The Two Voices
689 Words
First published in 1842, though begun as early as 1833 and in course of composition in 1834. See Spedding's letter dated 19th September, 1834. Its original title was 'The Thoughts of a Suicide'. No alterations were made in the poem after 1842.
It adds interest to this poem to know that it is autobiographical. It was written soon after the death of Arthur Hallam when Tennyson's depression was deepest. "When I wrote 'The Two Voices' I was so utterly miserable, a burden to myself and to my family, that I said, 'Is life worth anything?'" It is the history--as Spedding put it--of the agitations, the suggestions and counter-suggestions of a mind sunk in hopeless despondency, and meditating self-destruction, together with the manner of its recovery to a more healthy condition. We have two singularly interesting parallels to it in preceding poetry. The one is in the third book of Lucretius (830-1095), where the arguments for suicide are urged, not merely by the poet himself, but by arguments placed by him in the mouth of Nature herself, and urged with such cogency that they are said to have induced one of his editors and translators, Creech, to put an end to his life. The other is in Spenser, in the dialogue between Despair and the Red Cross Knight, where Despair puts the case for self-destruction, and the Red Cross Knight rebuts the arguments ('Faerie Queene', I. ix., st. xxxviii.-liv.).
[Footnote 1: The insensibility of Nature to man's death has been the eloquent theme of many poets. 'Cf'. Byron, 'Lara', canto ii. 'ad init'., and Matthew Arnold, 'The Youth of Nature'.]
[Footnote 2: 'Cf. Palace of Art', "the riddle of the painful earth".]
[Footnote 3: 'Seq'. The reference is to Acts of the Apostles vii. 54-60.]
[Footnote 4: Suggested by Shakespeare, 'Julius C***', Act v., Sc. 5:--
[Footnote 5: An excellent commentary on this is Clough's
_Perch pensa, pensando vecchia_.]
[Footnote 6: 'Cf'. Job xiv. 21:
"His sons come to honour, and he knowcth it not; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them."]
[Footnote 7: So Bishop Butler, 'Analogy', ch. i.:
"We cannot argue _from the reason of the thing_ that death is the destruction of living agents because we know not at all what death is in itself, but only some of its effects".]
[Footnote 8: So Milton, enfolding this idea of death, 'Paradise Lost', ii., 672-3:--
[Footnote 9: 'Cf'. Plato, 'Phaedo', x.:--
[Greek: ara echei alaetheian tina opsis te kai akoae tois anthr_opois. Ae ta ge toiauta kai oi poiaetai haemin aei thrulousin oti out akouomen akribes ouden oute or_omen]
"Have sight and hearing any truth in them? Are they not, as poets are always telling us, inaccurate witnesses?"
The proper commentary on the whole of this passage is Plato 'passim', but the 'Phaedo' particularly, 'cf. Republic', vii., viii. and xiv.-xv.]
[Footnote 10: An allusion to the myth that when souls are sent to occupy a body again they drink of Lethe that they may forget their previous existence. See the famous passage towards the end of the tenth book of Plato's 'Republic':
"All persons are compelled to drink a certain quantity of the water, but those who are not preserved by prudence drink more than the quantity, and each as he drinks forgets everything".
So Milton, 'Paradise Lost', ii., 582-4.]
[Footnote 11: The best commentary on this will be found in Herbert Spencer's 'Psychology'.]
[Footnote 12: Compare with this Tennyson's first sonnet ('Works', Globe Edition, 25), and the lines in the 'Ancient Sage' in the 'Passion of the Past' ('Id'., 551). 'Cf'. too the lines in Wordsworth's ode on 'Intimations of Immortality':--
For other remarkable illustrations of this see the present writer's 'Illustrations of Tennyson', p. 38.]
[Footnote 13: 'Cf'. Coleridge, 'Ancient Mariner, iv'.:--
There is a close parallel between the former and the latter state described here and in Coleridge's mystic allegory; in both cases the sufferers "wake to love," the curse falling off them when they can "bless".]
[Footnote 14: 1884. And all so variously wrought (with semi-colon instead of full stop at the end of the preceding line).]
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