The opening line of Alfred Tennyson’s novel “The Lotos-Eaters”, Odysseus gives the call to courage to his men. As they continue on their path towards their destination, Odysseus explains that it is another unavoidable detour rather than their final destination. But, even though the three first stanzas are ambiguous about its nature and significance, it is obvious. Tennyson’s poetic technique allows him to portray the land in a way that is both beautiful and dangerous. Tennyson makes his scenic descriptions more than just a clever diction. His poetic language mimics and mirrors many of the interesting qualities and effects of the land, as well as variations in rhyme scheme. It is the poet and the not the hero who discovers the mystery behind the land named after the lotos-eaters. This reveals the land as not the serene sanctuary it initially appears to be, but instead as a diversionary trap that threatens Odysseus with the amnesias and melancholia associated with unmoving in time.
The land’s opening description immediately draws attention to its strangeness and detachment from reality. Tennyson shifts from describing human activity to natural activities here. Images that would normally show frenzied and energy-filled motion are imbued here with a strange stillness. This is also evident in both the bizarrely inverted, enjambed construction and expression “fall and stop and fall”, which are interesting choices to reinforce the temporal nonlinearity found in the land where the Lotos-eaters.
Tennyson uses the Spenserian stanza rhyme system for “The Lotos-Eaters,” allowing for three different rhymes within nine long lines. This particular choice has a consistency and regularity that is similar to the tranquil, still aura of his realm. Each stanza connects semantically to the other: The streams of the first stanza flow into the second, and become the first and focal point of the second descriptor (“Aland full of streams!”). Meanwhile, the “sunset,” which is the first line of third stanza, continues the description of the mountains as “sunsetflush’d” in that stanza. The enjambment is used to connect the stanzas. One sentence runs for five lines and the other six for the final. In the lines, the same phrases or words are repeated.
Despite the fact that there are many rhyme patterns and repetitions, Tennyson creates unexpected tension. He uses caesuras to break up the flow and trochaic feet. Exclamation marks are used to punctuate two main descriptors for the land (“Aland of streams!” “Aland where all things seem’d the exact same!”), while colons, commas and hyphens separate descriptions later in a poem, causing pauses within the otherwise regular lines iambic pentameter. The poem is mostly perfect in rhyme, but there are exceptions. There are instances where the words appear to be almost identical or even the same as one another (“land” and “land” in the first and last stanzas respectively), and pairings of similar words (“adown” and „down” in the final stanzas). These variations in the rhyme scheme cause anxiety for the reader and prevent the rhyme reaching its full closure.
Humans disappear as passive observers and reappear in the end of the poem, where they are seen as the apathetic Lotos-eaters. Tennyson’s first stanzas instead describe the land in detail. Tennyson is able to describe a landscape that is sinister yet seductive. His painting style offers images of sinful temptation, both as “slow-dropping Veils of thinnest Law” or “charmed” mystification. This beautiful land of perpetual snow and sunset, with its many complexities, is just as problematic as the paradoxical paradise it portrays.
