Sappho and the Making of Tennysonian Lyric

Abstract

In 1830, on summer tour in southern France and Pyrenees, Alfred Tennyson wrote poem now known as in South. When Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson's travelling companion on that tour, sent copy of poem to their mutual friend W B. Donne, he included paragraph of critical commentary that has since become part of Tennyson studies-although, as I shall argue, in strangely halfacknowledged way. Hallam noted that poem was pendant to his [Tennyson's] former poem of Mariana, idea of both being expression of desolate loneliness; that southern Mariana required a greater lingering on outward circumstances, and less palpable transition of poet into Mariana's feelings; that this lingering on external was appropriate, for when object of poetic power happens to be an object of sensuous perception it is business of poetic language to paint; and that Tennyson's technique was sanctioned by the mighty models of art, left for worship of ages by Greeks, & those too rare specimens of Roman production which breathe Greek spirit. Hallam's commentary ends with comparison of Tennyson's poetry to the fragments of Sappho, in which I see much congeniality to Alfred's peculiar power.' What has come down in critical studies-as, for example, in great Ricks edition of Tennyson's poetry-is association of in South with Sappho's fragment 1: