In Memoriam

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1850

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Related Poems

“Adonais” by Percy Shelley (1821)

A monumental expression of the traditional elegy, written on the death of young poet John Keats, Shelley’s ode can be helpfully read to reveal how radical Tennyson’s elegy was. Both elegies take as their subject the too-early death of a promising poet—but for Tennyson, Hallam was not so much a poet as he was a friend. Shelley’s elegy is quite calmly conceived, a deliberate attempt to catapult the figure of a poet into the firmament of the heavens that is only lightly touched by the actual poet John Keats (Shelley barely knew him and the poem was composed months after Keats’s death). Unlike Tennyson, whose grief is real and raw and immediate and confusing, and whose struggle through grief he charts across years, this elegy seems deliberate and even contrived for the ultimate celebration of the Poet, capital “P.”

“Break, Break, Break” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1842)

This is an early lyric Tennyson wrote on the death of Arthur Hallam. Completed and published before In Memoriam, this brief melancholic lyric about the experience of loss and the little help the natural world provides can be read as an early sketch of the ideas Tennyson would use, a storyboard for the early cantos of In Memoriam. In the metaphor of the endlessly churning sea and the waves ceaselessly crashing onto the shore, Tennyson found a metaphor for both the sudden intrusion of death and for nature’s indifferent constancy against the ephemeral nature of humanity. Indeed, for the devastated poet the crashing wave represents the day that comes and then forever goes.

“In Memory of W. B. Yeats” by W. H. Auden (1939)

Influenced by the middle cantos of Tennyson’s In Memoriam, in which Tennyson celebrates and then dismisses the power of his art to provide him solace, W. H. Auden in this elegy on the occasion of Irish poet and mystic William Butler Yeats’s death argues that given humanity’s limited time on earth, it is poetry alone that gives immortality. Auden suggests that the poet Yeats ultimately corrupts, his body ingloriously laid to rest, but his poetry is a monument against the brutal rhythms of time. In the nearly century that separates the two works, British culture had drifted from its God much as Tennyson feared it would. Auden’s poem then can be read as what would happen to In Memoriam if the Christian God, Tennyson’s ultimate solace, would be removed, Auden’s elegy a sort of secular In Memoriam. Auden mirrors Tennyson’s questioning as well: Auden, who was gay, questioned both physical nature and his faith in God in many of his poems.

Further Literary Resources

Introduction in Norton Critical Edition of Tennyson’s In Memoriam by Erik Gray (2020)

In the Norton Critical Edition’s Introduction, editor Erik Gray provides not only the complex backstory of Tennyson and Hallam but also focuses on Tennyson’s considerable gripe with God, much to the shock of his contemporaries, which is one of the reasons, Gray suggests, that might account for the long delay in Tennyson’s publishing the cantos. The Introduction reviews the literary history of the elegy and, with particular attention to Milton’s Lycidas and Shelley’s Adonais, makes the case for the radical departure of Tennyson’s work.

“Varieties of Geological Experience: Religion in Tennyson’s In Memoriam and Lyell’s Principles of Geology” by Michael Tomko (2004)

Now considered indispensable, this landmark essay first proposed reading In Memoriam not through Tennyson’s biography but rather through Tennyson’s fascination with the new sciences, particularly the theories of geological time proposed by his contemporary Charles Lyell, a prominent volcanologist. The essay redefines Tennyson’s uses of this new sense of time as both a terrifying reality and as a possible avenue toward genuine hope grounded not in God but rather in the hard lessons of the layers of the earth’s crust that suggested humanity was part of a wider drama than any single death. The essay is available for download and/or purchase on various research sites including JSTOR.

The Once and Future Friend: Tennyson’s Exploration of Human Immortality by Melinda Simons (1996)

A cautious investigation into the dimensions of the friendship that triggered the creation of the poem and that shapes its complex emotional argument, this piece, a master’s thesis from the College of William & Mary that has since been published in a variety of forums, sees the friendship ultimately as just that, any kind of gay relationship or gay resonances (and Simons’s considerable evidence suggests strongly the possibility) are lost to contemporary biographers. The poem does not invite outing Tennyson. Rather, for Tennyson, Hallam offered the chance to idealize A Friend and to shape around his dead friend the aura of immortality through the agency of his own cantos.

W. H. Auden Reads “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”

Auden reads his poem “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” with the trademark raspy voice of his later years. A delightful listen.

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Elizabeth Klett Reads Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s "In Memoriam"

Not surprisingly, given the daunting length of the poem, most recordings of In Memoriam provide dramatic readings, often set to unctuous funereal music, of individual cantos, most notably Canto 27, with the poem’s most quoted lines about how better it is have loved and lost. Tony-nominated British actor Sir Ian Richardson recorded several of the early cantos and his buttery British accent does justice to Tennyson’s liquidity aural effects that capture the sorrows of the poet struggling to fall asleep. The only extant recording of the entire elegy is through LibriVox Recordings and is available through YouTube. A carefully paced two hours, the poem, set to a mournful series of black and white photos from presumably abandoned country cemeteries, is read by American academic and actor Elizabeth Klett. Her lack of a British accent lessens the sonic impact of Tennyson’s stately and august lyric lines.