Ulysses
BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Introduced by Ira Maine Poetry Editor
The Greeks called him Odysseus; the Romans Ulysses. This hero moves easily from one civilization to another. It is actually thought that the figure is much older than both civilizations and that his existence in Greek myth is simply our earliest record of him.
As far as the Greeks were concerned, Odysseus, a wily and cunning individual, a survivor, was wholly admirable, and the fact that he had no interest whatever in going to war with the Trojans, in fact he feigned madness to escape this possibility, was perfectly in tune with ancient Hellenic thinking.
The Romans, on the other hand, found these traits clashed absolutely with their own ideas on how a hero should conduct himself. The Romans were greatly concerned with honour and doing the decent thing. so they changed their take on Odysseus (now Ulysses) to reflect Roman ideals.
Tennyson, to me, unfortunately chose to write his poem around the heroic ‘Roman’ Ulysses, who is much less interesting than the Greek Odysseus. Odysseus is nicely flawed, a lot like Leopold Bloom in Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’. He is also to me a much more universal figure. It’s Bogart versus Mr Darcy and Bogart wins every time
In the end the Trojan War is long past, and Ulysses is getting old. He sits idly amongst his ‘windy crags’, meting and doling to an idle race, ‘…who hoard and feed and sleep and know not me…’ He longs to be off again, to set sail on one last great adventure,to hear his oars ‘… strike the sounding furrows…’
He wants, before he is incapable of it, to perform one last heroic deed, very much in the Roman manner. Odysseus, of course, being Greek, would have considered Ulysses raving mad, to be absolutely nuts, and certainly wouldn’t be living amongst ‘windy crags, bored to death. He’d be down there amongst his people, his eye to the main chance, having a bloody good time and looking for a warm body to lie with.
The Roman Ulysses, aware of the approach of ‘…the eternal silence…’ seeks to ‘…follow knowledge like a sinking star…’
His son Telemachus, is damned with faint praise; he is ‘prudent,’ ‘blameless’ and ‘decent’ and the perfect plodder to rule the place while old Ulysses disappears over the horizon, ‘…to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield…’
This is a masterly poem. Forget for a minute everything I’ve said about Tennyson’s choices. He chooses the Roman hero, makes him old, gives him strength, character and ambition. Ulysses remembers the past, remembers ‘…windy Troy…’ Achilles and the glory days. Now, having settled his kingdom, his affairs, he wants, one last time to feel the sails assaulted by the wind, the shaking hum of taut ropes, the stressed and moaning timbers, the air, the sea, and the pure get down hot damn excitement of a last extraordinary voyage.
To me, this is a very 19th century, British Empire, Charge of the Light Brigade interpretation of the Odysseus myth, and it’s none the worse for that. Good on you Alf!
Ulysses
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,
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 enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
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,
Myself not least, but honour’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’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever 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
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,
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 sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, 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, centred in the sphere
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:
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;
Old age hath yet his honour 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:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
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.
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
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.