Tithonus (poem)

"Tithonus" is a poem by the Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92), originally written in 1833 as "Tithon" and completed in 1859.

In Greek mythology, Tithonus was a Trojan by birth, the son of King Laomedon of Troy by a water nymph named Strymo ("harsh").

Eos,[1] the Greek goddess of the dawn, abducted Ganymede and Tithonus from the royal house of Troy to be her consorts.

The original version of the poem, named "Tithon", was written in 1833 shortly after Tennyson's friend Arthur Henry Hallam's death but was not published.

[4] When William Makepeace Thackeray asked him for a submission to the Cornhill Magazine to be issued in January 1860 which he was editing, Tennyson made some substantial revisions to the text of the poem[5] and submitted it under the title "Tithonus".

He remembers his youth when he would feel his whole body come alive at dawn as Eos kissed him and whispered to him words "wild and sweet" (61), which seemed like the song Apollo sang as Ilion (Troy) was being built.

(72–76) The first version of "Tithonus" was one of four poems ("Morte d'Arthur", "Ulysses", and "Tiresias") which were written by Tennyson following the death of his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam.

According to critic Mary Donahue, "It is not that anything so obvious and simple as the identification of Eos with Hallam is possible or that the emotional relationship between Tennyson and Hallam is wholly clarified by 'Tithonus', but it is clear that, in choosing the mask of Tithonus, Tennyson reached out to two of the most basic symbols, those of love between man and woman and the frustration of love by age, to express the peculiar nature of his own emotional injury.

The two poems offer two extreme views of facing death, each one which balances the other when they are read together− clearly one of Tennyson's original intentions when he first drafted them in 1833.

It tells the story of a Hollywood millionaire who, fearing his impending death, employs a scientist to help him achieve immortality.

A season 6 episode of The X-Files entitled "Tithonus" tells the story of a man cursed with immortality who works as a photographer taking photos of individuals whom he can sense are close to death.

He snaps these photos hoping to see the Grim Reaper and to die, finally, after having spent decades trapped in the land of the living.