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I'm a bit behind, some family events are interfering with what I should be doing (which of course is reading my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ books), but for those who are on course, here's the thread for discussing Sections 53-77 (LIII-LXXVII), which will take us the rest of the way through the first year, up to the second Christmas.

I am behind in my reading as well. I realize a person could spend their whole life studying this poem. Challenging but intriguing.

I'm going to do my catching up today (now that I've posted the final thread for Esther Williams). I agree that the Tennyson is deceptive in length. There's a lot in these lines.

Speaking of there being "a lot in these lies," I want to do a close reading of two Cantos, as a way perhaps of seeing how much is hidden deep in this poem.

Cantos 55 and 56 present the great challenge of Victorian faith, the problem of evolution. Even before Darwin’s Origin burst on the scene, Victorian scientists were making discoveries in the geology of fossils, long dead species, and wondering about how God’s creation of the universe could be reconciled with what they were seeing.

From Canto 55:

He starts simply enough:

“The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?�

God is within the soul and will not let our lives fail even after death. This is, of course, basic Christian theology of his age: there is life after death, and he will (he hopes) see Hallam again in Heaven. That is the promise of God within the soul.

But � the new discoveries are suggesting a Nature at odds with God. While not a sparrow falls without God knowing it, Nature is not so careful of her creations.

“Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,�

Note that Nature is “she.� God, of course, at the time was unquestionably male. He. But Nature is she. Separate, apart from God, yet a power in her own right, and even at strive with God. How can that be? Are they really at odds? These scientific discoveries are making the Victorians search for the secret meaning in the way they are finding that Nature works.

Nature is careful of the whole of a species, evolving them to survive as a species, but any individual is nothing to Nature, even though everything to the creator God. Nature will spread fifty seeds to have one sprout into life; does God waste 49 potential lives for every one that lives?
“I falter where I firmly trod,�

These discoveries of science are making Tennyson (and here I think he speaks for all Victorians) falter in their faith where before this time they could be absolutely firm in their faith. But these evolutionary ideas, Nature and God in conflict, are raising doubts. These doubts were reflected throughout Victorian society.

“I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.�

He still wants to have faith. He wants God still to be the hope. He falls on the altar, he stretches out his hands. As Shelley put it, “I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!�) Tennyson wants to see Hallam in Heaven. And remember, to Victorians, as to many modern day Christians, we will live in the afterlife in the body. He is groping his way through his faith, calling to the Lord of all, including of Nature. But his former belief is now reduced to mere feeling, faint trust.

It is a prayer of almost aching anguish. “Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.� (Mark 9.24)

Canto 56 continues this theme of science and faith:

�'So careful of the type?' but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, `A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.�

Nature is not, after all, so careful of her (God’s?) creations. The scarped [cut steeply, as in making a cut through a hill for the railroads being built everywhere] cliff and the quarried stone are where scientists were finding so many fossils of now extinct species; a thousand types gone. Why did God let them all die? If God created dinosaurs, why did they go extinct? Isn’t everything God creates perfect? But science is telling us no, Nature brings creations into existence and takes them out. All shall go.

Even man? Will man also go the way of the dinosaurs? What is Nature telling us when we appeal to her?

�'Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.' And he, shall he,

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes [temples] of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law�
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine*, shriek'd against his creed�

Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills?�

* I think ravine is used here in a now obsolete meaning of impetus, violence, force. OED.

Are all our hymns, our prayers, our worship meaningless? Will our trust in God and God’s love be, in the end, nothing? Nature shrieks against God’s creed! Will Nature consign even those of us who loved, who suffered, who battled for truth and justice, will Nature consign even those (and I think he must have Hallam first in his mind her) simply to be blown around the desert or become fossils ourselves? Is the promise that in our flesh we will see God denied us?

[Note here another very famous quote I bet you never knew came from this poem: Nature, red in tooth and claw.]

And in the end:

“No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him.

O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.�

Was all our faith merely a dream? As futile as the lives of the dinosaurs, who compared to us are mellow music?

Who is the “thy� of “O for thy voice to soothe and bless!�? God? Or perhaps Hallam, still, Tennyson hopes, living in Heaven and waiting for him? What hope is there to get an answer to this anguish of faith?

It is all a mystery. All behind the veil. Now we see through a glass darkly. Is there really something good we will see when the glass clears, when the veil is lifted?

This, for me, is near the depth of the Tennyson’s grief, but turned from the original blind, instant, instinctive grief now into thinking grief, which is almost worse. Hallam’s death combined with the terrifying scientific findings of the time have led Tennyson, as so many Victorians, into the depths of this crisis of despair. Is Hallam really just dead and gone and becoming fossilized in an iron hill never to be seen again? Are we really pawns of Nature, not beloved children of God? Or is our faith, if we can hold true to it in the face of this challenge to it, truly to be rewarded as we have been promised?

These are questions Tennyson will have to continue wrestling with as the poem goes on.

Many thanks for this close reading, Everyman. I do agree that the Victorian loss of faith/battle to retain faith in the face of scientific discovery is central to these cantos and to so much of the poem.

One of the things that is so great is the way he reflects the changing moods of grief - sometimes he can believe in personal immortality and feel sure that he and his loved one will be reunited, but at other times the doubt and despair are paramount.

While the whole poem is magnificent, I think there are probably cantos which stand out to each of us, and one which has made a strong impression on me is LXIX - there is more religious content here, as Tennyson sees himself wearing a crown of thorns like Christ.

It's a very strange and haunting canto, beginning

"I dream'd there would be Spring no more,
That Nature's ancient power was lost:
The streets were black with smoke and frost,
They chatter'd trifles at the door:"

That opening line has quite a Shakespearean ring to me - reminiscent of 'Macbeth shall sleep no more' - and the whole idea of the dream helps to give a great intensity to this canto.

There are several cantos where Tennyson recounts dreams, including some where he sees Arthur alive again. Here, though, he is even more isolated in the dream than in his waking life:

"I wander'd from the noisy town,
I found a wood with thorny boughs:
I took the thorns to bind my brows,
I wore them like a civic crown:

I met with scoffs, I met with scorns
From youth and babe and hoary hairs:
They call'd me in the public squares
The fool that wears a crown of thorns:"

The Penguin Classics edition of Tennyson's Selected Poems which I'm reading, edited by Christopher Ricks, has many notes of comments that Tennyson himself made about the poem, and on this canto he commented: "To write poems about death and grief is 'to wear a crown of thorns,' which the people say ought to be laid aside."

I do feel there is more to the crown of thorns than that, though - it's such a resonant image.

For anyone who wants to look at the full canto and some questions about it, here is a page about it at the Victorian Web:

Judy wrote: "While the whole poem is magnificent, I think there are probably cantos which stand out to each of us,..."

I agree completely. Parts of the poem really speak to me, parts are empty (though might become fuller for me if I read them more often). And I'm sure the ones that don't yet speak to me do to others.

Judy wrote: "For anyone who wants to look at the full canto and some questions about it, here is a page about it at the Victorian Web:"

Thanks for the comment and the reference. Yes, dreams do appear several times, and through them Hallam sometimes lives for him again.

I think this is true of other people who have loved lost ones -- that they return in dreams. Has never happened to me, but I think does to others.

Everyman wrote: " Will Nature consign even those of us who loved, who suffered, who battled for truth and justice, will Nature consign even those (and I think he must have Hallam first in his mind her) simply to be blown around the desert or become fossils ourselves? Is the promise that in our flesh we will see God denied us? ..."

The reader's guide I am dipping into (Alfred Lord Tennyson's 'in Memoriam': A Reading Guide) suggests that

"...Hallam becomes a metonym (a part that represents a greater whole) for the human race....and his death prefigures human extinction."

Using one specific mourner of one specific death to generalize to the crises of faith for the human species. Back in section 53, the last stanza, the mourner warns about the dangers of Philosophy:

"Hold thou the good, define it well;
For fear divine Philosophy
Should push beyond her mark, and be
Procuress to the the Lords of Hell.

Philosophy is a female, like Nature, perhaps like Eve? Tempting men with the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Judy wrote: "comments that Tennyson himself made about the poem, and on this canto he commented: "To write poems about death and grief is 'to wear a crown of thorns,' which the people say ought to be laid aside."

I do feel there is more to the crown of thorns than that, though - it's such a resonant image...."

The angel touches the thorns and "seem'd" to transform them into leaves. Of hope of spring, maybe? If the thorns are the poems, then now the poems will be less prickly? More hopeful? I love the voice of the angel. Not grieving, but hard to understand. If the mourner is going to try to change the poems from thorns to leaves, what will they be like?

Maybe I have a strange sense of humour, but I find myself chuckling at some of these sections where the mourner is troubled by his social and intellectual status. In LX, he compares himself to a young girl in love with someone above her position in society. In LXI, he pictures his lost friend chumming in the "circle of the wise", and hobnobing with Shakespeare! His friend will most certainly look down on (!) him for his inferior intellectual and poetic abilities. And then in LXIII, he compares Hallam's love for himself to the mourner's love for his pets! Surely we are meant to smile just a little at all this?

Ginny wrote: "Surely we are meant to smile just a little at all this? "

I think you are right, Ginny - there is a lot of wit among the sadness here, as in Shakespeare's sonnets.

Ginny wrote: "The angel touches the thorns and "seem'd" to transform them into leaves. Of hope of spring, maybe?"

I agree there is a feeling here of bringing the dead wood back to life.

On the angel in this canto, LXIX, in the Penguin there is a note of a comment Tennyson made: "But the Divine thing in the gloom brought comfort."

I feel that last line withdraws the comfort to an extent though, leaving us with that feeling of waking and not being able to make sense of what has happened in a dream - "The words were hard to understand".

Ginny wrote: "Philosophy is a female, like Nature, perhaps like Eve? Tempting men with the fruit of the tree of knowledge.."

And yet didn't many Christian thinkers follow Plato in his search for knowledge, and indeed themselves engage in that search? I think the Victorians had more trouble with the conflict between faith and science than faith and philosophy, but I could easily be wrong on that.

Ginny wrote: "Maybe I have a strange sense of humour, but I find myself chuckling at some of these sections where the mourner is troubled by his social and intellectual status. In LX, he compares himself to a yo..."

Is it intentional humor? Or is he really bothered by the class conflicts within his society and feeling some class guilt?

Everyman wrote: "I think the Victorians had more trouble with the conflict between faith and science than faith and philosophy, but I could easily be wrong on that.

I am happy to be corrected on this as it is a long time since I was taught it and I unfortunately don't have time for extra research right now, but I believe the dichotomy between science and faith developed more in the twentieth century, perhaps as atheism grew and openly opposed religion rather than being individual's having separate views?
From the Enlightenment onwards science was seen as a compliment to religion, humans learning more about the world God had gifted them in order to appreciate and worship God through their new knowledge and understanding.
Although now Darwinism is taken to be the absolute opposite of creationism and from that Christianity, Darwin's religious views were difficult to pin down and were closer to agnostic than atheist.

To be a little cross-textual though if I may, I was surprised in 'Esther Waters' how in a novel set in the 1870s she was mocked for being religious and wanting to go to church. I wasn't sure if it was just because she was Brethren rather than conventional, but I got the impression it was the whole religion side as she's warned about it by her fellow servant when she's just seen praying.

In this poem I see Tennyson's voicing the doubts that all people with faith are often plagued with, or to take it further, all people at some points in their lives : 'What if I am wrong?'
I think you explain it very well in your close reading, Everyman, the despair of a life view being challenged and in this case the absolute grief of uncaring Nature taking his friend and that being the complete end.

In Canto LXXI Tennyson mentions a holiday in France which he explored slightly more in this 1861 poem :

In the Valley of Cauteretz

All along the valley, stream that flashest white,
Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night,
All along the valley, where thy waters flow,
I walk'd with one I loved two and thirty years ago.
All along the valley, while I walk'd to-day,
The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away;
For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed,
Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead,
And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree,
The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.

I find it so moving that the friendship that in reality only lasted a very short portion of his life is still so important and inspiring to him thirty years later.