Based on an Arabic work called Mu’allaqat, in 1835, Lord Alfred Tennyson wrote himself a dramatic monologue in a set of 97 rhyming couplets. It is a stream of consciousness work with it’s protagonist caught up in in an interior monologue as he muses about the past and the future. There in Locksley Hall as he seeks a purification of his childhood feelings.
Quite a lot of it amounts to an angry tirade over losing a childhood love and his inability to get past his jealousy. First, his anger is turned on the man who supplants him and becomes her husband. Then, he turns his anger against the child she will have. Jealousy is a peculiar thing. So, the unnamed protagonist decides to turn his mind toward some mental distraction that will be the work of his life. When that fails, he decides to dream of a future utopian world to come.
I have never been a huge fan of steam of consciousness – not even my own. 😉 That being said, the important parts of this poem rest on Tennyson’s prediction of civil and military aviation. And after this burst of insight, we find Tennyson turning to a contrast between the beauty of civilization and the beauty of noble savages. I want to say that he was apparently having a bad day and it was for the good of world’s literature that he was. In the end, he rejects his past in favor of the marching tide of ‘progress’ and civilization.
Myself, I would prefer those summer isles of Eden. Sailing from place to place and writing and photographing might be quite the journey. There was a lot of blood shed in the 20th Century. I am not quite certain that period will go into the annals of history as the brightest spot in Western Civilization. Due to this, it might be said that Tennyson was prescient.
More, we might say that we can continue to hope he is in that his conclusion was that all of this leads to a world of federation, peace and universal law. While I am adamantly against too much federation, there’s a lot to be said for working together toward peace and universal law. There too, I have my reservations. I suppose it depends on what sort of peace we’re talking and whose laws. I am strongly preferential to the principles of the founding fathers of my republican nation, the United States and not so much in favor of a lot of the weirdness I am seeing as of late. But that is a digression. This post is about Locksley Hall. As such, perhaps it is best that I just say this last bit…
Locksley Hall may be read in its entirety here:
http://www.bartleby.com/42/636.html
Or listened to in an audiobook format here:
ALOHA PROMISES FOREVER 