An Inchoate Apocalyptic Aesthetic

Here’s one from quite some time ago–my junior year at The Master’s College, in fact. I’m going to offer it in as near to its “student paper” form as possible. Some of the very sketchy analysis here formed the basis for both my pursuit of Nineteenth Century Poetry as a field and my eschatologically-oriented approach to H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction in my master’s thesis.

Yes, at this stage I reflexively lumped all “seems evolutionary” lines of reasoning in the “reject” basket, much like at this point in my thinking “seems Catholic” would have been a reason to reject something. We are shaped by many things before we are fully formed, friends!

 

In Memoriam A.H.H. opens on a note of bleary agnostic resignation, but ends on a nearly apocalyptic affirmation of the glory of God’s rule of creation. In so doing, Tennyson reflects the fact that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” but that “the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of a faith unfeigned.” Therefore, while his beginning and end both acknowledge the superiority of God and the rightness of his goals, the beginning reflects the fearful insipidity of those who have not come to a right knowledge of God. The conclusion, on the other hand, reflects a fuller understanding of and submission to God’s ability to guide the universe.

The opening lines state flatly Tennyson’s agnostic view of God’s work, where he speaks of a God “Whom we, that have not seen thy face,\by faith, and faith alone embrace,\Believing where we cannot prove.” Further, Tennyson seems able only to acknowledge that God’s arbitrary crushing of man is accompanied by a like arbitrary raising of him; he seems unable to sense any purpose in this. Fear is the key here; it is precisely a lack of faith that makes it so necessary to constantly affirm one’s faith. That which faith truly apperceives is already seen as certain; it is that which one doubts that one must attempt to consciously affirm by faith. It is this state, however, of fearing the consequences of either accepting or rejecting the truth, that allows the Spirit fertile ground to work in men’s lives. In Tennyson’s case, it seems that such a work occurred on some level.

Tennyson acknowledges the need of such a work when he says,

    We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

Forgive what seem'd my sin in me;
What seem'd my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

The constant cry for forgiveness and the almost cringing tone is indicative of one who has not learned confidence in the love and promises of God, who still believes that God is too far beyond human thought to make any ethical standard applicable, or any final understanding possible.

Over the course of the work, however, Tennyson achieves a number of moments of clarity; the finest is in his epilogue. In closing, Tennyson speaks in glowing terms of a final marriage, one reserved for the end of time, which he sees typified in his sister’s marriage. The language is brilliant and full of hope, and the climax comes at the very last:

A soul shall draw from out the vast
And strike his being into bounds,

And, moved thro' life of lower phase,
Result in man, be born and think,
And act and love, a closer link
Betwixt us and the crowning race

Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge; under whose command
Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand
Is Nature like an open book;

No longer half-akin to brute,
For all we thought and loved and did,
And hoped, and suffer'd, is but seed
Of what in them is flower and fruit;

Whereof the man, that with me trod
This planet, was a noble type
Appearing ere the times were ripe,
That friend of mine who lives in God,

That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.

Of course, it cannot be ignored that Tennyson is powerfully influenced by the growing evolutionary consensus of his day; nor can it be supposed that he had an unclouded vision of the future state. At the same time, there is a powerful image in these lines of the coming man—that which has been missing from the agnostic piety of the Christianity to which Tennyson weakly appealed in his opening lines. It is the same appeal as that which Nietzsche makes when he postulates Ubermensch, the same as the appeal of the Marxist utopian fantasies of the great socialist worker. It is the lost Christian hope of the race which God has spanned time and space to collect, of those whose faith has made them whole by their apprehension of the grace of God in Christ. In the end, it is the hope of the future Sons of God which Tennyson’s poetic fervor envisions; it is the Bride of Christ who meets the Lamb face to face for the first time who exclaims, “Worthy!” in his lines. Tennyson’s hope which subsumes his grief is the knowledge that somehow, in some way, God will raise men above their present pitiful state and make them one with His divine presence in their midst. Recognizing this, Tennyson shakes of his languor and exclaims, affirming in the feast his pleasure and the sense of Hallam’s final glorification.

“For by Him, and through Him and to Him are all things; to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.”