Based on the French Cauterets, Tennyson’s own Cauteretz valley holds great psychological significance. As the persona travels the valley, different elements are triggered and crafted to form an enduring sense of how Hallam’s death still affects Tennyson decades later.
Depiction of Flowing Waters
Flowing water, in the “stream that flashest white” is a prominent feature. Bearing connotations of serenity and life, the bubbling of the running river casts a soothing backdrop, reinforced by the “deepening [of] thy voice.” The deepening noise creates a surreal effect and tied with the “deepening of the night”, creates a scene ideal for contemplation and introspection.
Flowing water is also a metaphor for the persona’s mental journey back in time, and the end rhymes as “All along the valley, where thy waters flow,/I walk’d with one I loved two and thirty years ago” join the ideas together in sound as well as meaning.
Transition of Time
A central theme is the transition in time, in the irony that “while I walk’d to-day,/The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away”. Although walking is associated with progress, and the description suggests a movement from present towards future, what actually happens is reversion to a time when Hallam was still alive.
Tennyson again uses moving water to convey chronological movement. The difference is where this was initially liquid within a stream, the “mist” is formless, nearly ethereal, and the vapour which “rolls away” obscures as well as clarifies the vision of the past.
Movement is also enforced with the general transition of the poem’s meter. In the starting lines, the meter is predominantly trochaic and dactylic, stressed at the front of each foot. This creates a subtly assertive rhythm, strengthening the crafted scene. Yet from the poem’s mid-point onwards, the rhythms are iambic and anapaestic, with stresses at the metrical foot’s back. The change to a smoother and more melodious voice reinforces the sense of time transition, aiding the verbal expression of an image of the past as nearly transcendental.
Presence of Solid Rocks
Despite this, there is a sense of believability as the images of the past are cast on the foundation of a “rocky bed”. The physical presence of the “rock and cave and tree” grounds the imagination in a comforting solidity. These hard objects are juxtaposed with the incorporeal voices which close the poem.
Echo of Dead Voices
Tennyson presents equations nearly mathematically precise, yet couched in ambiguity: “Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead” and “The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.”
One way to begin understanding this is seeing the “voice” as a synecdoche for Hallam himself. It is Tennyson’s journey through the valley, and back in time, that enables him to recall Hallam as he was in the past. However, the question remains of how the past is identical to the present.
This is possible with the insight that all movements within the poem, spatial or chronological, are a metaphor for the movements within Tennyson’s mind. This is marked by the emphasis on how the voices appear “to me”, referring to Tennyson. The poem is hence a revealing of private insight, and there is beauty in realizing how Tennyson’s memory of Hallam is still retained, pristine and unaffected, after “two and thirty years.”
Arthur Hallam in Tennyson's Poetry
It is unquestionable that Hallam, in life and in death, has had profound effect on Tennyson’s life and poetry. Comparison with Break, break, break or the longer In Memoriam would definitely be beneficial to understanding Cauteretz and Tennyson in general. Notably, this poem, composed years later, retains a degree of sentimentality, but also hints at a greater control, or at least masking, of Tennyson’s temperament.
In the Valley of Cauteretz can also be appreciated by itself, especially in its brevity as a “lyrical flash” (Tennyson). Certainly Tennyson’s own approval, that “Altogether I like the little piece as well as anything I have written”, vouches for the poem’s aesthetic value.
Bibliography
Alfred Lord Tennyson: Selected Poems Edited by Christopher Ricks
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