Tennyson, Alfred

Born and spent his childhood in Lincolnshire ; his poetry reflected the impressions of the picturesque nature of his homeland. Tennyson's father was a priest, along the female lines he led his family from the Plantagenets . Tennyson received an excellent upbringing. Together with his older brother Charles, who also had a penchant for poetry, Tennyson published in 1827 a collection of poems “Poems of Two Brothers” (anonymous) ^[1] .

In 1828, Tennyson, along with his brother, entered Trinity College at Cambridge University , but left without a degree. The university period was marked by friendship with Galam (the son of a historian), whose early and tragic death subsequently inspired Tennyson to one of his most remarkable works, “In Memoriam”. At the university, he received a gold medal for the poem " Timbuktu ", written on a plot set by the Academy. Criticism (Atheneum et al.) Noted this early work of the young poet. Two years later, his father dies and Alfred is forced to leave the university without graduating from it ^[2] .

In 1830, Tennison's second collection, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (53 in total), was released. It contains many poems, which later became very popular, and there are hints of a split soul, a struggle of feeling and mind, embodied later more completely in The Two Voices. Despite the undoubted talent in the collection, criticism, with a few exceptions, he was met with hostility (in particular, the famous "accuser" Keats Wilson, in the magazine " Blackwood ").

In 1832, his third collection was published, which contains some of his best works: “ The Lady of Shalott ”, “Œnone”, “The Lotos-Eaters”, “A Dream of Fair Women”, “The Palace of Art” and etc. This collection is much higher than the previous one; the verse is much simpler and more musical, the feelings and moods are more diverse and deep. And yet, in these verses, as in many later ones, there is some one-sidedness, which is a feature of Tennyson's poetry, mainly dwelling on pure feelings.

In 1842, a new edition of Tennyson's poems was published, which included the most famous of his lyric poems and poems: “ Ulysses ”, “Lady Clara Vere de Vere”, “Locksley Hall”, “The Blackbird”, “Of old sat Freedom on the heights ... ”,“ Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere ”,“ The Beggar Maid ”,“ The Two Voices ”and others. The collection caused general delight and nominated Tennyson among a number of first-class English poets. It marked all the best properties of Tennyson's poetry: deep lyricism , a sense of nature, the ability to recreate all the special charms of a calm English landscape , to describe English life in all its forms, both castles of barons and huts of peasants. The melodic, tender and colorful verse merges with the philosophical content that reflects the ideological life of the modern poet of England - the struggle of positive science with spiritualistic aspirations. This collection also showed Tennison's special art of creating poetic female images: Liliana, Queen of May , Elinor and others - a whole gallery of unfading artistic female characters. In his further work, Tennyson enriched and diversified his gallery more and more.

In 1850, Tennyson married, received the title of “Laureate Poet,” and published “ In Memoriam AHH .” The book was first published anonymously, but no one doubted that only Tennyson could write it. " In Memoriam AHH " - a series of separate elegiac poems caused by the death of Gallam; in the words of one critic, it is "one of the richest gifts brought by friendship to the altar of death." Tennyson surrounded his friendship for the deceased youth with a romantic halo and created a modern couple of the glorified antique ideals of friendship. The main mood of these poems is a chord of love and feelings of loss; the author’s thought never leaves the grave, but there is a transition from hopeless sorrow to the comfort that faith brings from skepticism .

In 1853, a war broke out in the Crimea (military operations on land began in 1854 ), in which the French, Turks, subjects of the kingdom of Sardinia and the British against the Russian Empire Nicholas I fought. In the battle of the Balaclava Valley under Russian fire, the English Light Cavalry Brigade died, which Tennyson sang in the poem The Charge Of Light Brigade .

Tennison's next major work is the poem “Maud” ( 1855 ), a story of tragic love set out on behalf of an unfortunate hero who makes fiery speeches against the vulgarity of life around him and blesses the war as a means to spark an explosion of noble feelings and silence the spirit of profit that engulfed England . Maud caused great censure because it seemed like an apology for war - as opposed to the intention of the author, who did not identify with his hero at all.

In 1869, the collection "The Holy Grail and Other Poems" was published , which is based on the works of Thomas Mallory ^[2] .

Tennyson wrote a poem on the occasion of the reburial of the remains of the American writer Edgar Allan Poe in 1875 , which was read at the ceremony .

His last poem, written the day before his death, was Crossing the Bar, religious stanzas that spoke of reconciliation with death; shifted to music, they were performed on the day of his funeral. At the request of the poet, his funeral was light, solemn; mourning was replaced by the predominance of white in the clothes and decoration of Westminster Abbey , where he is buried (in the “Poets' Corner”).

In 1853, Tennyson rented the Farringford estate in Freshwater Parish on the Isle of Wight and bought it in 1856. Later in 1884, Tennyson was assigned the title created for him by Baron Tennyson, of Aldworth in the County of Sussex and of Freshwater in the Isle of Wight , belonging to the United Kingdom kingdoms . Tennyson, who had previously denied the title in 1865 and 1868, accepted peerdom from Queen Victoria, his ardent admirer, largely for the sake of his children. March 11, 1884 he took a seat in the House of Lords .

The son of the poet - Hall Tennyson (1852-1928), 2nd Baron Tennyson - was Governor-General of Australia . His son, Lionel, 3rd Baron, was captain of the UK cricket team . Both of his sons, the 4th and 5th barons, left no children, and in 2006 the title passed to David, the great-grandson of the poet’s second son.

For Tennyson, extreme musicality and picturesqueness are characteristic, sometimes overlapping over the edge, like the French " Parnassians ". In the era of modernism , a reaction began against the excessive exaltation of Tennyson by the Victorians. He was represented as a singer of British imperialism and the epigone of “damned” romantics , who did not express a single original thought. A similar fate befell a century earlier than the idol of the XVIII century, Alexander Pope .

Characteristic in this regard is the attitude of J. Joyce , whose alter-ego Stephen in “ Portrait of an Artist ” subverts Tennyson as an ordinary “rhyme plait,” endowing him with the mocking nickname Laun-Tennyson ^[3] . Even the British Encyclopedia admits that much of Tennyson’s poetic legacy “can be called sugary and banal, pompous and pompous and pretentious”, and much is nothing more than a “presentation by a sweet-sounding meter of small and confused thoughts” ^[4] .

However, like Pope, Lord Tennyson remains one of the most quoted English poets. In particular, the final line from his poem “ Ulysses ” - “Fight, seek, find and not give up” - was chosen by the motto of the Olympic Games in London in 2012 ^[5] .

• Alfred Tennyson translated by Dmitry Shchedrovitsky
• Alfred Tennyson - biographical information and translations by Alexander Lukyanov
• Alfred Tennyson translated by Nikita Plyusnina - https://www.stihi.ru/avtor/achristie