Examining Section Five of Tennyson's In Memoriam
Taking a Look at Part 5 of the Elegy for Arthur Hallam
Aug 17, 2009
Although In Memoriam is a huge written work of 133 sections including the prologue and epilogue, section five of the elegy focuses on how difficult and clumsy it is to try and compose poetry to describe the feelings within oneself after immense sadness. It is like a machine trying to paint a portrait. Broad strokes can be painted, but it will never resemble a human being.
“Words, Like Nature”
In lines 1-4, the poet confesses he sometimes wishes he could keep his woeful words to himself, and that he sometimes considers it “half a sin” to reveal them (1). For with words, he says, he cannot be entirely truthful. Thus to half-lie is a partial sin, to the speaker. He hints that Nature does not reveal everything humans could know about life, just as he cannot tell all that he feels in his loss.
For words, he declares, “half reveal / And half conceal the Soul within” (3-4). There is relief and pain in writing these words then, as his own human limitations, given to him by Nature, prevent him from being completely honest, and yet allows him to at least briefly describe his loss.
“The Unquiet Heart”
In lines 5-8, the speaker notes that writing provides for him a sort of dull job to complete to distract him from his grief; it lessens the sharpness of the pain. He calls it a “sad mechanic exercise” (7). The word exercise could be interpreted in two ways: physical exercise is supposed to make one feel better physically and mentally, and although it is spelled differently, it could mean to exorcise the demons of grief.
He further describes the act of writing his poetic words as “dull narcotics, numbing pain” (8). He is committing an act against his own declarations that pain should never be allowed to overcome a person or dulled, as he noted in section four of his elegy. Yet perhaps the unquiet heart and brain that he speaks of needs time to rest, so that it may not become overwhelmed by the pain.
“Words like Weeds”
In the final group of words in section 5, the speaker describes how he uses words to shield himself from the coldness of grief and sorrow. Yet he also equates words with widow’s weeds, as in the line “In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er” (9). Weeds are slang for widow’s weeds, which were worn in the 19th century. This signifies his intense feeling of loss, that he considers himself a widow.
He further describes words as “coarsest clothes against the cold” (10), meaning that they provide only the barest of comforts to his wounded soul. Yet, he notes, although his words of grief “enfold” him, the words can only show his grief in the vaguest of terms. His feelings are “given in outline and no more” (12). Though he will continue the act of writing, he cannot consider it wholly truthful.
In section five of In Memoriam, the poet ironically uses words to describe how words cannot adequately express his feelings over the loss of Arthur Hallam. They both tell some of the story and yet conceal it. Yet writing these words is essential for Tennyson’s sanity and life, because they quiet his unquiet heart and brain.
Source
Tennyson, Alfred Lord, ed. Robert H. Ross, In Memoriam (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1973).
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