Symbolism in Tennyson’s Minor Poems

SYMBOLISM IN TENNYSON'S MINOR POEMS ELIZABETH HILLMAN WATERSTON M ANY of Tennyson's mature poems follow the method of symbolism : they reinforce our direct attention to the "subject" by dealing with another reality which will create emotional and intellectual responses in its own right but which is recognizable in the particular instance as a sign directing our interest back to the original subject. Using this tentative definition of the symbolic method as a touchstone, we observe in Tennyson's work a steady development in the technique of obliquity. In the present study I would first indicate certain general features of symbolic expression, as Tennyson practised it in the minor poems, and second, consider chronologically some minor poems that are typical in their symbolism. The end result of a study of symboJi'm ought to be a clarification of the author's topic, not of his motivation, his psychoses, or his learning. Even a brief consideration of Tennyson's symbols will convince the reader that Tennyson was determined not to use his art for escape or for satisfaction of himself alone. Distressed by the atomism of his age, he sought societal symbols, rejecting images whose impact was guaranteed only by his private experience. Hence his lifelong experiments with classical myth (in "Oenane," "Tiresias," and other poems) and with folk-lore (in poems using the legend of the swan-song, the Arthurian matter, and SO on). Tennyson used familiar poetic parallels (of the sea to life, of rocks to death, of birds to escape, and so on), because of their proven ability to enrich the reader's response to the "subject," and to deflect away from themselves the interest stirred by the emotional tension generated in reading poetry. Mention of myth brings us at once to an epistemological problem. According to Whitehead, almost all adult mental response is to symbolic stimuli. This belief need not lead to solipsism; it may produce an interest, like Whitehead's, in the processes through which external reality, given in nature, is transposed into the mental flux, conditioned, "intensified, inhibited, or diverted," by the nature of the receiver. Tennyson has a powerful recognition of the "causal efficacy," the reality of the world without, and an equal interest in the relationship between that world and the world within the mind, particularly the world of dreams. He presents a psychological theory for the persistence in memory of certain emotionally charged impressions in his "Ode to Memory" : 369 UNIVERSITY OF TORO NTO QUARTBRLY, vol. XX, no. 4. July, 1951 370 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY ... For the discovery And newness of thine art so pleased thee, That all which thou hast drawn of fairest Or boldest since, 'but lightly weighs With thee unto the love thou bearest The first-born of thy genius. Artist-like, Ever retiring thou dost gaze On the prime labour of thine early days.... He then lists as the realities of his own earliest memories, the realities most charged with emotional history for him, a narrow range of scenes which (as I shall show) recur throughout the poems with symbolic significance: high bushless fields, a sandy ridge, a cottage overlooking a marsh, a garden with dark alleys opening on plots of roses, lily, and lavender. Later in life, in tense moments, external nature provided other sense impressions, stored in memory with emotional surcharge, ready for use as symbol when the emotion returned . Strange, that the mind, when fraught With a passion so intense One would think that it well Might drown all life in the eye,That it should, by being so overwrought, Suddenly strike on a sharper sense For a shell, or a flower, little things Which else would have been past by! This is the process, described in Maud, by which the mind stores up a private hoard of natural symbols. For Tennyson, the realities which most often served as symbols are: landscape, particularly when several levels sharply different can be seen; dark houses or halls with unusual lighting; rivers, usually with cataracts; mist rising; stars, particularly "Hesper"; a family group of man, woman, and daughter; yellow colours, and rose; cheerful bells; rust; song-birds; ships at anchor; jewels. But these things do...