Back from the mouth of hell." Tennyson ends with a command to the reader to feel triumphant pride: "Honour the charge they made! / Honour the Light Brigade, / Noble six hundred!" His tone is exultant there is no hint of irony. Charging an army, while / all the world wonder'd." Tennyson rewrites history as "Cossack and Russian reel'd from the sabre-stroke" and the Light Brigade seems to return victorious: "They that had fought so well. Tennyson immediately shifts from blaming the commanders to commending the fixed and unalterable obedience of the brigade: "Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die." This commendation sets the tone of the entire work.įrom the second stanza on, the poem is an exaltation of bravery, depicting the men with "sabres bare. Tennyson, writing six weeks after the fact, names no names to blame in his paean to bravery, saying only "Someone had blunder'd." He disregards the negligence of such commanding figures as Lord Raglan and Lord Lucan, who mutually confirmed the order to attack without knowledge of the extent of the Russian forces. into the mouth of hell." William Russell of the "London Times" caught Tennyson's fervor, speaking of the spectacle's "pride and splendor." No Blame Game Tennyson confirms this with the line "boldly they rode as well. They are thus aligned with King David, going into spiritual darkness by faith. Certainly Tennyson is unsparing in his praise: the Light Brigade rides into the "Valley of Death," an allusion to the biblical "valley of the Shadow" in Psalm 23. Tennyson's work baffles historian Corelli Barnett, who wonders why he sentimentalizes such a monumental military blunder.
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