Beyond Romanticism: Tuckerman's Life and Poetry by Eugene England (review)

228Rocky Mountain Review Aside from these cavils (and the regret that she did not include a bibliography of all her works cited), Duncan-Jones achieves what she sets out to do: to move "continually to and fro between Sidney's outward and inward lives, and to suggest many connexions which have not hitherto been noticed " (xi). To date, M. W. Wallace's 1915 biography of Sidney had been the best, and a new biography was clearly needed, considering the growing number of critics who have questioned Sidney's idealism (in all senses of the word). Thus, this book is valuable because it deconstructs the traditional biographical image of Sidney and offers us what many scholars have been calling for—an alternative viewpoint. She tries to give us a view of Sidney that she hopes is just, and in general (with the above reservations), I think she succeeds. KATHI A. VOSEVICH University ofGeorgia EUGENE ENGLAND. Beyond Romanticism: Tuckerman's Life and Poetry. Provo: Brigham Young University, 1991. 314 p. The partial title, Beyond Romanticism, introduces Eugene England's focus in this well organized book about Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, nineteenth -century poet. In language that is clear and precise, England argues that Tuckerman, a neglected and often forgotten poet, was a Romantic whose talents carried him beyond Romantic aims; new recognition and acceptance are needed. England begins by exploring Tuckerman's "precocious technique" and his struggle to maintain separation between nature, God, and himself (2). Although he allows that Tuckerman was influenced by the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, and especially Tennyson, with whom he formed a personal bond, England states his thesis concisely: Tuckerman stands alone; his isolation and special understanding of nature resulted in "first-rate artistic achievement . . . great poetry" (2). Tuckerman was a Romantic who dealt with the same concerns that challenged his contemporaries. He struggled with Romantic interests, and he isolated himself in a "conscious leave-taking" from contemporary American culture, as did Hawthorne and Melville, and in other ways, Dickinson (2). Nature, he posited, is intimately related to humankind because nature is the Ultimate, the deity, and it is organic; it lives. Yet, Tuckerman was also "anti-Romantic." He distrusted the Romantic expectation of becoming one with nature; he understood what he observed through his own experiences and valued the "independent reality ofNature" (4-5). England, juxtaposing Tuckerman's non-merging philosophy with that of Emerson's desire for unity with nature, frequently returns to his position that Tuckerman struggled constantly between his Romanticism and his anti-Romanticism. He declares that Tuckerman ultimately decided that if Book Reviews229 man merged with nature and understood nature's language, man would lose his human identity. Tuckerman knew that human "language itself alienates us from the world." Tuckerman's great facility with language, his ability to describe that which is indescribable, is the very thing that prevents his merging with nature. Only death can fully unite man with the world outside himself (206-08). What appears to be the most profound influence on Tuckerman's mature work was the death of his wife, Anna. Tuckerman created five series of sonnets , and England examines a single sonnet, from the first series, written shortly after Anna's death. Here he sees Tuckerman's "intuitive groping for a new form of imagery, a hypersensitive acuteness of perception and an almost irrationally overpowering strength of suggestiveness" (121). Tuckerman deliberately broke the rules of sonnet form and rhyme, as did Dickinson and Whitman, and was familiar with sonnet variations developed by Milton, Donne, and Wordsworth. His many rhythmic effects combine "mature technical mastery with complex thematic development, the sustained individual voice and original style that mark him as a major poet" (163). Tuckerman's resolution in the Anna sonnets, in which he "accepts his human nature—with its tragic urges and limitations—and the responsibility to live fully at the human level until his life comes to its end" (193), fulfills his posthumous promise to Anna and foreshadows the central theme for what England considers Tuckerman's masterpiece, "The Cricket." It is in "The Cricket" that England sees Tuckerman's affirmation to resist the temptation to "merge with . . . the non-human world." Merging reduces any value...