Poetry for Students

212 Poetry for Students

Criticism

David Kelly

Kelly is a creative writing and literature in-

structor at two colleges in Illinois. In this essay,

Kelly explains why it is better to analyze Tenny-

son’s poem without considering the larger work

that it introduces.

The difficulty one finds in approaching a work

like Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Proem” is one that

troubles anyone practicing literary criticism and, in

fact, anyone trying to understand life: how much

should be examined at any one time? Even with an

average poem, possibilities abound, since there ex-

ists any extent of background information that

could be useful for helping readers comprehend the

lines on the page in front of them. Biographical in-

formation is often referred to, and so are similar

poems from the poet’s canon, or poems written

around the same time, or poems that clearly influ-

ence the subject matter.

“Proem” has all of these elements. It is the in-

troduction to a longer piece, In Memoriam A. H.

H.. The most obvious direction that a line of in-

quiry might be inclined to take is toward the larger

poem, to see how this segment compares to the

whole. Furthermore, this entire work deals with the

most moving, significant event in Tennyson’s oth-

erwise stuffy literary life, the death of his dear

friend Arthur Henry Hallam. The magnitude of this

one event was so compelling to Tennyson that the

bulk of his work in his important formative years,

from twenty-four to forty, was spent trying to cap-

ture the experience in this one work. Most of Ten-

nyson’s poetry deals with subjects drawn from

classical literature. The temptation to explore him

throughIn Memoriamis strong, and could easily

be justified as a rare opportunity that must not be

ignored.

Finally, there is the fact that “Proem” is a part

of the larger work, and should only be separated

from it when absolutely necessary. One of the most

influential poets in modern literature, T. S. Eliot,

explicitly warned readers that it would be a mis-

take to break down In Memoriam, to examine any

individual part, realizing the damage that such an

act could do to the entire piece. In his discussion

ofIn Memoriam, Eliot asserted that “the poem has

to be comprehended as a whole. We may not mem-

orize a few passages, we cannot find a ‘fair sam-

ple’; we have to comprehend the whole of a poem

which is essentially the length that it is.” Given

Eliot’s stature, it might be a good idea to do just

as he commands, assuming he knows best on po-

etic matters.

Those are the reasons for examining “Proem”

in a larger context. There are also very good rea-

sons, though, for letting this piece stand as an in-

dividual unit and examining it as such. For one

thing, it was written separately, after the rest of the

poem was already done. This introductory section

ends with the date 1849, which shows it to have

been one of the last pieces written. As much as Ten-

nyson wanted it to be a part of In Memoriam, he

also gave it some degree of autonomy by drawing

attention to the fact that it was written out of se-

quence with the other sections that have been

pieced together for this poem.

And, regardless of the poet’s intentions, the

fact remains that “Proem” actually stands indepen-

dently. It has a definite beginning and end, assigned

to it by the author: looking at this one segment with-

out the context of the rest of the poem would not

be anything like, as Eliot implies, taking a random

section from the middle and pretending that it is

supposed to have meaning. In a case like that, the

reader defines what the piece is saying by defining

its length, separating it from other information that

it is tied to; in this case, though, it already has its

own independent identity. As much as the case ex-

ists for looking around any one artistic piece in or-

der to draw intellectual connections to the facts of

the author’s life or to other things that he wrote,

still there is at least a reasonable case to be made

for considering a poem like this as its own free-

standing entity, in order to see what it, alone, says.

And that, ultimately, is the deciding factor. The

piece does have a context, as every work of art will,

but focusing too much on the context can actually

drive readers away from its unique significance,

putting them on the trail of research before they

have given the work itself their fullest attention.

Examined on its own, “Proem” turns out to be

less a memorial to Hallam than a general statement

on the author’s insecurity that surrounds his grief.

There are two defining characteristics of this piece.

One is the hazy way in which it approaches its own

subject; if it were not in the context of a piece called

In Memoriam, readers would not know until the

end that it is written about the death of a friend.

The other is the way that this poem begs for for-

giveness at the end, just as the aspect of grief is be-

ing introduced, a show of humility that reflects the

relationships that the poet has with both God and

his departed friend.

Proem

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