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... tenuously resolve to examine science face on rather than turn away from it. Tennyson condemns the notion that ignorance is a valid path to faith. Tennyson makes no attempt to refute the authority of science in its explanation of the corporeal world, but he does question whether scientific reason should have a role within the discussion of spiritual matters. CXXIV represents the climax of Tennyson's spiritual journey, as a passage that boldly asserts his new personal faith, a faith that is independent of any investigation of the corporeal: "I found him not in earth or sun" (line five). The passage is a bold rejection of the doctrines of natural theology, it is a rejection of the need to find evidence for God's existence within nature and it is a rejection of the notion that reason should form the basis of faith.
The first stanza expresses a transcendental philosophy in relation to God, that He is omnipresent; present everywhere and in everything: He is "He, They, One, All; within, without; " (line three). Such transcendentalism contradicts a notion of a God as something that can be discovered, to be pinned down. Tennyson here communicates his view of reason in the realm of the divine as an arrogant attempt to explain the inexplicable. Language itself, as a medium to convey notions of God, becomes indecent also. The list of collocations of oppositional concepts in the first stanza illustrates the concept that meaning emerges from difference, a theory propounded by Greimas in his S'em antique structural. The stanza demonstrates the inadequacy of language to communicate complex abstract concepts, such as the Nature of God, beyond use of shallow signs.
It demonstrates Tennyson's humility before God, and the impertinence of scientific thought to seek the answers to the eternal question of God, creation and the soul. Tennyson shows contempt for supposedly articulate philosophical arguments, using metaphor to compare them to "cobwebs. " Cobwebs are ingeniously intricate, but Tennyson pre modifies the noun with "petty, " promoting the perception of the cobwebs as pointless despite apparent worth just as philosophical arguments are to Tennyson. Like cobwebs, these arguments are equally as delicate and easy to destroy as they are intricate. Reason may coherently be communicated with language, yet feeling transcends such a medium and consequently language becomes inadequate tool to convey it accurately.
The linguistic coherence of the communication of reason has offered the head supremacy over the heart in a culture that values language highly. The poet may be said to strive to achieve a linguistic reflection of the feelings of the heart, but with In Memoriam Tennyson recognises the futility of his quest. He does not abandon the heart, however- he gives it a voice for itself. It is personified and said to stand up and say "I have felt. " Tennyson does not presume to be able to use language to convey what exactly it feels, but by giving it a dramatized voice he essentially brings the heart to life and allows it to assert for itself a valid presence in the discussion of faith. The use of the dramatized voice is then an example of the body performative nature of language - by giving the heart a voice it brings it into existence within the literary world, imbuing it with power and influence.
In this passage reason appears as a dehumanizing force, something that freezes the heart. The heart metonymically represents instinctual genuine feeling, something enabled over fallible intellect. In Memoriam is remarkable in its dual respect for and condemnation of intellectualism. He only condemns it when it has the audacity to attempt to explain the divine. In Memoriam puts forward that God is and always will be "the Power in the darkness" and it is futile of man to question it. As though heeding the disastrous effects of Victor Frankenstein rape of nature to attain divine secrets of life, Tennyson resolves not to lift the veil, to respect the divine and not to suppose to have the right to try to explain its workings.
He is frustrated at the veil earlier, but a simpler truth renders all others irrelevant. He finds it within, not without. In The Natural Theology of In Memoriam, Hough states that "there is no ground whatever for the view that Tennyson wrote the poem "in some sort of panic about monkeys" referring to the popular belief that the work is a direct response to the emergence of evolutionary theory. True, Darwin did not publish origin of species until nine years after the publication of In Memoriam, but the basic principles the mutability of species were to be found in works by Lamarack and Buffer, and indeed is implicit in Lyell's work. Hough devotes much time to the discussion of whether or not Tennyson was aware of evolutionary theory, and if he did what his own response was. He goes so far to offer other theories that may have been more valued by Tennyson, such as such as a much older theory of successive creations.
But there is little value in such an investigation, and is irrelevant to the question of whether In Memoriam reinvents faith. Barthes proclaims that a texts meaning is determined by the reader, dismissing a role for authorial intention in the domain of meaning. The message of In Memoriam ultimately transcends its moment in history, as it dismissal of reason in the realisation of faith works whatever scientific progress has been made. With each new challenge to faith made by science, the type of faith pronounced by In Memoriam acts to console the troubled reader, and remind him or her of the value of feeling. That passages may be read to explicitly refer to evolutionary theory despite the probability that they were not intended to do so is irrelevant. Fresh interpretations are what keep texts alive.
Though Brooke may be able to accept the deeply optimistic conclusion to Tennyson's spiritual quest, as a complete progression from "despair of God and man to faith in both, " it may be equally viewed with deep suspicion. The view of In Memoriam as a journey narrative may be viewed as a fraudulent imposition by a critic as eager for optimism as Tennyson himself. In Memoriam is not one poem, but 133 separate ones that were not composed in the order they appear in the published work. Both Brooke and Tennyson wish the reader to perceive the spiritual journey closing positively. Tennyson's preference of heart over mind may be perceived by a critical reader as an instance of wishful thinking. It may be said that Tennyson resorts to inner evidence for the divine only after a desperate search for it within the world, and that his conclusion takes mankind back into the dark ages and denies mans scientific progression.
The prologue was composed last and may be seen as encapsulating Tennyson's concluding thoughts. Tennyson's transformation from despairing disbeliever to ardent believe just seems too neat and the sermonizing tone of the prologue created by the use of archaic biblical words (for example "thou, "made, "art"), a Christian semantic field ("Lord, "Son, "immortal") and direct address to God seems to a critical reader too much like a denial of deep seated doubts through religious immersion. In Memoriam demonstrates Tennyson's masterful handle of language to create a fitting tribute to his deceased friend, but his genius lies in transcending this initial subject matter to embrace one at the heart of the Victorian psyche- the challenge of scientific discoveries to deeply held Christian belief. He reinvents faith in the sense that he encourages a different angle to view it from, and encourage a holistic approach to the study of nature in which scientific and religious approaches are not mutually exclusive. Word count: 2496 Bibliography Baldick, Chris: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) Brooke, Stopford A: Tennyson: His Art and Relation to Modern Life (London: Ibister and Company Limited, 1894) Hunt, John (ed. ) Tennyson: In Memoriam: A casebook (London: Macmillan, 1970) Mattes, Eleanor Bustin: In Memoriam: The Way of a Soul (New York: Exposition Press, 1951) Moi, To: Sexual Textual Politics (London: Routledge, 1995) Willey, Basil: More Nineteenth Century Studies (London: Chat and Windus, 1956)
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