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    AC Benus
  • AC Benus
  • Author
  • 08/21/2022
  • 202 Words
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  • 2 Comments
Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 

The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Prose - 70. Henry van Dyke - on Hallam and Tennyson’s Love

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on Hallam and Tennyson’s Love

(The "Threescore years and ten of earthly labour" means ‘Even if Hallam had lived to have a 70-year-long writing career, he could hardly have…’ etc.)

 

The promise of Arthur Hallam's life was not broken.

Threescore years and ten of earthly labour could hardly

have accomplished anything greater than the work

which was inspired by his early death, and consecrated

to his belovèd memory. The heart of man, which can

win such victory out of its darkest defeat and reap such

harvest from the furrows of the grave, is neither sprung

from dust nor destined to return to it.

 

A poem like In Memoriam –

more than all flowers of the returning spring,

more than all shining wings that flutter

above the ruins of the chrysalis, more than

all sculptured tombs and monuments of the belovèd dead –

is the living evidence of an endless life.

Henry van Dyke,[i]

1889

 

 

 

 

 

[i] “on Hallam and Tennyson’s Love” Henry van Dyke Studies in Tennyson (New York 1920); the quoted selection comes from the essayist’s concluding lines to the analysis of In Memoriam, p. 118

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/590be125ff7c502a07752a5b/t/5a711e6a8165f58f168c048b/1517362815650/Van+Dyke%2C+Jr.%2C+Henry%2C+Studies+in+Tennyson.pdf

 

as noted
  • Love 2
Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 
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AC Benus
1 hour ago, Parker Owens said:

Hallam and Tennyson are forever connected and Van Dyke’s words testify eloquently to this. Their love cannot return to dust, for In Memoriam rings in our hearts still. 

Just today, the 1924 poetry anthology on same-sex love I mentioned to you, showed me something by Hallam expressing his love for Tennyson before he died. It brought me to tears . . . and how it isn't used to preface every edition of In Memoriam must be because it makes their love far-too clear for straight tastes. This poem could be the very reason Tennyson started writing the greatest love poem that exists in the English language in the first place! And how important is that? 

I can't wait to bring it to Mirror readers :)

Edited by AC Benus
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