Alfred, Lord Tennyson
(1809 - 1892)
Tennyson´s Ulysses (Greek "Odysseus"), restless after his return to Ithaca, eager to renew the life of great deeds he had known during the Trojan War and the adventures of his ten-year journey home, resembles the figure of Ulysses presented by Dante, "Inferno" 26.
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Ulysses (1833)
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It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
5 That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
10 Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known-cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
15 Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,-
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
20 Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
25 Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
30 And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle,
35 Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
40 Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
45 There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads-you and I are old;
50 Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
55 The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
60 To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
65 Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
70 To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Editor´s Comments
Tennyson's "Ulysses" is a good example of what's called the dramatic monologue. When we hear this poem, we don't hear Tennyson's own voice, but rather the voice of a character he's created, in this case Ulysses. Many poems will quote something a character says, but then go on to describe an action, or comment on it from a different point of view--perhaps the poet's. But in a dramatic monologue, the voice we hear is consistent throughout the poem. And there's nothing more basic to creating that sense of a consistent character speaking than how the language itself is used. Consider this passage, where Ulysses talks about leaving his kingdom to his son Telemachus:
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle,
35 Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
40 Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
He gives us a clear picture of Telemachus, and his tone is entirely positive; he loves his son, and trusts him. But there's something else in his diction, in the words he chooses, that puts a little distance between himself and his son, even as he praises him. "slow prudence," "the useful," "the sphere of common duties." These are not phrases that would describe Ulysses the adventurer. They suggest the domestic, the tame, the well-behaved, and we can almost imagine Ulysses saying them with a bit of a shudder. The important point is that the words he uses are all similar in their associations; they define Ulysses as much as they describe his son. If I felt that someone were characterizing me incorrectly, I might say to that person "don't put words in my mouth." In a dramatic monologue, choosing which words to put in a character's mouth is the whole point.
Historical Considerations
The Homeric story of Ulysses has been appropriated by writers for many centuries. Dante, in the fourteenth century, put Ulysses into his Divine Comedy, while James Joyce, in the twentieth century, used Ulysses to structure a novel about life in modern Dublin. Tennyson turned to Ulysses in his hypnotic poem "The Lotus-Eaters" (1832), which focuses on themes of weariness and a desire for death. When he concentrated more specifically on the figure of Ulysses as hero, he elaborated on just one moment in a long and complicated mythology: the decision of an aging Ulysses to return once more to a life of restless adventure. The poem's tone is melancholy, expressing a sense of loss that may reflect Tennyson's own grief at the death of his friend Arthur Hallam, but it also affirms the need to go forward; this note of restless optimism - even in the face of doubt - struck a note common to the early Victorian period. Tennyson based his two-sided view of Ulysses on Book XI of Homer's Odyssey and Canto XXVI of Dante's Inferno.
That Tennyson's use of Ulysses was particular to his own personal situation, and to the social climate in which he wrote, is hardly unique. Every use of the past has something important to say about the present. J. M. W. Turner's 1829 painting Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus, almost contemporary with Tennyson's poem, captures a similar feeling. The painting's lighting suggests a kind of melancholy grandeur, while Ulysses, shouting his defiance of the giants, seems to embody the same rejection of prudent safety expressed by Tennyson's speaker.
Click here to see a detail from Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus by J. M. W. Turner.
In contrast to Turner's picture of romantic challenge, this painting by Claude Lorrain, Ulysses Returns Chryseis to Her Father, offers a perfectly serene classical scene.
Later in the nineteenth century, Edward Burne-Jones chose still another detail of the Ulysses legend. His portrayal of the enchantress Circe offers the viewer a beautiful seductress, very much in keeping with the desire of the Pre-Raphaelite movement (of which he was a part) to find in the distant past an aestheticized and often erotic ideal absent from the increasingly industrialized reality of Victorian England.
Click here to see The Wine of Circe by Edward Burne-Jones.
The Poet´s Life and Work
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Critical Essays
- Edward Dramin, "'Work of Noble Note': Tennyson's 'Ulysses' and Victorian Heroic Ideals."
- Lynne B. O'Brien, "Male Heroism: Tennyson's Divided View."
- Mathew Rowlinson, "The Ideological Moment of Tennyson's 'Ulysses.'"
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