Tennyson, Alfred
(Somersby, Lincolnshire 1809-1892 Aldworth bei Reading) : Dichter
Subjects
Index of Names : Occident
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Literature : Occident : Great Britain
Chronology Entries (3)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1835-1885 |
Tennyson, Alfred. Works. 1835 Tennyson, Alfred. Locksley Hall [Gedicht MS 1835]. "Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day; Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." 1847 Tennyson, Alfred. The princess : a medley. (London : Edward Moxon, 1847). She fulmined out her scorn of laws Salique And little-footed China, touched on Mahomet With much contempt, and came to chivalry 1864 Tennyson, Alfred. Enoch Arden. (London, Edward Moxon, 1864). Reporting of his vessel China-bound, And wanting yet a boatswain. Would he go? There yet were many weeks before she sail'd, Sail'd from this port. Would Enoch have the place? 1885 Tennyson, Alfred. The ancient sage. In : Tennyson, Alfred. Tiresias and other poems. (London : Macmillan, 1885). A thousand summers ere the time of Christ From out his ancient city came a Seer Whom one that loved, and honour'd him, and yet Was no disciple, richly garb'd, but worn From wasteful living, follow'd—in his hand A scroll of verse—till that old man before A cavern whence an affluent fountain pour'd From darkness into daylight, turn'd and spoke. This wealth of waters might but seem to draw From yon dark cave, but, son, the source is higher, Yon summit half-a-league in air—and higher, The cloud that hides it—higher still, the heavens Whereby the cloud was moulded, and whereout The cloud descended. Force is from the heights. I am wearied of our city, son, and go To spend my one last year among the hills. What hast thou there? Some deathsong for the Ghouls To make their banquet relish? let me read. How far thro' all the bloom and brake That nightingale is heard! What power but the bird's could make This music in the bird? How summer-bright are yonder skies, And earth as fair in lute! And yet what sign of aught that lies Behind the green and blue? But man to-day is fancy's fool As man hath ever been. The nameless Power, or Powers, that rule Were never heard or seen. If thou would'st hear the Nameless, and wilt dive Into the Temple-cave of thine own self, There, brooding by the central altar, thou May'st haply learn the Nameless hath a voice, By which thou wilt abide, if thou be wise, As if thou knewest, tho' thou canst not know; For Knowledge is the swallow on the lake That sees and stirs the surface-shadow there But never yet hath dipt into the abysm, The Abysm of all Abysms, beneath, within The blue of sky and sea, the green of earth, And in the million-millionth of a grain Which cleft and cleft again for evermore, And ever vanishing, never vanishes, To me, my son, more mystic than myself, Or even than the Nameless is to me. And when thou sendest thy free soul thro’ heaven, Nor understandest bound nor boundlessness, Thou seest the Nameless of the hundred names. And if the Nameless should withdraw from all Thy frailty counts most real, all thy world Might vanish like thy shadow in the dark. And since—from when this earth began— The Nameless never came Among us, never spake with man, And never named the Name— Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son, Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in, Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone, Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone, Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one: Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no Nor yet that thou art mortal—nay my son, Thou canst not prove that I, who speak with thee, Am not thyself in converse with thyself, For nothing worthy proving can be proven, Nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be wise, Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith! She reels not in the storm of warring words, She brightens at the clash of 'Yes' and 'No', She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the Worst, She feels the Sun is hid but for a night, She spies the summer thro’ the winter bud, She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls, She hears the lark within the songless egg, She finds the fountain where they wail'd 'Mirage'! What Power? aught akin to Mind, The mind in me and you? Or power as of the Gods gone blind Who see not what they do? But some in yonder city hold, my son, That none but Gods could build this house of ours, So beautiful, vast, various, so beyond All work of man, yet, like all work of man, A beauty with defect——till That which knows, And is not known, but felt thro’ what we feel Within ourselves is highest, shall descend On this half-deed, and shape it at the last According to the Highest in the Highest. What Power but the Years that make And break the vase of clay, And stir the sleeping earth, and wake The bloom that fades away? What rulers but the Days and Hours That cancel weal with woe, And wind the front of youth with flowers, And cap our age with snow? The days and hours are ever glancing by, And seem to flicker past thro' sun and shade, Or short, or long, as Pleasure leads, or Pain; But with the Nameless is nor Day nor Hour; Tho' we, thin minds, who creep from thought to thought, Break into 'Thens' and 'Whens' the Eternal Now This double seeming of the single world!— My words are like the babblings in a dream Of nightmare, when the habblings break the dream. But thou be wise in this dream-world of ours, Nor take thy dial for thy deity, But make the passing shadow serve thy will. The years that made the stripling wise Undo their work again, And leave him, blind of heart and eyes, The last and least of men; Who clings to earth, and once would dare Hell-heat or Arctic cold, And now one breath of cooler air Would loose him from his hold; His winter chills him to the root, He withers marrow and mind; The kernel of the shrivell'd fruit Is jutting thro' the rind; The tiger spasms tear his chest, The palsy wags his head; The wife, the sons, who love him best Would fain that he were dead; The griefs by which he once was wrung Were never worth the while— Who knows? or whether this earth-narrow life Be yet but yolk, and forming in the shell The shaft of scorn that once had stung But wakes a dotard smile. The placid gleams of sunset after storm! The statesman's brain that sway'd the past Is feebler than his knees; The passive sailor wrecks at last In ever-silent seas; The warrior hath forgot his arms, The Learned all his lore; The changing market frets or charms The merchant's hope no more; The prophet’s beacon burn'd in vain, And now is lost in cloud; The plowman passes, bent with pain, To mix with what he plow'd; The poet whom his Age would quote As heir of endless fame— He knows not ev'n the book he wrote, Not even his own name. For man has overlived his day, And, darkening in the light, Scarce feels the senses break away To mix with ancient Night. The shell must break before the bird can fly. The years that when my Youth began Had set the lily and rose By all my ways where'er they ran, Have ended mortal foes; My rose of love for ever gone, My lily of truth and trust— They made her lily and rose in one, And changed her into dust. O rosetree planted in my grief, And growing, on her tomb, Her dust is greening in your leaf, Her blood is in your bloom. O slender lily waving there, And laughing back the light, In vain you tell me 'Earth is fair' When all is dark as night. My son, the world is dark with griefs and graves, So dark that men cry out against the Heavens. Who knows but that the darkness is in man? The doors of Night may be the gates of Light; For wert thou born or blind or deaf, and then Suddenly heal'd, how would'st thou glory in all The splendours and the voices of the world! And we, the poor earth’s dying race, and yet No phantoms, watching from a phantom shore Await the last and largest sense to make The phantom walls of this illusion fade, And show us that the world is wholly fair. But vain the tears for darken'd years As laughter over wine, And vain the laughter as the tears, O brother, mine or thine, For all that laugh, and all that weep And all that breathe are one Slight ripple on the boundless deep That moves, and all is gone. But that one ripple on the boundless deep Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself For ever changing form, but evermore One with the boundless motion of the deep. Yet wine and laughter friends! and set The lamps alight, and call For golden music, and forget The darkness of the pall. If utter darkness closed the day, my son—— But earth's dark forehead flings athwart the heavens Her shadow crown'd with stars—and yonder—out To northward—some that never set, but pass From sight and night to lose themselves in day. I hate the black negation of the bier, And wish the dead, as happier than ourselves And higher, having climb'd one step beyond Our village miseries, might be borne in white To burial or to burning, hymn'd from hence With songs in praise of death, and crown'd with flowers! O worms and maggots of to-day Without their hope of wings! But louder than thy rhyme the silent Word Of that world-prophet in the heart of man. Tho' some have gleams or so they say Of more than mortal things. To-day? but what of yesterday? for oft On me, when boy, there came what then I call'd, Who knew no books and no philosophies, In my boy-phrase 'The Passion of the Past'. The first gray streak of earliest summer-dawn, The last long stripe of waning crimson gloom, As if the late and early were but one— A height, a broken grange, a grove, a flower Had murmurs 'Lost and gone and lost and gone!' A breath, a whisper—some divine farewell— Desolate sweetness—far and far away— What had he loved, what had he lost, the boy? I know not and I speak of what has been. And more, my son! for more than once when I Sat all alone, revolving in myself The word that is the symbol of myself, The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, And past into the Nameless, as a cloud Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs Were strange not mine—and yet no shade of doubt, But utter clearness, and thro’ loss of Self The gain of such large life as match'd with ours Were Sun to spark—unshadowable in words, Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world. And idle gleams will come and go, But still the clouds remain; The clouds themselves are children of the Sun. And Night and Shadow rule below When only Day should reign. And Day and Night are children of the Sun, And idle gleams to thee are light to me. Some say, the Light was father of the Night, And some, the Night was father of the Light, No night no day!—I touch thy world again— No ill no good! such counter-terms, my son, Are border-races, holding, each its own By endless war: but night enough is there In yon dark city: get thee back: and since The key to that weird casket, which for thee But holds a skull, is neither thine nor mine, But in the hand of what is more than man, Or in man’s hand when man is more than man, Let be thy wail and help thy fellow men, And make thy gold thy vassal not thy king, And fling free alms into the beggar’s bowl, And send the day into the darken'd heart; Nor list for guerdon in the voice of men, A dying echo from a falling wall; Nor care—for Hunger hath the Evil eye— To vex the noon with fiery gems, or fold Thy presence in the silk of sumptuous looms; Nor roll thy viands on a luscious tongue, Nor drown thyself with flies in honied wine; Nor thou he rageful, like a handled bee, And lose thy life by usage of thy sting; Nor harm an adder thro’ the lust for harm, Nor make a snail's horn shrink for wantonness; And more—think well! Do-well will follow thought, And in the fatal sequence of this world An evil thought may soil thy children's blood; But curb the beast would cast thee in the mire, And leave the hot swamp of voluptuousness A cloud between the Nameless and thyself, And lay thine uphill shoulder to the wheel, And climb the Mount of Blessing, whence, if thou Look higher, then—perchance—thou mayest—beyond A hundred ever-rising mountain lines, And past the range of Night and Shadow—see The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day Strike on the Mount of Vision! So, farewell. Sekundärliteratur Richard P. Benton : Hallam Tennyson notes that his father considered The ancient sage one of his best later poems. It was written after the poet had read The speculations on metaphysics, polity, and morality, of "the old philosopher", Lau-tsze. Transl. by John Chalmers [ID D4588]. Tennyson declared that the poem simply represents 'what I might have believed about the deeper problems of life A thousand summers ere the birth of Christ'. Paull F. Baum remarks that the poet's Ancient sage 'does not propound Taoism ; rather, he sums up Tennyson's own ingathering of a long Victorian life. The poem is, in Baum's opinion, 'Tennyson's benediction, both a personal last word and summary of his earlier doctrine and also an old man's answer to the hard questions of life'. Walter E. Houghton and G. Robert Stange gloss the poem in a similar vein : 'Although The ancient sage was written after reading the life and maxims of the ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao-tse, it does not present his philosophy. Jerome Hamilton, after repeating the poet's denial that the ideas expressed by The ancient sage are thoss of Lao Tzu, he affirms : 'All that remains even vaguely taoistic in the finished composition is the setting 'A thousand summers ere the time of Christ', which removes the argument altogether from the framework of Christian revelation'. What is surprising about these views is that, in spite of Tennyson's denial that his poem reflects the philosophy of Taoism, a careful comparison of Lao Tzu's ideas in Chalmers' translation with those in Tennyson's poem suggests strongly that it does expound the basic tenets of Taoism, especially those principles on which Taoistic cosmology is based. It appears not only that Tennyson borrowed his metaphysics from Lao Tzu but also that he adopted certain Taoist technical terms and incorporated them into the poem. It is true that there are ideas in the poem which Tennyson had long entertained before he read Lao Tzu's treatise, as well as that there is at least one idea included which is not consonant with Lao Tzu's philosophy – namely, the old philosopher's speculation in the poem regarding the possibility of personal immortality. Nevertheless, I see Taoist ideas in Tennyson's poem, especially in the first hundred and ten lines, and I believe these ideas were directly derived from Chalmers' version. First of all, there is the fountain symbol. It is true that Tennyson used the fountain to symbolize the life-force in his poetry long before he presumably read Chalmers. The 'affluent fountain' mentioned in The ancient sage symbolizes here is a distinctly Taoist conception. The old philosopher points out to the young poet that the apparent source of the fountain is not its real source. The source of the fountain is, above everything, and in this sense from nothing, from non-being. The conception was apparently derived from Chalmers' introduction and from Chap. XLII of his translation. In his introduction Chalmers explains Lao Tzu's conception of the transcendent absolute or Tao, using the fountain metaphor to do so. Other kinds of ideas in The ancient sage include the old philosopher's primitivism, which is expressed in his desire to shun the complexities of urban life ; his wise passiveness, his conviction that it is absurd for men to fight over issues on which they fail to agree ; and his charity, which is shown by his solicitude for the welfare of others. All these ideas are shared by Tennyson and Lao Tzu. To what extent Tennyson actually adopted Taoism as his own belief is a matter of speculation. One thing is clear – when Tennyson read the Tao-te-ching, its thought appealed to him strongly enough that it inspired his poem and through it he paid tribute to the character of Lao Tzu. In doing so he gave us what he considered one of his best later poems. |
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| 2 | 1902 |
Liang, Qichao. Yin bing shi shi hua. In : Xin min cong bao ; no 5 (1902). [On poetry]. 饮冰室诗话 Liang Qichao entscheidet sich für Shashibiya als chinesischer Name für William Shakespeare. Er schreibt : "Homer, the Greek poet, was the greatest poet in ancient times ; as for later poets, such as Shakespeare, Milton and Tennyson, their poems usually contain several thousand lines. How wonderful ! Just the sublime style is brilliant enough to overwhelm you, so you no longer need to comment on the language of their poems." |
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| 3 | 1912-1922 |
Wen Yiduo liest englische Lyrik, vor allem aus der Anthologie The golden treasury von Francis Turner Palgrave. He was immediately attracted to Keats, Tennyson, and other English poets. These two poets stimulated him to address such themes as the tension between an idealized timeless world of art inhabited by beauty, love and truth and the world of dark reality marked by suffering and pain. |
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Bibliography (7)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1835 |
Tennyson, Alfred. Locksley Hall. [Gedicht MS 1835]. = Tennyson, Alfred. Locksley Hall and other poems. (London : King, 1874). http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174629. |
Publication / Tenn5 |
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| 2 | 1885 |
Tennyson, Alfred. The ancient sage. In : Tennyson, Alfred. Tiresias and other poems. (London : Macmillan, 1885). (Library of English literature ; LEL 13115). http://www.telelib.com/authors/T/TennysonAlfred/verse/tiresias/ancientsage.html. |
Publication / Tenn3 |
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| 3 | 1930 |
Hu, Shi. Hu Shi ri ji. ([S.l. : s.n.], 1930). [Enthält Übersetzungen von Gedichten von] : Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, William Shakespeare, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rudyard Kipling, James Russell Lowell, Alfred Noyes, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Joseph Dane Miller, Denis H. Robertson. 胡適日記 |
Publication / HuS5 |
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| 4 | 1932 |
Zhong xue sheng fan yi. Gao'erji [et al.] zhu ; Zhang Tingzheng yi. (Shanghai : Zhong xue sheng shu ju, 1932). (Zhong xue sheng cong shu). [Übersetzung von Short stories und Gedichten]. 中學生翻譯 [Enthält] : Ivan Vazov, Maksim Gorky, John Ruskin, Maria of Romania, August Strindberg, Leo Tolstoy, Karel Capek, Josef Capek, Alfred Tennyson, Edgar Allan Poe, Percy Bysshe Shelley. |
Publication / Gork210 | |
| 5 | 1953 |
[Tennyson, Alfred]. Yinuo Adeng. Tiannisen zhuan ; Chen Zongxian bian. (Taibei : Kai ming, 1953). (Zi xue ying yu quan ji ; di jiu ce). Übersetzung von Tennyson, Alfred. Enoch Arden. (London, Edward Moxon, 1864). 伊諾.阿登 |
Publication / Tenn1 |
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| 6 | 1995 |
[Tennyson, Alfred]. Dingnisheng shi xuan. Dingnishen zhu ; Huang Gaoxin yi. (Shanghai : Shanghai yi wen chu ban she, 1995). [Übersetzung der Gedichte von Tennyson]. 丁尼生诗选 |
Publication / Tenn4 | |
| 7 | 2000 |
[Noyes, Alfred ; Garfield, Leon ; Tennyson, Alfred]. Mei ying mi zhou. Nuoyisi [Alfred Noyes], Jiafeier [Leon Garfield] ; Tainisen [Alfred Tennyson] wen ; Chaersi Qiping [Charles Keeping] tu ; Liu Qingyan yi. (Taibei : Gelin wen hua, 2000). (Meng xiang jia xi lie ; 37). 魅影迷咒 [Übersetzung von] : Noyes, Alfred. The highwayman. In : Blackwood's magazine ; Aug. (1906). Garfield, Leon. The wedding ghost. (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1985). Tennyson, Alfred. The Lady of Shalott. In : Tennyson, Alfred. Poems. (London : E. Moxon, 1833). Erw. (London : E. Moxon, 1842). |
Publication / Tenn7 |
Secondary Literature (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1962 | Benton, Richard P. Tennyson and Lao Tzu. In : Philosophy East and West, vol. 12 (1962). | Publication / Tenn2 |
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