'Breaking into song by fits': Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' and the Psalms (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam and the Bible's Book of Psalms both serve as manifestos for their respective communities. The Jewish people of the Old Testament, as a whole, suffered together, wandering, often defeated and even made captive by their enemies; they felt isolated from their God and in need of His salvation. Likewise, Tennyson spoke for his community, those of all classes who felt besieged by the iconoclastic revelations of science, especially geology and the emerging theory of evolution, which for decades had been building up to a process of ineluctably casting increasing doubt on the cherished religious certainties inculcated by a literal interpretation of the same scriptures. Although he uses Christian topoi at times to illustrate his message, ultimately he hopes for a salvation defined by immortality not necessarily tied to any specific denominational doctrine or to the person of Jesus.; On the way to that consoling faith, the poems that relate the journeys of both poem cycles fall into categories common to In Memoriam and the Psalms: poems of Lament, of Nature, of Direct Address, and of Wisdom.; In the poems of Lament, Tennyson, like the psalmists, bemoans his loss. In the poems of Nature, Tennyson, like the psalmists, examines his surroundings for clues to what they can tell him about who he is and where he is going. Tennyson formulates his own theory of Natural Law, synthesizing faith and reason.; In the poems of Direct Address, Tennyson speaks to the one he loves, just as the psalmists frequently speak to God. He asks him to remember their friendship, as they ask Him to do the same. In the Wisdom poems, Tennyson for a long while wanders like the ancient Hebrews, lost and seeking an anchor, until at last he finds comfort and reassurance in the hope of immortality, for he concludes that love cannot die and neither can lovers. Though the psalmists' solution, unlike Tennyson's, does not lie in individual immortality, the significance for both rests on spirituality as the way to make sense of man's place in the universe.