The Kraken is a mythical squid-like creature mentioned in sources as diverse as Bishop Pontoppidan’s account in 1755 (which inspired Tennyson) to The Pirates of the Caribbean in today's entertainment.
This poem, one of Tennyson’s earlier ones, invigorates the allure of the Kraken’s myth, and exhibits a mastery in poetic craftsmanship.
Sense of Faraway
The sea and its depths hold a fascination to the imagination, and the poem draws on this from the beginning:
Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea
The steady rhythms of the iambic pentameter in the first line is accentuated by the open vowels in words such as “below”, “thunders” and “upper” reinforce the feeling of depth through their broad sounds.
In the second line, the caesura in the words “far, far” breaks up the meter slightly to give a more natural voice to the lines. The word repetition emphasizes the extent and depth of the sea which Tennyson is explores; further than even the “upper deep”; straight to the bottom of the abyss, which is poignant not as an defined image, but as an idea of immeasurable and unfathomable depth.
The light imagery contributes to the other-worldly feeling in the deeps. The manner that “faintest sunlights flee/About his shadowy sides” juxtapose the immensity and shadow which the Kraken’s bulk creates with the minute sunbeams which dissipate in his presence. The weak, “sickly light” casts a strange and fantastical aspect upon the Kraken, which paradoxically reveals yet hides “many a wondrous grot and secret cell”, giving a sense of mystery both to the surroundings and the Kraken itself.
The Kraken’s Immensity
The immense Kraken is represented by slumber and age, rather than movement and vitality.
Images of his size include his “Unnumber’d and enormous polypi”, and his “Battening upon huge seaworms”, and again, the broad vowel sounds in these words reinforce the corpulent nature of the Kraken. Especially striking is the “Huge sponges of millennial growth and height”, the word “millennial” conveying expanse both in age as well as size simultaneously
Age is synonymous with the Kraken’s slumber: “His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep/The Kraken sleepeth”. “Sleepeth” as a verb is a better word choice than “sleeps” not only because it balances the meter, but also in its word form which hearkens to older English usage such as the Bible, further conveying a sense of the archaic. Although the Kraken still feeds on worms, his “dreamless” state of stupor creates a certain tension, creating a sense of immense, yet unfulfilled might.
The Inevitable End
The Kraken’s origins and its reasons for sleep are not elaborated; and the lack of an Alpha or beginning, enhances a sense of godlike power within the creature. However, Tennyson’s Kraken has an Omega; it is fated to death when end of the world occurs.
The “latter fire” and “angels” are an allusion to the Biblical end of the world:
“..And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea..the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died..” Revelations 8:8-9, King James Version Bible
There is a sense of pity and loss, not only for the “man and angels” which will only see the Kraken a single time, but more so that the Kraken, in its the sudden “roaring” fury, its only show of a realization of its consciousness and sentience, as well as its strength, ends as quickly as it begins with its death on the surface.
Christopher Ricks remarked that The Kraken, similar to another early poem Mariana, was one which “Ponder[s] the possibility or impossibility of another chance”. This is true not only in Tennyson’s initial attempt to remove the poem from print(it was first published in 1830 and not restored till 1872), but also in the Kraken’s tragic death.
Tennyson's expression of death is also explored in other poetry, such as his longer and darker poem Maud.
Bibliography:
Alfred Lord Tennyson: Selected Poems Edited by Christopher Ricks
The Bible, King James Version
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