In Memoriam: The Way of the “Living Will”

Abstract

I propose to argue that the poem shows the persona moving from despair and sorrow to hope and happiness through his love and his developing consciousness―in short, his “living will.” In lyric mood and subject matter, In Memoriam touches on the highly emotional and personal feelings which have a power to capture an ideal beauty. We can perceive how Tennyson, learning in his sorrow some of the laws of love, found relief in expressing them in In Memoriam. It is his most elaborate descant, in elegiac mood, upon his courtship of sorrow. In Memoriam doubtless has an appearance of greater unity than one would discover in reading it from beginning to end. It clearly possesses unity of a certain sort. Tennyson may be said to have circled about his great sorrow and the problem of sorrow, not seeking or claiming to reach a real destination by the processes of consecutive thinking, but more and more advanced toward the elevation of sorrow into beauty and love.