丁尼生勋爵的疯狂

The Victorian poet was startlingly modern. By James Parker The appointment of a new medicine man is a dicey moment in the life of a tribe. Get it wrong, pick the wrong guy, and your deepest spiritual diseases will go not only untreated but undetected. Get it right, and there’s at least a chance of an accurate diagnosis. The Victorians, rather surprisingly, got it right. In fact, for all their pomposity and stolidity and leadenness of soul, and for all their windbag religiosity, they nailed it. They chose as their national poet a vagrant and depressed semi-atheist from a family of lunatics. They chose Alfred, Lord Tennyson. …