Part 8 (1/2)
Rien n'est sacre for this cynic, who thinks himself a Stoic Thus Maud was made to be unpopular with the author's countryainst Maud's lover, described by Tennyson as ”a s of a cynic”
That he is ”raised to sanity” (still in Tennyson's words) ”by a pure and holy love which elevates his whole nature,” the world failed to perceive, especially as the sanity was only a brief lucid interval, teirl of sixteen, unknown to her relations Tennyson added that ”different phases of passion in one person take the place of different characters,” to which critics replied that they wanted different characters, if only by way of relief, and did not care for any of the phases of passion
The learned Monsieur Janet has maintained that love is a disease like another, and that nobody falls in love when in perfect health of mind and body This theory seeh At best and last, he only helps to give a iant deck anda battle-cry”
He did not go out as a volunteer, and probably the Criinal estate of cynical gloom--and very naturally
The reconciliation with Life is not like the reconciliation of In Memoriam The poem took its rise in old lines, and most beautiful lines, which Tennyson had contributed in 1837 to a rief and pain, To find the arain”
Thence the poet, working back to find the origin of the situation, encountered the ideas and the persons of Maud
I have tried to state the sources, in the generalat practice,”
disapproved of the ”criticis narrator with the author, and neglected the poetry ”Noin the ears of men I do not know any verse out of Shakespeare in which the ecstacy of love soars to such a height” With these coree, yet may fail to follohen he says, ”No poem since Shakespeare seee of human nature” Shakespeare could not in a narrative poe passions of one character to the characters of many persons
Tennyson was ”nettled at first,” his son says, ”by these captious remarks of the 'indolent reviewers,' but afterwards he would take no notice of them except to speak of them in a half-pitiful, half- hu sin and error of the critics was, of course, to confound Tennyson's hero with himself, as if we confused dickens with Pip
Like Aurora Leigh, Lucile, and other works, Maud is under the disadvantage of being, practically, a novel of modern life in verse
Criticised as a tale of modern life (and it was criticised in that character), it could not be very highly esteemed But the essence of Maud, of course, lies in the poetical vehicle nobody can cavil at the i stanzas -
”I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood”;
with the keynotes of colour and of desolation struck; the lips of the hollow ”dabbled with blood-red heath,” the ”red-ribb'd ledges,” and ”the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands”; and the contrast in the picture of the child Maud -
”Maud the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the Hall”
The poem abounds in lines which live in the memory, as in the vernal description -
”A million emeralds break froarden singing
”A passionate ballad gallant and gay,”
as Lovelace's Althea, and the lines on the far-off waving of a white hand, ”betwixt the cloud and the arden When twilight was falling, Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud, They were crying and calling,”