Melancholy as an Interspace between the Spirit and the Body in Tennyson’s In Memoriam

Abstract

Regarded as one of the greatest Victorian poems, In Memoriam (1850) portrays Tennyson as a man devastated by the demise of his close friend Arthur Hallam. Tennyson composed this long elegy to pay tribute to his departed friend. This paper points out that doubt, melancholy and love are fundamental to In Memoriam. Doubt predominantly characterises this poem because Hallam’s untimely death made Tennyson harbour reservations about his faith. Besides doubt, melancholy pervades this poem. Like Shakespeare’s sonnets it refers to, this poem is also marked by love. These three elements, doubt, melancholy and love, are centred around the theme of grief. This study is based on the interconnected discussions of these three elements with regards to mourning. As a poem of faith and doubt, In Memoriam shows that the poet believes, or longs to believe, in the supremacy of the soul and yearns for a spiritual union with his deceased friend. As a poem of melancholy, this elegy shows that the poet chooses to be engulfed in sorrow and dejection as grieving reinvigorates his love for Hallam. As a poem of love, it demonstrates that the poet utilises poetic language to articulate his love, loss and pain, and the body resurfaces in his poetic descriptions of their love. Hence, this article asserts that melancholy functions as an interspace between the spirit and the body in the Victorian poet’s psyche where the former and the latter merge.