Lord Alfred Tennyson – Ulysses.

Tennyson wrote the “Ulysses” in 1833. The title is the name of one of the most important figures of roman and geek mythology: the hero of Homer's epic poem the “Odyssey” and one of the figures that Dante introduces in his “Inferno”. Such name creates expectations in the reader: will he be the real protagonist of Tennyson’s poem? will he be the speaking voice? will he remember of his journey?

The text is made up by five stanzas, so by five sequences:

-          The first introduces the speaking voice and characterises him according to his social status and is life before the war and the travel;

-          The second refers to his travel and continues his characterization through the highlight of his love for travelling and of his need of knowledge;

-          The third one introduces Ulysses son, Telemachus, underlining his features in comparison of his father’s ones;

-          In the fourth the speaking voice explains his need for another travel;

-          The last concludes the poem with a meditation on what thought.

The introduction of the character do not help the reader to find an answer to the first question that he posed reading the title, but it gives him hints to begin the construction of the speaking voices’ features.

The protagonist is a king of what seems an ancient savage population. He is an old king with an old wife and his life has no meaning for him. The hearth is still: the metaphor means that he does not want to be there and does not feel anything for the people who live there. The crags are barren: meaning he does not feel anything also for his wife that is in addition connoted only through her social status of wife of the king. His ways of government highlight again his detachment from his reign (I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race). Another information that the first sequence gives to the reader is his not being known by his population, that could be due to the distance between the protagonist and the people.

The protagonist is so an old ancient king, that wants no to role his population and that had travelled a lot in the past. The Homer’s Odysseus adapts to this initial description.

From the rhetorical point of view the reader can understand the narrative strategy used by the writer: the protagonist speaks personally (there is a first person narrator) and describes his own feature, so we have a dramatique monologue. The speaking voice will not report the thoughts of the writer but the thoughts of the character that the writer chooses and will do so speaking to a silent listener that is present only to permit the narrator’s speaking. Two of the three questions of the reader are answered: the protagonist will be the speaking voice and if he in the Homer’s Odysseus he will speak about his journey.

The identity of the character becomes more understandable because of the first line of the second stanza: I cannot rest from travel. The travel is a sea one, indeed the stanza is empty by recalls to the sea or to the water (I will drink Life - on shore – the dim sea). The identity of the protagonist is completed by other two sentences of the second sequence: I am become a name, referring to the episode of the Cyclops Polyphemus in which Ulysses said his name becoming the name itself, and For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known underlining the most important feature of the hero, his curiosity and need for knowledge. These two element confirms the speaking voice is Homer’s Odysseus, Ulysses. Another confirmation of this identity comer from a following sentence, highlighted by the alliterative sounds of t, y and w: And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. Indeed Ulysses took part to the was that, according to what Homer says, saw all Geek populations united against the oriental city of Troy.

The remembering of all this, of the war and of the journey, brings the narrator to desire another travel and another heroic action (How dull it is to pause, to make an end). Such desire is not satisfied so the character of the poem is perfectly recognizable in the Ulysses, he is remembering his life during and after the war and is already returned to Ithaca, where he can’t feel at home no more. His need of knowledge is high and he declares his intention to leave again but he does not do it (And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought).

The second sequence underlines however only the single person of the hero recalling his companions that have followed him (All times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me). Where is his family?

A focus on his family is the entire third sequence: the speaking voice introduced a second character, his son, who is characterized in opposition to him. Telemachus is a right king that is able to make the savages that have to rule on behave better and progress, he is religious and respects people rights and duties. It is introduced as distant from the characterization of his father, as underlines the closing sentence: He works his work, I mine, Ulysses does not see himself as a king, but as a traveller, as he has before said. From this the speaking voice underlines again his decision to leave again: When I am gone, his desire for knowledge and travel has become a decision. The decision to leave again is not present in Homer’s Odysseus, but it permits the reader to think about another Ulysses, that of Dante’s Inferno. In the Divine Comedy Ulysses after was damned because of his obsession to knowledge and died because the second journey he wanted to do after his return to Ithaca. The decision to leave again refers to this second journey.

The reference to Dante’s comedy is much more recognizable in the following stanza. It contains the exposition of the Ulysses’ decision to leave and the words that he uses to convince his old companions to leave again:

-          He remembers them their value in battle and in the journey (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);

-          He presents the negative aspect of their condition (you and I are old) seeing it another reason to leave and to make again something to be remembered before die (Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done);

-          He underlines again their value and his precise decision: he wants to navigate till he will die (for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die) to reach and pass the Pillars ofHercules, to reach the Happy Isles and to reach the place where Achilles is, to become heroes after death;.

This are the same passages that follows Ulysses in Dante’s divine Comedy when he tells the man how he is died and why he is damned. The oration used by the Dante’s character to convince his companions to leave again contains the same argumentations of the one exposed by the speaking voice in Tennyson’s. The two models of Tennyson’s writing are so Homer and Dante Alighieri.

The last stanza contains a reflection about the last journey that the narrator wants to do because of his need of moving and his need of knowledge. The conclusion of the stanza is the conclusion of the poem and the concluding sentence of the argumentations adopted by Tennyson’s Ulysses to convince his companions to leave: 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. The sentence can be considered a summary of all the character’s description: he is an hero that fights against gods and that can do nothing but accept his destiny and that lives because of knowledge. This are the main features of the hero according to the narrator and according to the writer.

In conclusion, the hero protagonist of the poem is a romantic hero that acts with a titanic will and that accepts death. It is the symbol of what man could be according to the writer. The narrative strategy used by the writer is the dramatique monologue, the protagonist in Ulysses and he in introduced both in reference to the Homer’s one and to the Dante’s one. The poem underlines all the hero’s life: his reign on Ithaca, his war, his return to the island, his son’s reign, his will of leaving again and his possible death. The central themes of the poem are life, death, honour, journey and knowledge. A reference to the writer’s intentions speaking of the hero through the voice of the hero himself is relegated in the last sentence: To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield, the will not bow to the conventions, then to offset the strong middle class, to know and assert the individuality literary or total.