"This Wide Whisper Round My Head" In Memoriam and the Complexity of Memory

Abstract

Lord Alfred Tennyson's In Memoriam A. H. H. is, one feels safe to say, a poem of memory. For rarely has the memory of a friend been given such an illustrious, elevated poetical treatment. Yet the question remains: how is the poem "of or "in" memory? And is the poem really about its propounded subject, Arthur Hallam, at all? Although the initial premise of In Memoriam seems simple enough, a closer reading of how recollection works in the text reveals considerable complexity in its dealings with memory.