Creeping Like A Guilty Thing
02/11/06 16:55 Filed in: Inspirations
I was discussing an extract from Tennyson’s
In Memoriam today with a class of students, and
we found ourselves talking about the complex
emotions of going to look at a house where you
had once lived or with which you had particular
emotional associations.
It struck me that hunting down images of former homes on the web (see previous posts) falls between two sensations: the slightly furtive – and sometimes oddly dizzying – experience of approaching a former home, and the rather more settled experience of simply looking at a photograph which you have always possessed. The former has a stalkerish – or at least self-conscious – quality, and something of that remains in the hunting down of photographs in other people’s web collections. On the other hand, it feels free from the fear of discovery.
The Tennyson piece has a middle stanza which elegantly delivers grief, shame and the (impossible) desire for discovery; and the device of burying ‘hold’ within ‘behold’ is beautifully done.
Extract from
In Memoriam A.H.H.
VII.
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand.
A hand that can be clasp’d no more—
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but, far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
Tennyson
It struck me that hunting down images of former homes on the web (see previous posts) falls between two sensations: the slightly furtive – and sometimes oddly dizzying – experience of approaching a former home, and the rather more settled experience of simply looking at a photograph which you have always possessed. The former has a stalkerish – or at least self-conscious – quality, and something of that remains in the hunting down of photographs in other people’s web collections. On the other hand, it feels free from the fear of discovery.
The Tennyson piece has a middle stanza which elegantly delivers grief, shame and the (impossible) desire for discovery; and the device of burying ‘hold’ within ‘behold’ is beautifully done.
Extract from
In Memoriam A.H.H.
VII.
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand.
A hand that can be clasp’d no more—
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but, far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
Tennyson
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