SOURCE: Kilroy, James. “The Chiastic Structure of In Memoriam, A. H. H.” Philological Quarterly 56, no. 3 (summer 1977): 358-73.

[In the following essay, Kilroy looks at the use of chiasmus, or inversion of the second of two parallel phrases, throughout In Memoriam, with particular focus on several stanzas at the center of the work.]

One of the recurrent challenges to critics of Victorian poetry has been the attempt to describe the structure of Tennyson's greatest poem, In Memoriam, A. H. H. Few deny its unity, but explanations of how its one hundred thirty-three separate poems are organized into an artistic whole have ranged from Eliot's description of it as “the concentrated diary of a man confessing himself” to the much more elaborate schemes proposed by A. C. Bradley and Valerie Pitt.¹ Despite the knowledge that Tennyson added two sections after the trial edition and that he once considered entitling it Fragments of an Elegy, readers report a single, coherent effect and an impression of careful architectonics. There are, of course, unifying features such as the references to the passing of seasons, recurring Christmas celebrations and anniversaries of Arthur Hallam's death. But claims of thematic unity have put unjustified importance on a single section, the mystical vision reported in Section XCV. And the structural importance of the central group of poems, the most discomforting episodes which compromise the middle of the “nine natural groups,” has been overlooked.

The stanzaic scheme, quatrains rhyming abba, has been recognized as absolutely appropriate to the dramatic nature of the poem. Christopher Ricks notes that it would be “utterly unsuitable for sustained argument,” but allows its “exquisite aptness” for a poem in which moods, ideas and theories circle and hover, or advance but only to recede.² Tennyson's own description of the verses as “short swallow-flights of song, that dip / Their wings in tears, and skim away” suggests a similar symmetrical pattern, in which a single exciting fall is framed before and after by parallel structures. The stanza constitutes a chiasmus, reinforced by thought and syntax, and such a chiastic pattern is found in the entire poem as well.³

In the smallest unit, the quatrain, a chiastic structure dominates. The repeated rhymes of first and last lines adapt themselves well either to reiteration of the same sentiment or to balance of opposed claims in the polar lines. In between the rhymed couplet achieves graver weight and often constitutes a single statement framed by the opening and closing lines. Of course such absolute symmetry does not occur in every quatrain, but the rhyme scheme encourages the major thought or deepest feeling to gravitate toward the middle. Just as the center of gravity can be seen in individual quatrains, the larger units of the poem's structure reveal a similar chiastic plan. Each of the poem's one hundred thirty-three sections is made up of a series of quatrains arranged so as to constitute a discrete episode. For, as Tennyson himself indicated, the poem is a dramatic work, in which “the different moods of sorrow as in a drama are dramatically given.”⁴ But within each of the numbered episodes, and the prologue and epilogue as well, there is only rarely a logical structure which assumes progress; more typical is a circular reiteration at the end of the opening statement, with amplification or emphasis often occurring at the end. Even when thought is moved along within the section, it is by carefully balanced dialectic.

The entire poem exhibits a similar chiastic pattern of sections. In defending one or another theory of the poem's structure, previous critics have often over-simplified. From A. C. Bradley's claim, itself based on the poet‘s own comment, that the poem is divided by the three Christmas observances (Sections XXVIII, LXXVIII, and CIV), through Valerie Pitt's cogent arguments that the two anniversaries (LXXII and XCIX) provide more likely points of division, the most basic observation about In Memoriam is too easily slighted: that is that the critical number is not four, nor three, nor even nine, but one hundred thirty-one. Each of the sections is a distinct expression, with an independent subject and form. The arrangement of sections, however, does reveal a pattern: a movement from initial grief downward to near despair and a concomitant choking of expression, and then upward to acceptance and articulation. That pattern is clearly exposed if we consider the poem as composed of the “nine natural groups” which Tennyson mentioned in a letter to his friend James Knowles.⁵ It should not be surprising that the groups are of unequal length, nor that they cover unequal periods of time, for human experience is never so symmetrically neat. What matters is that they serve as roughly equivalent thematic units arranged, like the quatrain, to invest the greatest weight in the center of the poem. Thus the middle group, the fifth of nine such, is the low point, while around it framing groups symmetrically advance and then retreat. Of course something happens, and the chiastic structure does not require return to exactly the starting point. But the poem's greatest intensity occurs in the middle, not at the conclusion; the parallel elements of framing sections form a chiasmus, reflecting the structure of individual lyrics and quatrains. Thus, the dramatic progress of the poem does not lead to putting greatest weight on Section XCV, nor on dividing action at Christmases or anniversaries either, but rather on that group of sections which record the nadir of the speaker's experience.⁶ Consideration of the poem as centering on the middle of the nine “natural groups” also reinforces the major themes of the poem, its consideration of the nature and force of love and the difficulty of faith, especially in face of contemporary scientific discoveries. Even the subject of the difficulty of verbal expression, so nicely analyzed by E. D. H. Johnson, is most fully revealed by considering the poem as having a chiastic structure centering on Section L through LVIII.⁷

The nine groups are so arranged as to form a chiasmus whose central unit presents the very nadir of the speaker's experience and the central thematic statements. To reveal that pattern it will be necessary to discuss the nine groups as four pairs of parallel units, noting the ways in which they direct attention toward the central passages. The chiastic structure formed in the stanzaic unit is amplified in the arrangement of these larger units, as well as in the patterns within sections or groups of sections with the prologue and epilogue, the outermost statements of the poem, completing the overall pattern.

The first of the nine groups consists of Sections I through VIII, and as a structural unit it establishes the poem's main concerns. In the very first section, most of the entire poem's content is made evident. The speaker relates his belief in progress, connecting evolution with personal immortality in the very first stanza: “That men may rise on stepping-stones / Of their dead selves to higher things.” John D. Rosenberg convincingly argues that these two elements with their related aspects, scientific fact and religious faith respectively, are the main components of the synthesis which the poem achieves.⁸ To that should be added the subject of love, emphasized in the rest of the poem as a third major theme and mentioned in this opening section. The shift from past to future to present tense has the effect of relegating a belief in progress to the past. At the poem's opening, then, the speaker stands between a past now lost and a future untenable consolation and he sees no alternative to turning away, to indulging in grief. Section V introduces the theme of poetic composition, when the question is raised of whether or not it is even proper to express grief. Standard arguments follow: the deception and ambiguities of expression versus the consolation to the poet found in even such a “dull, mechanic exercise.” Rather than being a subordinate theme, as it has sometimes been regarded, it is clearly integrated into the dramatic situation and made equal to the other themes. The positive reasons offered are really unhealthy: poetry as therapy might be recommended but the imagery makes it clear that in this speaker's view, it would be only a narcotic. Expression of grief is reduced to mere wallowing in it. Of course at this point in the poem such a view of poetry is appropriate; later his struggle out of despair will find a correlation in a more healthy and productive view of poetry as well. The changing situation of the speaker, his place in the emerging drama, also accounts for the deliberately cloying and sentimental statements of some of these early sections. The groups of scenes of domestic bliss are products of self-pity, a stage not unexpected in such a situation. In Section VII the depressed state of the speaker darkens the scenes he relates; he admits this in Section VIII, again resorting to sentimental images of a happy lover whose hopeful perspectives are shattered at the absence of his beloved. The section ends with rather maudlin and self-deprecating comments on his poetry. The closing lines of Section VIII clearly indicate the closure of one act, albeit a preliminary one. In a series of eight episodes the central themes are established—as is the nature of the poem's organization—which shift in time as the speaker questions, evades, rationalizes, but again and again submits to intellectual analysis of his own evasions. Like so many of Tennyson's early poems this group succeeds better in posing questions than in providing answers. Its focus is on dramatic apprehension rather than logical discourse, and the method is appropriate to revelation of characters and situation in such detail as to make the reader share in the emotion and even participate in intellectual analysis of the situation. Irony is too vague a term to describe the relation of reader to narrator in such a case. “Sympathy,” the term favored by Tennyson's contemporaries, comes closer if it is seen as including emotional empathy along with participating in the logical analysis. Such is the tone of the closing lines of this unit: the echoes of Ben Jonson's song, “To Celia,” provide an appropriate final comment: the hopes that his tribute of poetry may live, or at least close the matter.

The last group, Section CIV through CXXXI, closes by exhorting others to join in a song which will endure, “a cry above the conquered years,” thus ending with confidence by proclaiming the efficacy of poetic expression. The other themes raised in the first group are similarly concluded. The last group begins with a repetition of the opening lines of the fourth group, “The time draws near the birth of Christ,” but with contrasting accounts of Christmas traditions observed. More important are the parallels to the first group. By CV his belief in progress is asserted, as the speaker looks toward a better future not just for himself but for mankind as well. In this context, the “Ring out wild bells” section is not simply the set piece of jubilation it appears to be when extracted and set in an anthology; it is a dramatic utterance, revealing the conscious struggle to overcome grief and seek hope. By now Time, whose changes have proven to be inexorable, is accepted instead of regretted. And so, with a fierce energy the speaker exhorts Time to work its way toward progress and the aid of mankind. Here the movement from personal grief to public good is clearly expressed; personal sorrow is associated with materialism and sectarian strife. Yet the last group should not be misread as a statement of placid assurance, for the struggle which appeared throughout earlier sections continues to the end. In living through another anniversary of his friend's birth, or resolving not to shut himself from others, he continues to resist the self-pity which characterized much of the opening expression. The challenges raised by recent scientific theories of change, most positively termed either progress or evolution are, in the end, faced and accepted. Sections CXV through CXVIII, are not one long piece of logical dialectic, but a series of episodes in which are presented the problem, his hope to settle it, and finally, in CXVIII, the most full reconciliation of his personal need for hope and contemporary theories of evolution. Appropriately, he uses the first person plural form to express his confident conclusions regarding the nebular hypothesis and the moral progress compatible with evolution. This set of authoritative, confident exhortations contrasts sharply with the illogical, self-serving evasions uttered in the opening sections.

Marking the enormous progress achieved over the series of statements, Section CXIX serves as a companion to VII. Now the speaker can remember the past, face the dawn and, finally, clasp the hand of his friend—if only in imagination. It is that touch, that union with the departed which he had sought in VII and throughout later episodes. Most striking is the contrast of his final self-assurance with the self-doubt of the opening. In Section CXX, to the objections of scientific materialism he replies not with logical arguments but with faith in his own worth: “I was born to other things.” Concurrent with the restoration of hope and the renewal of his own personality is the revival of confidence in his love for the lost friend, so that by Section CXXIII such love provides stability and assurance in the face of all fears.

In terms of dramatic development, that is as far as the speaker progresses, and in the concluding eight sections he summarizes his final position. Section CXXIV is the most comprehensive of these; in it he attempts to express how he reached the stage of confidence and peace. It was not through rational investigation, nor from natural evidence but through intuition. He tries to express this, first saying that in defense against despair or destruction by freezing intellect his heart “stood up and answered ‘I have felt.’” But immediately, as if that account is insufficient, he returns to the simile offered before at the low point of his experience when in Section LIV he called himself a child crying for light. The addition of the last two stanzas to Section CXXIV provides needed elaboration of his recovery. But equally important, those stanzas make it clear that it is an act of expression which is given credit for turning him to recovery:

          Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father near.

It is not certain that had he not cried, the child in the simile would not have felt reassurance. But it is likely to be so, so that the vocal expression itself serves a therapeutic, consoling function. And in the case of this speaker, there is no doubt that expression, via the poem itself, leads to consolation. The conclusion he finally reaches is not adaptable to familiar discourse:

And what I am beheld again
          What is, and no man understands.

But that should not be dismissed or even discounted as evasive, for he has reached a point where logical discourse is impossible. He has apprehended some higher reality; he has even apprehended himself (“what I am”); but he does not claim to have comprehended either. In the last several sections other concerns raised in the opening sections reappear, all transformed by the experiences which have transpired. Love, the loss of which the speaker had feared in Section VII, is confidently proclaimed as victor over all forces of change and loss. Evolutionary change, the force specified in the first three sections as antithetical to belief in man's dignity and some sense of order, is accepted and even exalted in the last sections. Clearly religious faith is restored, and the voice of Sorrow which haunted him in Sections I and III is replaced by a “deeper voice” proclaiming social truth and finally by the voice of his friend Hallam. In the last section appears the final resolution of all themes and the final polar element in the carefully balanced structure. It consists of a single sentence, addressed to free will, employing a tone of extreme confidence and eloquence. A metaphor of earthquakes is established in the first lines:

O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock.

Free will is set against earthly things as exempt from change and deterioration, and as palpable also: it is “living,” while reality is only that which “seems.” This full reversal of values is called attention to by the deliberately slow pace set by the language: the second line is a tongue-twister which requires equal emphasis on each of the last four words. The will is exhorted to rise out of the rock, so that we, the speaker now taking on the authority of mankind, may

… lift from out of the dust
          A voice as unto him that hears,
          A cry above the conquered years. …

This confident statement represents the ultimate development of the theme of expression which pervades the poem; at the end he has a voice, and knows that it can be heard, and even speaks for more than himself. Faith in God, hope for the future, and most of all, love—the speaker ends proclaiming the most confident belief in the unity of all things. The Christian overtones are undeniable and remarkable in a poem which has not employed many explicit Christian symbols or echoed the Gospel language very clearly. Just as each of the Gospels ends with references to spreading the word, this poem ends with the proclamation of faith in expression and constitutes that confident voice as well.

The second (IX-XIX) and penultimate (LCIX-CIII) groups are largely transitional. But important parallels establish their function in filling in parts of the chiasmus. The second group is concerned with the disposal of the body of the dead Hallam. Although the tone is lighter and less self-pitying, the series of episodes advances the main themes, adding special weight to the theme of poetic expression of grief. But now there is added complexity as an inner dialogue begins—not of the present self with an earlier one, but of two aspects of the mourner's character. He comments on his own concern for the safe and calm transport of the corpse, seeing it objectively for a moment. The passion is still there, however, for the section ends with more defiant or hopeless imaginings. In Section XII he dreams of leaving his mortal body and flying like a dove out to the ship bearing Hallam's corpse, but reaches only a question, “Is this the end?” So too in Section XIII, he knows that his inability to comprehend what has happened is giving rise to imaginings and excessive grief; he knows it, but he goes on imagining as though torturing himself with the thoughts of Hallam alive. So overtaxed are his powers to construct consoling fictions that in XV he questions whether the shock has unhinged his reason making him unable to distinguish fact from fiction or to express the difference. This is an essential question, related not only to his experience of shock at this point of the narrative but to the whole theme of poetic expression. Can I report facts with accuracy and my responses without distortion? he asks. In fact that issue is the central subject, at least on one level, of the entire poem; and it is a question with no simple answer except the poem itself. Of course the theme of achieving ordered expression relates to that of discerning some cosmic order as well, but by Section XVI that possibility is not raised. This early in the poem he has not faced that possibility and failing to see order he recognizes only delirium. But by the last of the sections in this group, the scenes of the ship's arrival and the burial, the speaker has achieved a surer grip of reality. The “firmer mind” begins to form, and he recognizes the finality of Hallam's death. And once having faced the hard fact of death, “My deeper anguish … falls / And I can speak a little then” (XIX, ll. 15-16). Still he is careful to add that it is only the “lesser griefs that may be said,” while the most profound, heartfelt ones remain unspoken.

The penultimate, shortest group of sections, XCIX through CIII, reveals parallel changes. The speaker, revisiting places of youthful happiness, realizes the independent existence of familiar scenes of nature. It is actuality, not imagined things, which sustains him at this point. Recalling his friend's death is no less painful, but there now is no self-pity nor resentment. Even the acknowledgment that the scenes he now views will change is expressed as a mature judgment, not as a plea or cry. But more important in the chiastic structure of the poem is the parallel contained in the motif of voyage. Whereas the earlier group dealt with the journey home of the body of Hallam, this group centers on a voyage away as the family prepares to move from its home. A culmination comes in Section CIII in a vision of the dead. A dove, paralleling that in XII, summons the speaker to a voyage out to sea, which becomes a mystical voyage out of the self. But whereas in the second group he was unable to achieve communion, but only asked “Is this the end?” he is successful in this eighth group, and achieves communion and inspiration as well. More important yet, he achieves confidence in his craft, his ability to speak and write this poem.

The closer to the central group of sections, the more contorted is expression for the speaker. Thus both the third and seventh groups are less explicit than sections nearer the extreme ends of the chiasmus. In Sections XX-XXVII the speaker can with ease write about various peripheral matters, but the closer he comes to the most painful recognition of the loss of his friend, the more he evades, rationalizes or feels choked from expression. At this point in his bereavement it is natural for the speaker to distort his view of the past, but with regularity he questions the accuracy of his own descriptions and conclusions. Such admission of his own unreliability might be claimed to preclude the reader's involvement in the emotional situation; but, on the contrary, in making the reader aware of the contrivance and distortion of the character's statements, a tension between opposite forces adds to the dramatic intensity. It is as though the speaker is fighting against himself and all the while being sucked deeper into despondency. In the same way his repeated attempts to define just what he is trying to achieve by expressing his grief or writing this poem functions as a potent dramatic situation. In Section XXVI he expresses his intention in an even more defensive way:

          … I long to prove
          No lapse of moons can canker Love,
Whatever fickle tongues may say.

Similarly his comments on God are tentative, nearly hypothetical, so that the reader senses his longing to believe, to trust, to rely on God; but even as palpable are his uncertainty, confusion and even fear. This group of sections ends with an assertion, as though the speaker needs to stake out at least some matters as certain. Almost ironically it is love he cites as the single sure value. And its eminence is determined by intuition:

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.

Whatever the limitations of language, some conclusions are tenable, at least as derived from feelings. And his intuition is reliable, as it turns out; the value of love, and the continuing effect of it, form the subject of the discourse to follow.

Conversely, the seventh group, LXXII through XCVIII, marks a stage of recovery and resolution of certain problems raised in the earlier section. His struggle to explain why he is writing this poem progresses toward a conclusion as his relationship to his dead friend slowly improves or becomes clearer. Even within the first section of this group, there is some recovery from anger and depression into acceptance and consolation. By now he has progressed to the point of reentering the world convinced that if he cannot rise above suffering, at least he cannot be hurt any deeper. The grounds of his earlier resentment fall away, not because some logical argument has dispelled them, but just because having gone through the depths of misery he is purged of resentment and susceptible to belief again. In the next section, LXXIV, he is able to see his friend's face—the very act of imagination he had struggled earlier to perform. But still he adds there is more that he now sees which must be left unsaid. Yet the extent to which he has recovered from depression and the change in his attitude toward his own literary composition are most clearly seen in Section LXXVII which concludes the discussion of the merit of his verses. By this point he has achieved distance from his own experience and activities; he knows that his efforts to write his reactions and thoughts will emanate in nothing more substantial than pages that tell “a grief, then changed to something else, / Sung by a long-forgotten mind,” and yet he persists, stating his intentions as being two-fold: “to breathe my loss” and “to utter love.” Comparison with the group in the parallel position of the chiasmus, Sections XX-XXVII, reveals how changed his attitudes toward poetic composition are. The return of his confidence in human relations is signalled by the sections on the second Christmas and the section addressed to his brother Charles. There remains some strain; evidence of the effort at recovery he is making is seen in the curious section, LXXX, in which he imagines what might have happened had he died and his friend lived. The imagery of this section is the most telling indicator of how he is forcing himself to optimism. Unlike the other sections it employs the language of commerce; words such as “gain,” “credit,” “influence,” and “save” make us associate this section either with Shakespeare's Sonnets 30 or 38 which also achieve ironic effects through commercial references, or with Tennyson's “Ulysses” where similar terms are employed for ironic effect. The chiastic structure is supported by another repetition, the opening lines of LXXXV, which repeat those famous lines of XXVII. It is no late realization that it is better to have loved and lost, but one which he felt even when he suffered most. This section serves as the very center of the seventh group, summarizing his progress to this point and dispassionately stating his position at this time. What is new is an utterly transformed view of the power and function of expression. The section is itself a gift of words, addressed to Edmund Lushington as Hallam Tennyson's note indicates, and as such it constitutes proof that he has begun to recover, to regain speech. Furthermore it is about words: it starts with a recollection of the words of consolation which it took him time to understand. The nightingale of Section LXXXVIII parallels the linnets of Sections XXI and XXVII, now singing of “fierce extremes.” But gradually the speaker comes closer to what he had longed for: some sort of communion and reunion with his dead friend. From Section XC to the most analyzed episode, XCV, the wish to rejoin his friend grows, suspense is built, and the setting for the big scene is established.

The chiastic structure of the poem, reinforced by symmetrical placing of parallel statements and stages of thought places the greatest emphasis at the very center of the poem, in the fifth of nine groups. Therefore, Section XCV, sometimes claimed to be the climax of the poem, is not that. But it is undeniably important as a capsule statement of the progress of the poem to this point, as well as a distinct experience in itself. Like the big scenes of his other dramatic poems, it is recorded in the past tense, not the present, despite the fact that the episodes leading up to it and those that follow are in the present tense, and it is effectively presented in dramatic form as a vivid experience. Although a detailed examination of the dramatic structure of this section is not necessary to this paper, it should be noted that the effect of the trance or vision involves a revival of the speaker's power of expression: he becomes able to “read” of the past, and hear “silent-speaking words.” The counter-attack of faith takes the form of language, “word by word, line by line.” And although he cannot find adequate words to recapture or report the experience, a fact which he regrets, he does make an effort in the form of this section itself. The closing sections of the group, XCVI through XCVIII, elaborate upon the growth of faith he experiences, the revival of love and the restoration of his power of expression, culminating in the last section, explicit proof in the form of a balanced and yet feeling letter to an unnamed friend. Thus it closes as a strong contrast to the way in which the parallel group opened: the expression he had earlier despaired of is achieved.

The fourth and sixth of the “natural groups,” XXVII-XLIX and LIX-LXXI, serve as the immediate frame of the central crucial movement of the poem, and so in these two groups parallel thematic elements are quite clearly stated. From his consideration of the Lazarus story on, the speaker is troubled by the question of what occurs after death. The possibility of immortality, the comparison of death to sleep, are most clearly stated in XLIII and the following several sections. But by the contrasting poems in the sixth group, LXVIII through LXXI, a transformed tone dominates. If the matter is not settled, at least it is viewed from a different perspective. Even more striking are the parallel uses of domestic imagery when in Sections XL and LX the speaker describes a bride on her wedding day. Whereas in the earlier section it is feelings of the family she is leaving which provide a metaphor for the speaker's grief, in the later section he is able to enter the more complex but mature psychology of the bride herself. In both groups the subject of poetic composition is prominent, with XLVIII providing the fullest, most accurate description of his intention in the entire poem.

The group of sections L-LVIII, the very middle one of the nine groups, constitutes the low point for the speaker, the thematic crux, the place at which each of the strands is interlinked and most fully developed. His struggle against despair has become gradually weaker, and the evasions and distractions which he posed have become transparent. In earlier sections he had avoided referring to his present position and he had hidden behind references to mankind or transferred his private doubts to hypothetical questions. But in this group of sections the defenses fall; in a series of dramatic utterances breaking forth he reaches the nadir of his experience. Although he opens the group by appealing to friends for help, aid is not forthcoming and very quickly he sinks to despair and even a longing for death. The difference in tone from earlier sections is striking: he is speaking without guile or self-evasion. Letting forth his grief after so long stifling it is not done without worries that he is doing wrong. In LI he questions whether he really does want help and whether he should reveal his “inner vileness.” Once again this is couched in terms of mankind—“we” instead of “one”—although in the two central stanzas he slips into the first person. The fear that his submission is sinful or sacrilegious is restated, more clearly now because he reveals his fear that love is betrayed in the process. In succeeding sections the gravitational pull of despair intensifies, and although he attempts consolation in LIII it is inadequate to counter the dizzying, drowning forces that oppress him.

Finally, in Section LIV and continuing for the next few sections, the nadir is reached. When the speaker attempts to define “the good,” he is reduced to basic claims and an intensified awareness of the inadequacy of his own speech. It begins in the abstract: “we trust” but it becomes painfully personal by the end. The first three stanzas list things hoped for, the bare requirements for any hopeful view of life. But they are followed with the admission “Behold, we know not anything.” He shifts to the first person and admits that all he has is some slim hope; but even that he reduces by stressing how far off the beneficial results are likely to be. Then the last stanza undercuts even the bare hope that preceded by referring to it as only a dream:

So runs my dream: but what am I?
          An infant crying in the night:
          An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.

At the very depth of his experience the speaker's concern is with his inability to express himself. The general observations now have been reduced to focus on his personal misery; the comments on expression and poetry have likewise come to bear only on his inability to say anything; the speaker has been dragged down to the hard facts of his own confusion. Thus stripped of defenses, he proceeds to admit his personal need for a belief in immortality. The theory entertained in the first stanza of LV is not, then, another piece of abstract theorizing intended to distract the speaker by raising his attention from actual suffering to a higher and hopefully benevolent plan. It is simpler and more painful than that. The opening sentence is more a challenge than a question: “Does it not?” rather than “Does it?” And what it states, not in any confident manner, is the central, necessary challenge which the speaker has avoided facing, the minimum irreducible fact necessary to make life bearable: the immortality of man, particularly both his friend and himself. The insistence on this is not based on reason but on instinct—instinct backed into a corner at that. Something “likest God,” some minor identity, paraphrasable perhaps as soul, gives out the wish for immortality. Admittedly the logical order is weak and the underlying emotion is most strong, but this entire statement of need results from his immediate anxiety. No matter how broken, how confused, and close to despair he is, the belief in God is not sacrificed. He still pleads to God: not with firm knowledge of the efficacy of his prayers but with “lame hands of faith” and faint trust. The emphasis is still on his call to God, even though that is only a faint cry. Section LVI culminates the most depressed set of episodes, relating theories of evolution, religious belief in a divine order, and man's need to love in a single desolate view. It is clear that he still is struggling against despair and in desperation asks if man is no more than the deceived but corrupted product of an indifferent physical force. Of course no answer comes; and he even fears no answer ever will come. But at this lowest point he forsakes speech for hearing: if speech is inadequate maybe there remains a chance for hearing a voice which can console.

It is to that which he turns in Section LVII, and begins the climb upward. The speaker responds to a voice urging him to come away. He has no inflated confidence in his poem; he even admits he thinks it will fail. But his sense of hearing is strong, and in some mysterious way it becomes clear that the crisis has passed. The group of sections closes with LVIII, which extends the metaphors of hearing, but from an echoing distance, both of time and place. He hears and accepts the advice of the high muse to wait, desist from expressions of grief, and listen for consolation.

The prologue and epilogue may be considered as separate from the body of the poem. Of course they reiterate the central concerns of the poem; in their internal structures, reflect the chiastic pattern of the whole poem. In the prologue the opening confident proclamation of Christ as “immortal Love” is gradually replaced by more and more personal admissions of uncertainty and prayers of humility. Conversely the epilogue moves from the personal to greater and greater confidence, culminating in a paean in praise of God who unifies all and gives significance to everything.

Closer analysis of individual quatrains would reveal frequent use of the chiastic pattern, paralleling the structure of the whole poem, and it could even be argued that certain pairs of images reinforce such a symmetrical balance. However it is sufficient to note the importance of the calculated balance of the nine “natural groups” one against the other on either side of the focal, middle group; for by noting that structure the dramatic nature of the poem is most clearly discerned. The subjects described as major themes and other subsidiary ones as well, all receive fullest expression in the central group, not as a result of discursive analysis, but as measured by the intensity of expression. Finally it is expression itself, hearing as well as speaking, which leads to the resolution of the poem. Thus at the very center of the chiasmus, the middle section of the middle group, LIV, appears the most painful and honest admission of man's inability to be more than “an infant crying for the light.” But that admission, futile though it seems at the time, is the germ of eventual salvation.

Notes

1. T. S. Eliot, “In Memoriam,” Essays Ancient and Modern (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1936), p. 196; A. C. Bradley, Commentary on Tennyson's In Memoriam (London: Macmillan, 1907); Valerie Pitt, Tennyson Laureate (London: Barrie & Rockliff, 1962).

2. Christopher Ricks, Tennyson (New York: Macmillan, 1972), pp. 228-30.

3. The rhetorical term “chiasmus” describes a sentence pattern in which parallel units are set in reversed order (e.g., “John rode to the city; to the country rode Mary.”) In describing the structure of larger units such as stories, parables and entire works, Biblical scholars have long used the term “chiastic” to describe a structure such as is suggested by the Greek letter chi (X), with parallel rhetorical or plot units in reversed order. Although the term is not frequently used in literary criticism of modern languages, it is well accepted among Biblical scholars. See Nils Wilhelm Lund, Chiasmus in the New Testament (U. of North Carolina, 1942) and John Bligh, Galatians in Greek (U. of Detroit, 1966) for discussion and applications.

4. Hallam Lord Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir (London: Macmillan, 1897), i, 304-305.

5. This scheme is admirably discussed in Martin Svaglic, “A Framework for Tennyson's In Memoriam,” JEGP [Journal of English and Germanic Philology], 61 (1962), 810-25. However, he does not discuss the poem's chiastic arrangement nor the way in which the theme of poetic expression is integrated into the poem's dramatic structure.

6. James R. Kincaid describes the poem as balancing on a pivotal section, LVI, so that its two halves balance ironic against comic visions: Tennyson's Major Poems (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1975), pp. 80-109.

7. E. D. H. Johnson, “In Memoriam: The Way of the Poet, “Victorian Studies, 2 (1958), 139-48.

8. John D. Rosenberg, “The Two Kingdoms of In Memoriam,” JEGP, 63 (1959), 228-40.