Ulysses, Tennyson

It is a dramatic monologue written by Alfred Tennyson during the second part of the 19th century. It is a kind of poem in which a single fictional character (Ulysses), speaks to a silent audience (that is implied). There is no dialogue, Ulysses is the only one who speaks, and from his words he reveals his personality and his characteristics: he is impetuous, in contrast with his homeland, always ready to new adventures, he doesn’t want to stop travelling, because he wants to reach knowledge. Differently from Omer’s and Dante’s Ulysses, Tennyson’s Ulysses is an older one. In the first lines he says that there is no advantage to stay in Itaca for an “idle king”, because he has to reign a savage race: the people are only interested in material things. Itaca is described from Ulysses’ words as a “still heart” (spento focolare). The setting is conveyed as an island with “barren crags” (barren reminds to desolated mountains). The description of the setting is used because he wants to underline that Itaca’s people exploits the island and therefore sterility in the land is the consequence of people’s actions. The description of the setting (with a synthetic use of the language) reveals to the audience the characteristics of the setting but also how Ulysses feels for his homeland, and so the advantage is that the audience can extrapolate information about the character’s personality and feelings. Still speaking to himself he proclaims that he “cannot rest from travel” but feels compelled to “drink” life. He has enjoyed all his experiences as a sailor who travels the seas, and he considers himself a symbol for everyone who travels the world. His travels have exposed him to many different types of people and ways of living. He exposed himself to the “delight of battle” in fighting the Trojan War with his men. Ulysses declares that his travels have shaped who he is: to travel means to know something that is different from you, it means to enrich your cultural baggage and to enjoy the world. “I am a part of all that I have met” he asserts. And it is only when he is traveling that the “margin” of the globe that he has not yet traversed starts to fade. Ulysses declares that it is boring to stay in one place, and that to remain stationary means to rush yourself not to shine. To stay in one place is to pretend that all there is to life is the simple act of breathing. He uses irony and sarcasm while he says this; the audience can feel contempt (disprezzo) in Ulysses’ words. He knows that life is not only to breathe but life is to travel and to cross new horizons, to know something new, to understand different cultures and traditions, to visit landscapes never seen before. Ulysses’ words tells to the audience that not to travel means not to live, and so to die. On the other hand, if you travel you can “save something more from that eternal silence”. He can’t stop himself and stay at home neither for three days: he has to satisfy his impulses that drive him to travel the world. He wishes to “follow knowledge like a sinking star” and forever grow in learning. Ulysses now speaks about his son Telemachus, who will act as his successor while the great hero never stops his travels. He says: “This is my son, mine own Telemachus, to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle.” He speaks about him praising his prudence, dedication, and devotion to the gods. Telemachus will do his work of governing the island while Ulysses will do his work of traveling the seas: “He works his work, I mine.” Telemachus’ personality is in antithesis with Ulysses’ one. In the final stanza, Ulysses addresses the mariners with whom he has worked, travelled, and weathered life’s storms over many years. He declares that although he and they are old, they still have the potential to do something noble and honorable before “the long day wanes.” He encourages them to make use of their old age because “ ’tis not too late to seek a newer world.” He declares that his goal is to sail onward “beyond the sunset” until his death. Perhaps, he suggests, they may even reach the “Happy Isles,” or the paradise of perpetual summer described in Greek mythology where great heroes like the warrior Achilles were believed to have been taken after their deaths. Although Ulysses and his mariners are not as strong as they were in youth, they are “strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”