, 'l wandered
lonely', in poetical tvorks,ed. Thomas Hutchinson, rev. Ernest de Selincourt (London: oxford Universiry press,1936), 149. The fact
60
Tennyson and Aestheticism
memory are generally less tranquilly recollective.In The Louer's Tale, for
instance, he writes: 'The very face and form of Lionel I Flashed through
my eyesinto my innermost brain' (1.365.93-4). \Tordsworth's 'inward
eye', arype of mental vision, has become Tennyson's much more literalminded'innermost brain'which, in spite of that fash, takessome getting
'into'. If this is poetic vision, it is oddly anatomical. Lionel's'form' seems
to have to push 'through' the corporeal eye to reach the'brain', so that
the fash of recognition is audibly slowed up by the obstruction of a
body. Like the waterfall 'that fashest white', this flashing 'form' also
somehow touches, through tactical delay, on a tangible presence. The
metaphorical flash of memory is turned, by Tennyson, into a laborious
effort, which touches on a lost, beloved body somewhere.
Brimley's review then quotes the whole section from 'Morte D'Arthur'
where the word is used wice to describe the fall of Excalibur into the lake:
And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch,
Shot like a streamerof the northern morn,
Seenwhere the moving islesof winter shock
By night, with noisesof the northern sea.
So flashedand fell the brand Excalibur
(Ir. 12-13. 138-42)
Between 'flashing' and that last 'flashed' there is a long pause, as the
Miltonic simile whirls into another time and place: 'the northern morn',
the 'isles of winter'. The fall of the sword is held up, slow-motioned
by something that lies between. Like the formative waterfall in 'The
Lotos-Eaters', the lines can't quite let Arthur's sword fall. Some fifry-five
years later, grieving the death of his son Lionel in the Red Sea in
'To the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava', Tennyson once again imagines
something falling and fashing on water:
When That within the coffin fell,
Fell-and fashed into the Red Sea.
(rrr.20r. 43-4)
Here, the flash happens only after the awFul, unsynchronized bump
of 'fell I Fell', as the poet characteristicallyfeels,and feelsfor, the body
'within'. In'Morte D'Arthur', similarly,the flashis delayedby a physical
obstacle:'Seenwhere the moving islesof winter shockI By night'. These
that Hallam quoted these lines in his review might have given them an extra resonance
for Tennyson. SeeRemainsin Wrseand Prose,297.
Tennyson and Aestheticism
6l
lovely lines (about touching islandsagain) expresssomerhingwhich the
flashing swift sword cannor: the sensi of physical 'shock'; l"iterally,the
clash of icebergsbelow the surfaceof the water. Tennyson,spl".ing of
the word 'shock' at the end of the line lets the shock continue
"r"th.
verb hangs, uncertainly, berweentransitive and intransitive senses.
Do
these'movingisles'shockagainstsomething,or only shock,invisibly,in
'shock I By night' keepsboth mianings in play. This ,sho.k,
themselves?
is grammaticallyintransitive, like a shiver that runs thiough the nerves.
But it is also rransitivebecause,as icebergs,what m"kes1h.m .shock,
is.the
impact of physicalbodiesbelow the surface.The object of
!"g.
'shock' is there, invisibly encounteredas a shatteringrouch
in another
place. In parallel to the clean-cutfall of the sword, with its visionary
fash, Tennysongivesus the after-'shock'of thoseunseen,unheardland
masses,themselvessupplying, at a distance,the missing object of the
verb'fashing'.
Such displaced touch is a defining characteristicof Tennyson's
^
fashpoints. Again and again the moment of revelation,of spiritual
or imaginativeintuition, is slightly held up by the senseof a body.
Even while rhe flash suggesrsinstantaneous,visionary understandin!,
touching is harder,slower,and happensar a remove:
Sowordby word,and lineby line,
The deadman touchedme from thepasr,
And all ar onceit seemed
at lasr
Ihe living soulwasflashedon mine
( r r .413.33 6)
The great momenr of consolationin In Memoriam, which happensin a
flashof revelationthat the soul is 'living', is
rypicallyprecededby
".roth.,
kind of knowledge:'The dead man touchedme.'Tiis touch should
be
,touched,
figurativeand intransitive.The poet, here,should simply be
by readingHallam's lerters,'*oid byword, and line blline'. But the
adjective 'dead' confusesthe figure. Hallam was alive when the letters
were written. He is now_a 'living soul' when the lettersare being read.
Yet Tennyson writes: 'The dead man touched me from th. p"rtl rhat
death is in the pasr,certainly,but it is suddenlythe subjectof touch in
the present.'The deadman'as a resultseemsa more ,o,r.hirrgthing than
eitherthe wordsofhis lettersor his 'living soul'.Tennyson',dlrpl".J-..rt
of the mystical flash into literal touch hak.r 'The dead man touched
me' in fact the great, achievedrevelation of this stanza- a reveladon
which carriesthe 'shock' of two bodies which have come into contacr.
Tennysonand Aestheticism
Tennysonand Aestheticism
As in 'Morte D'Arthur' and 'To the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava', the
poet cannot quite let go of the thing that must alsodisappearin a fla1h
The collocation of touch and flash, the one a delayedreaction of the
other, happensover and over again in his poetry. The Lady of Shalott
comesdo*tt, like any fallen woman, at the mere flash of Sir Launcelot
in a mirror. The betrayingdiamondsin 'Launcelotand Elaine',the mix
of truth and lies in 'Balin and Balan', all flashwith a light that somehow
involvesintimate, if illicit, touch. Guinevere'sfinal farewellto Arthur at
the end of the fdylls of the King returns, with the full emotional charge
of that primal scene,to the sameconnection:
more touch or claspit, than beautyin a dream.'23Ina sensesheis right.
Touching'the Happy Isles'might leadto'forms of sensuousloveliness',
but it might also lead to nothing, where touching only breaks up on
itself, like the seain 'Break, break, break',which never seemsto land
in spite of touching land so often. In two lines of In Memoriam those
breakersare set beside the old aestheticistlandscapeof Cauteretz, to
suggestan object, invisibly presentin both scenes,which may not be
touched or clasped,howevermuch it flashes:'The cataractflashingfrom
the bridge,I The breakerbreakingon the beach'(II. 386. 15 - 16).
The criticism that Tennyson is either 'too sensual'or not sensual
enough recurs throughout the nineteenth century, as if something
about his poetry both rousesand thwartsthe expectationof touch. The
questionis a formal one asmuch as it is thematicor emotional.'I dread
the losinghold of forms',t4Tennysonhimself once declaredin relation
to his poetry. The word 'hold', as IsobelArmstrong haspointed out,25
carriesa chargeasstrongas'touch' in his work. 'And dream my dream,
and hold it true' (IL 443. l0) is a'hold'so pertinacious,desperate,
sensuous,
asto make the objectnot just a truth or dream,but something
held for dear life. The word 'form' too, that great catchword of English
aestheticismand one of its recurring ideals,pretexts,double entendres,
is an object the poet dreads'losing hold of'. 'It is not merely in art,'
writes tJ7ilde, 'that the body is the soul. In every sphere of life Form
is the beginning of things.'26The beauryof the body erymologically
haunts that word, while leavingit free to appearbodiless.Tennyson is
'Wilde
as drawn to the physicallyforming potential of the word as
and
Pater.'I dreadthe losinghold of forms' is a declarationloaded,not only
with the senseof poetry'sformal restraintsand rules,but alsowith that
other, human flormwhich the poet alsodreads'losing'.
ln In Memoriam Tennyson returns to the word 'form', asJ. C. C.
Mays points out,27with obsessivetenaciry. So nature's 'hollow form
with empry hands' (lL 32l. 12) at the start is graduallyreplacedwith
62
out her armsandcriedaloud
Then shestretched
'Oh Arthurl' therehervoicebrakesuddenly'
Then-as a streamthat spoutingfrom a cliff
Fails in mid air, but gathering at the base
Re-makes itself, and flashes down the vale'$7ent
on in passionate utterance
(rrr. 545.602-7)
Guinevere'svoice calling on Arthur takes Tennyson back to 'The
Lotos-Eaters',the Valley of Cauteretz, and a poetry which holds off
its own conclusion,event,PurPose,in a pause,like held breath,before
it 'flashes'into 'utterance'again. The extendedsimile of the stream
separatesGuinevere'slonging to touch, 'she stretchedout her arms',
from the displaced impact of the flash which both realizesand loses
the possibiliry of touch. The delay between them takes us back, for a
moment, to the land of afternoon,the islandof beaury,the valleywhere
song returns endlesslyon itself with no need to find moral or heroic
purposeany more. In that aestheticistlandscapeof a valley, a stream,
and a waterfall,Tennyson still hopesto find 'Arthur''
'It may be we shalltouch the Happy Isles,I And seethe greatAchilles,
H ere,
w h o m w e k n e w ' (I. 6 1 9 .6 3 -4 ), the hero of ' U l ysses' decl ares.
journeying,
but
also'
heroic
to
end
an
only
not
involves
land
touching
of touch.Touching'the Happy Isles'is
the othersenses
characteristically,
separatedby one line only from Achilles, the delayedobject of that verb.
Tinnyson alwayshears the sound of touching in landing, particularly
when the land is an island, self-contained,removed, serene'where
from ... life'.
wereseparated
'beaury,certainforms of sensuous
loveliness
It was Barrett Browning who once complainedof Tennyson: 'He has
not flesh and blood enough to be sensual... His rePresentationof
beaury... is rather the fantasmaof beauty,than the thing. You can no
63
2t
Quoted in Robert Bernard Martin, Tennyson:The Unquiet Heart (Oxford: Claren,
266-7.
don P res s 1983),
z+
Quoted in J. C. C. Mays, 'In Memoriam: An Aspectof Form', Uniuersityof Toronto
Quarterly, 35 (19 65), 22 - 46, 24.
2: IsobelArmstrong, 'The Collapseof Object and Subject In Memoriam',in Critical
Essayson Alfed Lord Tennyson,ed. Herbert F. Tucker (New York: G. K. Hall, 1993),
r36- 52.r 48.
26 Oscar \?'ilde,'The Critic as Artist', in Intentioni (London: Methuen, l9l9),
95 - 2r 7. 20r .
27 Mavs,'In Memoriam',23.
54
Tennyson and Aestheticism
the form of Hallam, whose hand might fill the poet's own. Form, in In
Memoriam, comes in many shapesand impels many kinds of action. It
is something which divides, which might be worn, which is a formaliry
of faith or custom, which is 'beauteous', 'seeming-random', 'ancient',
which flows, which might be a 'first form', or an 'other form', or an
'after form'. As with so many of his key words, Tennyson rings the
changes on 'form'as if, in his very language, acknowledging that words
the same time he
too 'flow I From form to form' (lI. 443. 5-6).At
admits that the dead man might only be touched and known as form.
'Come, beauteous in thine after form' (II.409.15), he begs, holding
on to the physicaliry of 'form', even of the more distant'after form', by
means of an old association with beaury. Tennyson thus gives to English
aestheticism a play on 'form' which indeed allows the soul to be the
body, the spirit to be the letter, the fash of revelation to be the touch of
the flesh. Form is one of those dream words which offers the dreamer
an object he might literally 'hold true', while knowing he might hold
nothing at all.
The key lines about language as form appear, as critics have commented, in Section XCV: 'Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame I In
matter-moulded forms of speech' (II. 413. 45-6). Armstrong argues
that these lines justi4r an 'idealist'2sreading of the poem, where language
as living form triumphs over the dead meanings ofwords. Donald Hair,
similarly, offers a Coleridgean reading, in which forms or moulds affirm
language as a'natural' or'God-given capaciry'2ewhich itself transforms
matter. Eric Griffiths, on the other hand, hears in it Tennyson's attention to the printed body of the text, and therefore to the body itself, 'the
physique of his intellection'.30 Both idealist and materialist interpretations find room to manoeuvre in that packed phrase: 'matter-moulded
forms'. To these I would add a little extra focus on 'moulded'. This, as
well as carrying idealist overtones of shaping and creating, also sets up a
sympathetic resonancewith 'matter'. This may be the 'matter' of speech,
the purpose and sense of it, which stops this too being 'a tale of little
meaning'; or it may be 'matter' itself, the material basis or body of all
recalls earth itself, the grave of the
form. The word'moulded'inevitably
poem's 'Dark Yew' sections: 'Thy roots are wrapt about the bones' (II.
28 Armstrong,
'The Collapse
of ObjectandSubject',I50.
2e Donald S. Hair, Tennyson's
Language(London: Universiryof Toronto Press,
t99t),20.
30 EricGriffiths,'Tennyson's
Breath',in Tuckered.,CriticalEssays,28-47,36.
Tennysonand Aestheticism
65
319. 4). It is that very senseof mould which Paterwill unearthand toy
with throughout his curiousstory'Duke Carl of Rosenmold',wherethe
roots of words and treesdig down into the earthy mould or matter of
the world, however many 'roses'grow from it: 'the higher informing
capaciry,if it existwithin, will mould an unpromisingmatrerto itself',:t
he punningly and ambiguouslysuggests.Tennyson himself, with his
keen ear for etymology, must also have registeredthe materialist meaning of 'matter-mouldedforms'. Language,roo, is made up of physical
matter,which moulds its forms, transitively,into shapeand life, but also
moulds, intransitively, back to earth. The materialist-idealist debateis
played out in the very stuff of Tennyson's language,specificallyin the
curious shiftinessof his verbs. Flash, shock, form, mould, touch, all
havea fickering play about them, a resrless,
objectlesspalpabiliry,as if
feelingfor both the empry and full possibilitiesof their own forms.
I am suggesting,then, that Tennyson,consciouslyor unconsciously,
offers the nineteenth century one of its most memorable, sensuous,
aestheticistvoices.It is he who pusheslanguagealmost as far as it will
go into music, whose rhymes and echoesring on the other side of
sense,who usesrefrainsand returns like audible embodimentsof the
tautologyof art for art's sake.This musicalcompulsion is not a search
for metaphysicalself-validation,but a feeling for form as a thing to
be held as literally as possibleagainst the threat of formlessness.The
strain of 'pure aestheticism'in his work doesnot stop, however,with
the earthly paradisesof 'The Lotos-Eaters'and 'The Palaceof Art'. It
runs all through his writing, turning up in those islanded momenrs
when beauty, for its own sake,becomesseparatedfrom the moral and
narrativeaction of the poem. 'And we came to the Silent Isle that we
neverhad touched at before',he writes aslate as 1880. Touching at, or
on, islandsis somethinghe hasbeen doing all his life.
This aestheticismis not, however, just a matrer of sound and
sensuousness.
Like Pater's,it hasan ancientand powerful philosophical
rationale. Brimley, in his concern to exempt In Memoriam from the
chargeof aestheticism,for instance,endsby declaringrhat 'Poetry and
passionarenobler and wiserthan stoicismor Epicureanism.'Tennyson,
he proposes,abandonedhis 'all serene'32sryle in the later work in
recognition of that superioriry.In 1885, Pater published Marius the
rl Pater, 'Duke Carl of Rosenmold', in Imaginary Pornaits (London: Macmillan,
I e 1 0), rtg-53, t2g.
r2 Brimley,'Alfred Tennyson'sPoems'.279: 261.
66
Tennysonand Aestheticism
Epicurean,in which he givesa semi-novelisticaccountof the philosophy
which underliesthe whole aestheticmovement-a philosophywhich,he
writes, reinforces'the deeporiginal materialismor earthlinessof human
natureitself,bound so intimatelyto the sensuous
world'.tt By the 1880s
Paterwas riding a high tide of interestin Lucretius,mainly as a result
of the perception that Lucretian atomic theory intriguingly paralleled
contemporary scientific developments.Lucretius, as Frank Turner3a
points out, wasonly takenseriouslyby the Victoriansin the 1870s,after
the publication of Munro's great edition of De Rerum Natura in 7864,
as well as after the first important article on 'The Atomic Theory of
Lucretius'in 1868.It wasin 1868that Tennysonpublishedhis dramatic
monologue'Lucretius'.He alreadyowned Munro's edition, along with
severalothers,and indeed had consultedMunro on the accuracyof the
poem'sdetail,much of which comesout of Lucretius'poem.
However, as Brimley hints, Lucretius was alwaysdeeply embedded
in Tennyson'simagination.The openingof 'The Lover'sTale' is drawn
from the famous opening of Book 2, on the sweetness
of watching a
storm at seafrom a safe distance,while in 1842 Tennyson added the
whole last section of 'The Lotos-Eaters'.basedon Lucretius' account
of the serenecontemplationof the Epicureangods: 'On the hills like
Gods together,careless
of mankind' (I. 476. 155). The interest,as one
might guessfrom its prominencein this poem, goesback to the years
with Hallam. And indeed, Hallam's essay'On Sympathy'35is full of
referencesto Lucretius and Epicurus, while in a letter he specifically
comparesTennyson's 'manner of delineation' to, among others, 'the
about the sacrificeof Iphigeniain Lucretius'36-the pasdivine passage
sagewhich shows,in Munro's translation,'So great the evils to which
religion could prompt!' (3):z tnroughout his life Tennyson included
Lucretiusamong his favouriteclassicalpoets,and once declaredhimself,
laughingly, a potential convert to the Roman poet's 'heart-crushing
atheism'.38
References
to Lucretiusin Tennyson'swork abound,asPaul
J
3r Pater,Marius the Epicurean,i. 146.
3a Frank M. Turner, 'Lucretius Among the Victorians', Victorian Srudies,16(1973),
3 2 9 - 4 8 ,3 3 5 .
35 Arthur Hallam, 'On Sympathy', in The Writings of Arthur Hallam, ed. T. H. Vail
Motter (London: Oxford UniversiryPress,1943),133-42.
x The LettersofArthur Henry Hallam, ed.
Jack Kolb (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State
Un ive r sir yPr e ss,l9 8 l) , 4 0 1 .
tz -fiti Lucreti Cari, De Rerum Natura, with a translation and notes by H. A. J.
Munro, vol. I (Cambridge:Deighton Bell and Co, 1864),5.
38
Quoted in Paul Turner, Tennyson(London: Routledge, 1976),122.
Tennysonand Aestheticism
67
Turner3efirst noted and asChristopher Ricks haswidely footnoted. BeNveenTennyson and Pater,Lucretius is the missing Link.In Memoriam,s
senseof the disintegratingatomism of narureleadi, through Lucretius,
to Pater's sensein the Conclusion to The Renaissance
oF the human
form as 'but the concurrence,renewedfrom momenr ro moment. of
forcesparting sooneror later on their ways'.4oLucretius' accountof a
world from which the gods have been removed to a faraway calm, a
world which is made up of nothing more than a fortuitous concourseof
atoms, givesto Tennyson his 'dust of continenrsro be' (II. 352. 12) and
to Pater his 'perpetual flight'4r of impressions.The materialist basisof
aestheticism,nor in the Marxist but the Lucretiansense,could be said
to start with Tennyson, who, in the words of Huxley, was 'the first poet
sinceLucretius who has understoodthe drift of scre:nce'.42
It is not exactly 'science'that Tennyson takes from Lucretius, but
a materialist or 'marter-moulded' perspecriveon the world which
remained with him to the end. There may be nothing more, as
Tennyson'sown Lucretiuschants,than 'atom and void,
and void'
",oi,
(rr. 719. 257).43By the law of bodies,the soul is too thin
to surviveits
parting from marrer, and is thus lost in the air. Tennyson,sown lovelv
renderingof 'dispersa
per auras'is 'the soul flies out and dies in the air,
(rr. 720. 273).Such thinnessof matter also marks the nature of the
gods.As he puts it:
If all bearoms,how thenshouldthe Gods
Beingatomicnot bedissoluble,
Nor follow rhegrearlaw?
( r r . 714.r 14- 16)
The proof of eve-rythingthat is not void, then, is touch. Everywhere
in Lucretius rhe definition of mamer,of body, corpora,is its tangibiliry.
so, for insrance,in Munro's translation,'nothing but body."i ,ou.h
and be touched' ('tangereenim et tdngi, nisi corpLs,nulla potest res),44
or, later from Book 2,'touch, touch... is feeling of the body' ('ta.ctus
re
Quoted forTurner, 122.
a0 'W'alterPater, The Renaissance
(London: Macmillan, l9l0),234.
4t l bi d.235.
and Lettersollhomas Henry HuxlE, ed. Leonard Huxrey,2 vors. (London:
, -t !:P
Macmillan,
1900), ii. 338.
For a less_positive
.-43
.reading of Tennyson's debt to Lucretius, see Helen Small,
'T9nryson and Late sryle',
The TennysonfiesearchBulletin, g(2005), 22()-50,230_ 1.
aa Tiri Lucreti Cari. 14.
68
Tennysonand Aestheticism
Tennysonand Aestheticism
enim, tActus... corporisestsensus').a5
This leadsto the logical conclusion,
in Book 3, that 'when we seethat none of theseeffectscan take place
without touch nor touch without body, must we not admit that the
mind and the soul are of a bodily nature?'('corporeanatura anirnum
In Book 5 he writes that, sincethe fine nature
constAre
animamque?').<e
of the gods 'has ever eluded the touch and stroke of the hands, it must
touch nothingwhich is tangiblefor us; for that cannottouch which does
not adnrit of being touched in turn' ('tangereenim non quit quod tangi
non licet ipsum').a7Tennyson'sLucretius callson the goddessVenus:
'Nay, if thou canst,O Goddess,like ourselveslTouch, and be touched'
(II.712. 80-1). The untouchableness
of the Lucretiangods proves
either their non-existence,
or elsetheir sheerindifference,in a realm of
'eternalcalm', to stormsand troublesbelow. They cannot 'Touch, and
be touched' becausethey have no physical realiry, no atomic structure
which provestheir presenceor interestin human affairs.
Instead,in their'tranquil abodes,'Munro translates,the gods 'laugh
with light shed largely round' ('et largo dffiso lumine rident).a8 In
'Oenone'Tennysonsimilarlyimagineshow they'Rest in a happy place
and quiet seatslAbove the thunder' (I. 428.129-30). In 'Lucretius'he
writes:'Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar I Their sacredeverlastingcalm!'(II.713. 109- 10).In 'Morte D'Arthur', 'the island-valley
ofAvilion' (II. 18. 259), to which Arthur journeysafterdeath,is, asTennysonhimselfnoted,the placeof the Epicureangods:'Deep-meadowed,
h"ppy, fair with orchard-lawns'(262). Throughout his life he falls back
on certainwords: touch, calm, serene,h"ppy, far away,which are never
quite the innocently cheerful words they seem.Instead, they carry the
darker,or lighter, connotationsof Lucretius'view of a universewhere
everythingthat is not sensedand touchedis dismissedto an outer space
of godly irrelevance.There, they might 'laugh with light'-a laughter
that soundsasempry as bright air. In Tennyson,too, the word 'h"ppy'
carriesovertonesof that purposelesscontent. The 'H"ppy Isles', 'the
h"ppy dead',the 'happy ... orchard-lawns','the happy Autumn fields',
are all examplesof a happinesswhich is nearerto Lucretius' placewhere
the gods 'laugh with light' than to the Christian land of the Blessed.
The problem that runs through Tennyson's accountsof such sunny
landsis that, in Lucretius'scheme,their inhabitantsarealsoimmaterial,
untouchable,thin, out of reach.
a : T itiL u cr e ti Ca r i,1 4 .7 0 .
4 8 Ib id . 1 0 5 .
46 l bi d. 111.
69
It is possible,then, to readIn Memoriamas apoem deeplytroubled,
but alsoinspired,by that Lucretianmaterialismwhich wili becomethe
basisof victorian aestheticism.As pater puts it in Marius: 'The various
pathetic traits of the beloved, suffering, perished body of Flavian, so
deeplypondered,had made him a
t.'4e Mateii"lir-, for pater
-"r.ii"ii,
and his contemporaries,
is a philosophy
basedon the materialiryof the
For Tennyson roo, the attempr ro recoverthe body of Hallam,
!^ody.
'Sweethuman hand and lips and eye' (rr.44g.6),
involveshim in a
Iong, tormented drama of touch, preciselybecausetouch is the Lucretian touchsronefor being there at all. By ranging Hallam among the
classicalgodsalmost ro the end of the poem,Tennyrot 's languag.io.,
on beggingfor physicalcommunication, in defiance,but drl i.,"ru"b,l.
justification,of the Lucretianuniverse:
O, thereforefrom thy sightless
range
\X/ithgodsin unconjectured
bliss,
O, from the distanceof the abyss
Of tenfold-complicated
change,
Descend,
and touch,andenter;hear
( r r .410.9 13)
That Miltonic'sightless'doesdouble dury: Hallam is blind to, but also
invisibleto, the living. The'distanceof the abyss'is somehowtoo far for
eithersideto seeacross.This invisibledistanceis then emphasizedby the
phrase_'unconjectured
bliss',which puts'bliss'firmly beyond.onj..tur.,
itself the most unreliableof senseperceptions.Tiris, once again, is a
Lucretian scene,with Hallam ser among the unimaginable;gods',in
a place beyond sight or conjecture.The extraordin"r/ 1i.,. wh]ch then
Follows:'Descend,and touch, and enter;hear', must win its force from
the blocking distancesof the previous lines. Across 'the discanceof
the abyss'comesthe body of Hallam, with all its capacities,of course,
for 'touch'. Interestingly,Tennyson leavesthoseu.rbr, 'Descend,and
touch, and enter', inrransitive,as if still castingfor their object. Rather
like the treesthat 'Laid their dark armsabout the field' (rr. 4'12. 16), the
clesiredobjectof this embraceis missing,and the verbsengagein shadow
play.For'nothing but body can touch and be touched',Lucietiusinsists.
As late as Section CXXUI Tennyson is describing a self-evidently
I:picureansceneof storm and tumulr, a scenefrom *[i.h the deadare
safelyimmured:
4? Ibi d.2t7.
ae Pater,Marius the Epicurean,i.
125.
70
Tennysonand Aestheticism
Vhile thou, dearspirit,happystar,
O'erlook'stthe tumult from afar,
And smilest,knowingall is well.
(Ir. 448.1820)
That smile unnervingly recallsthe gods who 'laugh with light', whose
happinessis an indifferenceto 'the tumult' rather than a concern for
it, and who remain untouched by human invocations.Once again the
word 'h"ppy' evokes calmness'from afar', from a place or condition
with a senseof being untouched about it. Set above the storm of
human and natural life, Hallam has returned to that first sceneof
bliss-the one which, according to Brimley, marked the 'extreme'
point of Tennyson's aestheticism:the Lotos land where gods recline
of mankind' (I.476. 155),and'smilein secret'(159)'
iog.ther,'careless
\)(h"..u., biographical event originated this scene, it seems that In
Memoriam cannot get free of it. Tennyson cannot relinquish the idea of
a touch which on the one hand assuresHallam a kind of afterlife among
the gods,and on the other puts him at an eternalremove.
This trouble of touch is then often signalledby Tennyson'snervous'
intransitive verbs. Even when they should graspsomething, as in 'Laid
their dark arms', they seemto cast 'about'. There is somethingunfinished,unsatisfiedabout them, a senseof touch missingits object.This
is rrue, for instance,of the lines:'Break,break,break,I On thy cold gray
stones,O Sea!'(I.24. I-2). Here, the strategicallyplacedlast comma
changesthe meaningof 'break',from 'breakon' to 'break,'which thus,
visibly and aurally, curtails its arrival on the shore as well as its arrival
at the real object of breaking:'the touch of a vanishedhand' (11). This
is the 'break,'both of not reachingthe h"PPy isle,but also,perhaps,of
breakingon it with such force that there is a breaking-uPshock involved
in the touch. 'Break,break,break,'Tennysonwrites,asif, not being able
to reachhis object and touch the 'hand', he can only repeatthe effort,
leave the verb curbed by its comma, and saveat least his intransitive
heartbreak.Something similar is going on even at the very end of In
Memoriam: 'Until we closewith all we loved' (II. 452. 11), the poet
writes.To 'closewith' ought to mean to finish, bring to completion,to
closethe book. But it alsomeans,of course,to meet' touch, embrace,
whetherin love,with its hint of sexualclimax,or perhaps,aswith an enemy or angel,in combat.Tennyson,onceagain,silentlyslipsthe ideaof a
body besidea verb which both yearnsfor, yet cannotquite reachit. 'Until
we closewith' fails to 'close'its meaning quite asquickly as it should.
Tennysonand Aestheticism
7l
The proverbiallyfamous"Tis better to haveloved and lost' (fi. j45.
15) plays a similar game of absentobjects.The collocation of loving
and losing suggesrsthat something,other than just love, is the object
of loving and losing. After all, the poet has nor 'lost' love-he goes
on loving after Hallam's death-but he has lost the loved body which
is not there. once again, the senseof a body, palpably lovable, lies
somewherein the vaguereachesof thoseverbs.Something that is 'loved
and lost' is not just love; it is alsoa presence,an object.Tennyson thus
makesverbswork hard to find the transitivesenseof an intransitive loss.
Displaced,unknown, far away,the idea of an object remainsobliquely
connectedwith thoseTennysonian verbs:flashing, shocking, breaking,
casting,loving, losing,which seemro asserran objectlessacriviry.
The phrase 'far, far away' was, as is well known, a favourite with
Tennysonsincechildhood.He wrote that ir'had alwaysa srrangecharm
for me' (III. 197 note). The charm of sound for its o*n ,"k.. that
condition of music, meanr that his ear showed certain addictions to
the lotos-fruits of words. Towards the very end of his life he wrote a
short Poem, specificallyfor music, called'Far-Far-Away',
in which
the repeatedphrasemimes its own musicallydistancing effect. But rwo
deletedlinesalsopoint to an old, autobiographicalpain: 'Ghost, do the
men that walk this planet seem' and 'Ghost, can you seeus, hear us?
do we seem'(III. 198 note). The self-sufficient
sonoriryof the phrase
'far, far awav'is also, theselines tell, a call to be heard by one wt.o may
always be too far to hear. 'He is not here; but far away' (rl. 326. 9),
Tennyson writes in In Memoriam. There the phrase doubles back, to
qualify, not the placewhereHallam might be, but the too near'noiseof
life' (1. l0) which shutshim out. At somepoint in Tennyson'slife the
romantic distanceof the pastbecameconfusedwith the distanceof the
future, as ghostsand gods came to be rangedon rhe other side of that
'far away'.For asLucretiusputs it, in a passage
which Tennysonmarked
heavily in his own copy, the 'gods musr ... enjoyimmortaliry together
with supreme repose,far removed and withdrawn from our conterns'
('semotaab nostrisrebusseiunctaque
longe).50 The Latin 'semotA','far
removed',givesTennyson a phrasefor a distanceboth unmeasurable
and beyond 'our concerns'.
At the start of In Memoriam, for insrance,the poet usesthis phrase
in a passagewhich asksto find, like a profitable reward, 'The far-off
interestof tears' (II. 318. 8). Here 'interest'also punningly expresses
Tennyson and Aestheticism
Tennyson and Aestheticism
the fear that such 'tears' may not be interesting any more to the 'far-off'
dead, who may, after all, be smiling about something else. If the gods are
'far removed and withdrawn from our concerns', rhey will not answer
tears. The same contradiction emerges in Section L)C(XII. At first the
old profit motive, sprung from a grave imagery of roots and flowers,
seems to offer hope:
Dante's Paradiso: 'The Love that moves the sun
and the other srars,.
But Tennyson's version differs slightly from both:
72
Nor blame I Death, becausehe bare
The useof virtue out of earth:
I know transplantedhuman worth
'Will
bloom to profit, otherwhere.
(Ir.394.9 12)
However, in the nexr sranzathat hope fails, and the argument from 'use'
and 'profit' collapsesbefore the old clamour to be heard:
For this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garnersin my heart;
He put our lives so far apart
'We
cannot hear each other speak.
(rr.394.
1316)
Once again the Lucretian perspective, 'so far apart', opens up an incommunicable distance-a distance to make all speech simply unprofitable
and useless;it may be, to make all speech'a lamentation and an ancient
tale of wrong, I Like a tale of little rneaning rhough the words are srrong
(I. 475. 163-4). The Epicurean gods or sailors in 'The Lotos-Eaters'
are deaf to ancient wrongs, having gone too 'far' across the sea to hear
them. "'Our island home I Is far beyond rhe wave"', they sing, that
'far' going in both directions, so rhere is no knowing which 'island'
is 'home'. \Tithout the use and profit of the Christian resurrecrion,
speaking to the dead might indeed be a uselesslamentarion, a 'pure
aestheticism' perhaps. Tennyson's great poem wrestles, not only with
doubt and faith, grief and consolation, body and soul, but also with a
classicalperspective which, in its blithe indifference to gods and ghosts,
both too thin to touch, also acknowledges that void, that far-awayness,
which might turn speech back on itself, into a uselessif beautiful art for
art's sake. 'Ghost, can you see us, hear us?'
Interestingly, the final stanza of In Memoriam, which seems ro resolve
the poem into a prayer of hope, catches, for one last moment, on that
old perspective. The lines, as Ricks points out, lovingly echo one of
Hallam's own poems: 'The Love lToward which all being solemnly
doth move' (II. 458 note). This, in its rurn, echoes the last line of
73
That God, which ever lives and loves.
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-offdivine evenr.
To which the whole crearionmoves.
(rr.459.
r4r_4)
Dante, of course, puts love at the centre of his
universe, and makes
it the. moving lever of the whole system. Hallam
.Love,,
still centres
but the movement is creation's rowards it. Tennyson
adds rwo new
ingredients to divine love: 'one law, one elementl
with their hint of
scientific, elemental marrer rather than spiritual purpose.
He then adds
the tiny labour and distance of his o*r, A,rourit.
phr"r.:,far-off,.After
a poem which has so turned on the calm and h"ppy
indifference of
things 'far-off', it is strangely disconcerting to find,
,t. end, that the
poet is still, covertly, asking, 'how far' the point 'To"i
which the whole
creation moves'?
To en{ the poem, thus, with another intransitive
verb, Ieaves its
.
object still unreached, untouched. The verb 'moves'
both closes and
.far_off,.
refuses to close. Its 'event' is no nearer, after all, but
still
So
'I-ennyson
ends, not with God's or Hailam's love reached, but with
the
long effort to move towards it, possibly even ro
move it at all, through
.th.
the thing he has so touchingly celebrated in all its
forms:
*ho"le
creation'.