In Memoriam: An Aspect of Form

IN MEMORIAM: AN ASPECT OF FORM J. C. C. MAYS The form of In Memoriam is not an academic question only. Here, as in other cases, to speak of the form of the poem is to describe its total elfect. It is to describe our conclusions On the experience of reading the entire thing. There are two important discussions of the poem's form to which a reader might turn in the expectation of adding to or sharpening his own conclusions. A C. Bradley's discussion' is probably the best known. He bases his reading on Tennyson's remarks included in the Memoir and in the Eversley edition; and they lead him to conceive of the three Christmas lyrics as a kind of structural framework, around which the rest of the poem is arranged. The other account has received its most persuasive statement from Miss Pitt, in one of the most sympathetic and balanced among recent studies of T ennyson? She bases her account of the form of In Memoriam on Tennyson's remarks to James Knowles. These remarks lead her to consider the two Anniversary lyrics, not the Christmas lyrics, to be the principle of the poem's form; and she goes on to discern a Dantesque pattern of Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso. Each of these interpretations is in its way consistent, and each is able to point to aspects of the poem for support. At the same time, each interpretation is valid only if the other is denied, even if the other may appear equally justifiable and On similar terms. It seems then as if, when we turn for help in understanding the poem's form, we have to assume that Tennyson planned his poem in one of two ways. And the poem itself does not much help us to decide which of these two ways he intended, because we have also to assume that the plan was partially obscured in its working-out during the process of composition. The fact that each interpretation is simultaneously consistent and contradictory suggests in itself that each of them might approach the poem in a similarly inappropriate way. It suggests each might be based on characteristics of the poem which are superficial, or at least secondary, on proximate effects and not upon their cause. Also-and more important, since we are concerned here with the poem more than with its critics-neither of these alternative interpretations is reinforced by our reading. W e have Volume xxxv, N'Umber 1, October, 1965. U IN MEMORIAM": AN ASPECT OF FORM 23 continually to import them: we cannot carry them away. They are most inadequate because, while they work well enough between their own two covers, when we turn back and read In Memoriam again, they are either forgotten or, if they are remembered, they raise a good many more problems and doubts than they settle. One other way of understanding the poem's form may be mentioned. This is to assume that it has no form, that it is essentially a number of individual lyrics which are related to each other by shared themes and images but by little else. This way is perhaps nearer to the truth, because it is at least more honest. At least it shows a willingness to draw conclusions about the form of the poem from reading the poem itself, even if the reading has not proved altogether very conclusive or rewarding. A little mare help than this may, I feel, be offered. Tennyson's later comments to Knowles and to his son are not immediately relevant as a means of approaching the poem as it is. To understand its form, in a way that corroborates our experience while and after reading it, we must turn in the first place to the attitudes towards form expressed in the poem itself. When these attitudes are properly recognized, it is appreciated more readily why Tennyson was encouraged to give In Memoriam a form of a somewhat peculiar kind. They also help to describe the relation between the important themes of the poem and its more striking characteristics of technique. Finally, they are not irrelevant to the grounds of the shortcomings of...