On the Kraken by Tennyson

Like the fossilized dragons the paleontologists deemed "terrible lizards" or dinosaurs, the kraken is a mythological beast that escaped the confines of story and became real. Inspired by the giant sucker marks on whale carcasses and alleged sightings, Tennyson crafted a romantic description of the kraken firmly rooted in the objective and rational lexicon of modern biology, a solemn and formidable guardian to stand at the gateway between myth and modernity.

Nature in Tennyson's time was not yet the fragile, balanced soap bubble that we have discovered it to be. It was the handwriting and handiwork of an omnipotent God, although increasingly falling under the yoke of His creation, Man. Tennyson was witnessing Man's kingdom, which had long included ox and ass, plough and mill, swell to encompass coal and steam, edifices of scope and scale unprecedented since Babel. He misses by just a few years the return of Icarus and Daedalus to the skies and the advent of the motor car. The kraken represented the white areas at the edge of the map, a poignant reminder that God's creation was infinitely greater than Man's accomplishments.

The conclusion to Tennyson's poem is the apocalyptic boiling of the seas and the kraken's dramatic death, which also is the moment of his glorious advent to the eyes of "men and angels." Unlike the prophets of old, who dwelt among men and left them bodily in the lieu of death, the kraken spends a millennial lifetime in 'abysmal' seclusion and only in death joins the world of man. Like the statue of Ozymandias, the kraken as a symbol is most poignant in its destruction, and an invitation for the mighty to despair. But for the humble, he is instead an invitation to wonder at the majesty of God and His Creation, a Creation that encompasses magnificently alien creatures in surreal settings just below the surface of the world we have allowed ourselves to believe we control and understand.