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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Although often dismissed as a Victorian curiosity, the faith of Tennyson's In Memoriam anticipates the radically modern religious vision of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Both In Memoriam and Teilhard's The Phenomenon of Man stress the need for modern man to see the human phenomenon in the light of recent scientific knowledge. Both works portray the anxiety and doubt that such a vision entails; both works portray the shape that faith must take if man is to survive. Tennyson and Teilhard see modern doubt as stemming from the space-time malady: overwhelmed by the enormity of the universe, modern man fears his existence is both frail and futile. To counter this malady, both men develop a cosmic faith stressing love as the spiritual energy that drives evolution onward; the need for greater knowledge, communication, and spiritual growth; and an awareness of human survival after death. Translating this faith into Christian terms, both men see man's salvation in his efforts to evolve toward a cosmic Christ-that-is-to-be. Although Tennyson speaks as poet in mostly personal terms and Teilhard speaks as scientist-sage in more general terms, both men use art to lead the reader to Real Assent.
1 T. S. Eliot, “In Memoriam,” Essays Ancient and Modern (London, 1936), p. 187.
2 The Poems of Matthew Arnold, ed. Kenneth Allott (New York, 1965), p. 341. See Allott's note to 11. 182–190 identifying Tennyson as the poet referred to in these lines.
3 Tennyson: Aspects of His Life, Character, and Poetry, rev. ed. (Garden City, N. Y., 1962), p. 299. This book was originally published in 1923.
4 Some notable exceptions: Basil Willey, “Tennyson,” More Nineteenth Century Studies: A Group of Honest Doubters (New York, 1966); Jerome Hamilton Buckley, Tennyson: The Growth of a Poet (Boston, 1965); and Carlisle Moore, “Faith, Doubt, and Mystical Experience in In Memoriam,” VS, vii (1963), 155–169.
5 The Alien Vision of Victorian Poetry (Hamden, Conn., 1963), p. 21.
6 “The Poetry of Tennyson,” From Dickens to Hardy, ed. Boris Ford (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1958), pp. 243–244, n. 13.
7 Tennyson Laureate (Toronto, 1963), p. 101.
8 New York, 1963, p. 122.
9 Quoted in Hallam Lord Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir, I (New York, 1897), 304–305—hereafter cited as Memoir.
10 See especially Dorothy L. Sayers' introductions and notes to The Comedy of Dante A lighieri the Florentine, trans. Dorothy L. Sayers and Barbara Reynolds, 3 vols. (Baltimore, 1949–62); and C. S. Lewis, Preface to Paradise Lost (New York, 1961).
11 There is no question of “influence” here: Tennyson did not influence Teilhard any more than he influenced Darwin. On Tennyson's anticipating Darwin, see Willey, “Tennyson,” More Studies, p. 87, and Buckley, Tennyson, p. 121.
12 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, tr. Bernard Wall (New York, 1961), p. 31. Unless otherwise noted, all references to Teilhard's writing are to this text.
14 Buckley, Tennyson, p. 276, n. 16.
15 Willey, “Tennyson,” More Studies, pp. 83–84.
16 A Miscellany (London, 1929), p. 31.
17 Throughout the paper Tennyson is referred to as the speaker in the poem. An absolute identification of author and speaker is questionable, however, because the poem is not strictly autobiographical. See Memoir, I, 304.
18 Mayhead, “Tennyson,” From Dickens to Hardy, p. 239.
19 See, e.g., 11. 22–30.
20 Quoted in Claude Cuénot, Teilhard de Chardin, tr. Vincent Colimore (Baltimore, 1965), p. 158.
21 Quoted in Cuénot, p. 158.
22 For the identification of “him who sings,” see Memoir, ii, 391 and n. With the reading of Poem I given here, cf. Lore Metzger, “The Eternal Process: Some Parallels Between Goethe's Faust and Tennyson's In Memoriam,” Victorian Poetry, i (1963), 189–196.
23 Cf. Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, 1. 276: “Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is divine.”
24 Valerie Pitt objects to this passage: “The modern mind can scarce endure this; moral endeavor is not its ideal, and it recognises that the energies of the ape and tiger are not without their place in the higher life of man” (Tennyson Laureate, pp. 113–114). It is difficult to quarrel with generalizations about “the modern mind,” but Basil Willey apparently disagrees with Miss Pitt about it: “We have rightly learned from the nineteenth century that man must make himself, and be the changer as well as the product of his own environment. But we must also learn that if man makes himself wholly in his own image, he may find that like Frankenstein he has created his own destroyer” (“Origins and Development of the Idea of Progress,” Ideas and Beliefs of the Victorians, New York, 1966, p. 39).
Also, has Miss Pitt confused Tennyson's tiger with Blake's? To Tennyson, the ape and tiger in In Memoriam represent only unreflecting animalism. Is it accurate to see in them energies that have their place in the higher life of man? Do they not function much as Dante's leopard, lion, and she-wolf do in Canto i of Hell, that is, as symbols of what obstructs man in his efforts to climb higher?
With Tennyson's idea, cf. Teilhard's statement: “See how the animals behave (monkeys, for example, or even certain insects): we see them doing things that are materially culpable, and only need the emergence of a fuller consciousness to become fully reprehensible.” Quoted in Henri de Lubac, Teilhard de Chardin: The Man and His Meaning, tr. René Hague (New York, 1967), p. 101, n. 16.
25 Cf. a canceled section of In Memoriam (originally cxxvii) in which Tennyson calls upon the “Victor Hours” to “fuse the peoples into one” (Memoir, i, 307).
26 The Idylls of the King, describing the deterioration of King Arthur's civilization, is devoted primarily to depicting one such eddy in the flood. In Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, the old man says (11. 235–236):
Forward then, but still remember how the course of Time will swerve,
Crook and turn upon itself in many a backward streaming curve.
27 Cf. Joseph Sendry, “In Memoriam and Lycidas,” PMLA, LXXXII (Oct. 1967), 437–443.
28 “In Memoriam,” Essays, p. 187.
29 “In Memoriam,” Essays, p. 187.
30 Cf. de Lubac, Teilhard, p. 97: “Moreover, [Teilhard] never achieved a definitive formulation of his thought, nor did he ever claim to provide a complete theological or dogmatic exposition.”
31 In Memoriam: The Way of a Soul (New York, 1951), p. 91. It is interesting to note that while Mrs. Mattes immediately identifies the “Strong Son of God” with the Word of God, or the Logos, T. S. Eliot finds only a “hazy connexion” between the two. See below in text.
32 Cf. Teilhard's “0 Christ, ever greater!” See de Lubac, Teilhard, pp. 45–54.
33 Cf. Memoir, i, 309–312, where Tennyson's “reverent impatience of formal dogma” is discussed. Note that Tennyson's attitude is different from poising belief with unbelief, as exemplified in the famous prayer: “O God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul.”
34 Eliot, “In Memoriam,” Essays, pp. 184–185.
35 Quoted in de Lubac, Teilhard, p. 38.
38 Teilhard de Chardin, quoted in de Lubac, Teilhard, p. 116.
37 See de Lubac, Teilhard, p. 44.
38 Quoted in de Lubac, Teilhard, p. 44.
39 See Pitt, Tennyson Laureate, p. 115.
40 See, e.g., the three Christmases in xxviii, xxix, xxx, lxxviii, civ, and cv; as well as xxxi, xxxii, xxxvi, lxix, and cvi.
41 Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. W. H. Gardner and N. H. MacKenzie, 4th ed. (London, 1967), p. 90.
42 The Victorian Sage (New York, 1965), p. 10.
