Write a short note on Tennyson’s
“In Memorium”
Tennyson’s famous Elegy ‘In
Memorium’ has one hundred and thirty six sections, and they form a complete
poem. Different sections were written at
different times; and also these sections were written at different places. Such fashion was popular in his times; but he
did not like them to be published in a single poem. He said, “I did not write them with any view
weaving them into a whole, or for publication until I found I had written so
many.”
‘In Memorium’ was written as an
Elegy in memory of Arthur Henry Hallam, who died in 1833, the lyrics that
became sections was written over sixteen years.
The prologue to the poem was was added in 1849. The elegy commenced as an expression of
private and personal grief, but then broadened into an attempt to probe and
answer the spiritual problem of the age.
Tennyson’s great loss led him to reflect on the great problems of
religion; immortality, reality of evil and the free will. These questions were agitating every sincere
thinker of the age. The poem as a whole
is the record of his passage from a numbness of absolute despair to the larger
hope. Thus ‘In Memorium’ becomes a
lyrical and philosophical poem.