Selected Poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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The forbidden fruit for Tithonus was returning the love that Eos (or Aurora) felt for him. His desire for her is expressed in some of Tennyson’s most beautiful lines, and it is richly sensual. As Eos used to awake in the morning, growing lucent and amorous simultaneously, the young Tithonus had the power to respond, feeling his ‘blood/Glow with the glow that slowly crimson'd all.’ The lines that describe his passionate arousal are among the most beautiful ever penned by Tennyson, and yet even these are denied . The moral of the story is given clearly enough: ‘Why should a man desire in any way/To vary from the kindly race of men?’
What makes this so difficult to bear is the imagery of light that Tennyson employs so powerfully here, and in other related poems. Of course, rationally the reader can easily accept the point that, just as taking mind-numbing narcotics is immoral, so desiring the life of a god, for whatever reason, is unnatural. But for Tithonus, his former life, before the love of Aurora was dark and shadowy (‘that dark world where I was born’), and, after he met her and fell in love, his world was filled with light. The same choice, of course, falls to the Lady of Shalott, who is ‘half sick of shadows.’ Her whole life is imagined in deepest isolation – Tennyson excludes all mention of any other human being to share her imprisonment – and she experiences life only through ‘Shadows of the world’ ‘moving through a mirror clear.’ This strongly suggests Plato’s metaphor of the cave, of course, and just as the philosopher rejects the world of shadows for one of light, so the Lady is drawn to the love of Lancelot who is so bright and shining that he enters the poem with all the impetus of some great solar deity. He is the light-bringer to the Lady as surely as Eos is to Tithonus: ‘He flashed into the crystal mirror’ (italics added). As soon as there is fullness and fulfilment, however, the Lady is cursed and the weather turns toward winter and death. This is similar to the detailed natural descriptions of The Lotos Eaters where everything is described as being just after the moment of fruition, and therefore about to decay and wither.
Mariana, in the eponymous lyric, is in an analogous state to the Lady of Shalott in the final section of her poem. Whereas the Lady is prevented by a ‘whisper’ that there is a curse upon her if she looks toward Camelot, Mariana’s imprisonment is seen in even more oppressive psychological terms: ‘She could not look on the sweet heaven/Either at morn or eventide.’ She is, in fact, already experiencing the emotional death that seems to result from an admission of the sensual.
What makes this so difficult to bear is the imagery of light that Tennyson employs so powerfully here, and in other related poems. Of course, rationally the reader can easily accept the point that, just as taking mind-numbing narcotics is immoral, so desiring the life of a god, for whatever reason, is unnatural. But for Tithonus, his former life, before the love of Aurora was dark and shadowy (‘that dark world where I was born’), and, after he met her and fell in love, his world was filled with light. The same choice, of course, falls to the Lady of Shalott, who is ‘half sick of shadows.’ Her whole life is imagined in deepest isolation – Tennyson excludes all mention of any other human being to share her imprisonment – and she experiences life only through ‘Shadows of the world’ ‘moving through a mirror clear.’ This strongly suggests Plato’s metaphor of the cave, of course, and just as the philosopher rejects the world of shadows for one of light, so the Lady is drawn to the love of Lancelot who is so bright and shining that he enters the poem with all the impetus of some great solar deity. He is the light-bringer to the Lady as surely as Eos is to Tithonus: ‘He flashed into the crystal mirror’ (italics added). As soon as there is fullness and fulfilment, however, the Lady is cursed and the weather turns toward winter and death. This is similar to the detailed natural descriptions of The Lotos Eaters where everything is described as being just after the moment of fruition, and therefore about to decay and wither.
Mariana, in the eponymous lyric, is in an analogous state to the Lady of Shalott in the final section of her poem. Whereas the Lady is prevented by a ‘whisper’ that there is a curse upon her if she looks toward Camelot, Mariana’s imprisonment is seen in even more oppressive psychological terms: ‘She could not look on the sweet heaven/Either at morn or eventide.’ She is, in fact, already experiencing the emotional death that seems to result from an admission of the sensual.
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