Jeff Tennyson's In Memoriam: A Love Poem

There has been much debate regarding In Memoriam, as to whether the poem depicts a purely heterosexual friendship, or whether it potentially presents us with a relationship that could be deemed more homosexual. It is indeed a love poem, regardless of which type of love it portrays, as it is an elegy that expresses the love, affection, and grief Tennyson held for his dear, deceased friend Arthur Hallam, through metaphors and imagery, with the work closely resembling a private journal or diary. Critics and readers hold different opinions as to the degree of their relationship, with discussions analysing the possibility of a homosexual relationship. Two literary critics Jeff Nunokawa, and Sarah Rose Cole consider interesting yet contrasting viewpoints,

Tennyson frequently refers to Hallam as ‘My Arthur’, suggesting a possessiveness common to romantic relationships, and in section LX. 2-4 he goes so far as to imagine himself as a young female pining after Hallam’s noble figure: “My spirit loved and loves him yet/ Like some poor girl whose heart is set/ On one whose rank exceeds her own”. These feelings towards him are unchanging and will not diminish: “My centred passion cannot move/ Nor will it lessen from to-day” (LIX. 9-10). Tennyson’s metaphors are often conflicting as in one example he calls Hallam just a “Dear friend” (CXXIX.1), but then finishes the line with describing him as being “my lost desire” (CXXIX.1), which instantly makes the reader question his true feelings. In section CXXIX.9-10 he calls Hallam a “Strange friend, past, present, and to be”, which can perhaps be read as Tennyson hinting that perhaps they did not share a normal friendship, and finishes by saying: “Love deeplier, darklier understood”, which sounds as though he feels their love is something bigger and hard to comprehend-not the simple and innocent love we had first

Critic Sarah Rose Cole (2012) disagrees with Nunokawa (1991) by saying we should not view homosexual and heterosexual identities as two binary opposites, where one must arise after the other as a sign of mental growth. She says that instead of beginning with male friendship and then ending in heterosexual marriage, the poems trajectory focuses solely on male to male relations. According to Cole (2012), Tennyson is emphasizing that male relations and heterosexual romance can work parallel to each other; simultaneously: “First love, first friendship, equal powers, / That marry with the virgin heart” (LXXXV. 107-108). Instead of distinguishing them from one another Tennyson portrays “both same-sex “friendship” and cross-sex “love” as passions that “marry with” the heart” (Cole 62). So rather than homosexuality, emphasis is put on male friendship. It is being suggested to us that rather than view homosexual and heterosexual relationships as being opposed to each other, we should see them as “simultaneous and identical”, as it “not only associates male friendship with marriage, but subordinates marriage to male-male relations”