Where does great art come from? For centuries, this question has puzzled scholars, critics, and philosophers. Do masterpieces of spectacular truth and beauty arise simply from fertile minds blessed with rare technical ability?
Does the artist’s life experiences form the true seed of great art that must be watered by time and talent? Or, is the creation of a work of genius the result of a sudden, unfathomable blaze of inspiration that falls at random upon artists of varying talents, and setting their hair on end and fingers tingling, like a lightning strike? Is artistic inspiration guided by some higher power, a divine Muse, as the Greeks of old believed?
The answer likely involves some combination of all these factors, though the precise process of exceptional artistic creation will remain always a mystery, an enigma of the human soul and its relations with the world.
Art springs from myriad human experiences, like moss finding apertures in a stone wall. But two phenomena of human life provide particularly fertile ground for art to blossom: love and grief. Famed Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson experienced both of these emotions in his friendship with Arthur Hallam, and some of the resulting poetic achievements are among the greatest in the English language, offering us a glimpse into the mystery of the relationship between friendship, grief, and art.
“Portrait of Two Friends,” circa 1522, by Pontormo. Public Domain
Tennyson and Hallam met as students at Cambridge University in 1828, two rare minds and rare hearts who were instantly drawn to one another as brothers. A sonnet by Tennyson addressed to Hallam depicts their strong sense of being kindred spirits:
So, friend, when first I looked upon your face, Our thought gave answer each to each, so true-- Opposed mirrors each reflecting each-- That though I knew not in what time or place, Methought that I had often met with you, And either lived in either’s heart and speech.
Though the two young men shared acute intelligence, political outlook, poetic and literary interests and abilities, and membership in an elite undergraduate club called “the Apostles,” they differed in many ways. Arthur Hallam was rich, energetic, precocious, self-confident, and a natural leader. As fellow apostle John Kemble wrote of Hallam in a letter, “if ever man was born for great things he was.” On the other hand, Tennyson—also widely admired in the university—was tall, grave, handsome, poor, impractical, sensitive, moody, and rather lazy, though, of course, deeply passionate and of noble sentiment.In his biography of Tennyson, John Batchelor writes, “To Alfred Tennyson, Arthur Hallam was simply dazzling—elegant, worldly, assured and rich, all the things Tennyson felt he could never be. Emotionally, however, the two young men were alike—they were both lonely at Cambridge and they both had troubling relationships with their fathers.”
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An illustration of (L) Alfred Tennyson from after the painting by Samuel Laurence, 1897, and an illustration of Arthur H. Hallam from "The Poetic and Dramatic Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson," 1899. Public Domain
Tennyson and Hallam remained close throughout their Cambridge days and beyond. Along with some other young men from Cambridge, the two idealistic friends even participated together in a daring and romantic though ill-planned plot to take money and messages to Spanish revolutionaries who sought to overthrow the Spanish monarchy. Hallam was, not for the last time, the instigator in the friendship, with Tennyson’s revolutionary fervor falling short of his friend’s, though the trip did provide Tennyson with material for future poetry. The escaped ended with disillusionment when the selfishness of the revolutionaries became apparent.
Eventually, Tennyson introduced his friend to his large family in Somersby, England, and Hallam fell quickly and passionately in love with Tennyson’s sister Emily. As Batchelor relates, Hallam taught Emily Italian specifically for the purpose of writing private love letters back and forth. He had some reason for this secrecy, since Hallam’s father disapproved of his son’s relationship with Emily, who was the daughter of an alcoholic country clergyman—she did not at all possess the status that Hallam senior expected for the bride of his promising young son. In the end, however, Hallam’s father consented and Hallam and Emily’s engagement was made public.
In addition to providing encouragement and intellectual stimulation to feed his friend’s developing poetic career, Hallam also offered Tennyson practical assistance in the publication of his work. In fact, it was more than mere assistance, as the publication of much of Tennyson’s early work—particularly “Poems” of 1832—was almost entirely the result of Hallam’s efforts to get Tennyson a publishing deal and prod the slow-moving genius to write more. Batchelor tells us, “Arthur Hallam’s attributes—his energy, enterprise, business acumen, presence, confidence, and address—were of priceless service to Alfred Tennyson. It was Hallam who put Tennyson in touch with the published Edward Moxon, who would see Tennyson’s work into print until the late 1850’s.” Tennyson owed much to this faithful comrade.
A Sudden Loss
Photo production of Tennyson's poem "In Memoriam," circa 1887 to 1897. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Public Domain
It comes as little surprise that a nature as sensitive and affectionate as Tennyson’s would suffer an indescribable blow when he lost his dearest friend and supporter completely and unexpectedly in 1833. Hallam was abroad with his father that summer when he died, abruptly, of a brain aneurysm, at the age of just 22. His bright flame flickered out almost as soon as it had begun to burn. After this death, which came on the heels of Tennyson’s loss of his father, Tennyson entered a period of aimlessness, sorrow, and suffering.
Yet beauty and even hope was to spring up from this tragedy. For it was in a flurry of poetic output in the wake of this tremendous loss that Tennyson wrote some of his finest poems, including “Ulysses,” “Tithonus,” and “Morte d’Arthur.” Moreover, this grieving experience would provide the impetus for “In Memoriam, A.H.H,” not published until 17 years later, and called “perhaps the greatest of Victorian poems” by the Poetry Foundation. “Tennyson grieved over [Hallam’s death], then internalized it, then made it into the material for art, which bore fruit,” writes Bachelor.
“In Memoriam” was also the poem that would make him famous the world-over and touch and console the heart of Queen Victoria following the death of her husband, Prince Albert, and leading, in part, to Tennyson’s appointment as Poet Laureate of England.
“In Memoriam, A.H.H.” is an elegy for a lost friend, but, like all great poetry, it both expresses and transcends any one particular event. It is about all friendship and all death and all grieving. One of the most famous stanzas, the final one, runs,
I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; ‘Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.
Tennyson concludes the poem by saying that he does not envy birds and beasts who don’t have to suffer the awareness of loss, grief, or guilt. He even does not envy other human beings who have never given their love and friendship, and therefore have not suffered loss. Even though it is painful, Tennyson knows that what he has experienced is far better, for more valuable, for more human: “Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.” A life where one shuts everyone out, forms a shell, and gives no love or friendship for fear of being hurt, is a sorry human life indeed.
A print of Arthur H. Hallam's bust, circa 1884 to 1889. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Public Domain
What I find most remarkable about “In Memoriam” is this largeness of heart and the lack of bitterness on the part of the poet. Tennyson—though grieved, lost, confused, and in some sense completely broken by the death of Hallam—chose a path other than despair. There is a note of acceptance even in the most desperate, pained, and hopeless chords of this dirge. Tennyson may have been, at times, aimless, moody, oversensitive, but at the same time a great nobility of though and elevation of sentiment is revealed in his poetry.
And we owe that poetry, in part, to love and to loss. Without Hallam—his friendship, support, industry, and, ultimately, his tragic death—we likely would not have Alfred, Lord Tennyson as we know him, nor would we have his poems, these jewels of English literature.
Friendship, and its frequent correlative, loss, can beget great art. It is often in the crucible of intense and deeply painful experiences that beauty forms, just as diamonds result from unthinkably high pressures and temperatures inside the earth. Art—like diamonds—is often the result of a trial by fire, producing a final product that is bright, cleansed, and purified, and reflecting in its facets a concentrated form of the vast array of the world and human life, with all its tragedy and triumph.
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