Ulysses (poem)

"Ulysses" is a poem in blank verse by the Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), written in 1833 and published in 1842 in his well-received second volume of poetry.

In Dante's re-telling, Ulisse is condemned to hell among the false counsellors, both for his pursuit of knowledge beyond human bounds and for creating the deception of the Trojan horse.

For much of this poem's history, readers viewed Ulysses as resolute and heroic, admiring him for his determination "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield".

[1] The view that Tennyson intended a heroic character is supported by his statements about the poem, and by the events in his life—the death of his closest friend—that prompted him to write it.

As the poem begins, Ulysses has returned to his kingdom, Ithaca, having made a long journey home after fighting in the Trojan War.

In the final section, Ulysses turns to his fellow mariners and calls on them to join him on another quest, making no guarantees as to their fate but attempting to conjure their heroic past: ... 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 To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die.

According to critic Dwight Culler, the poem has been a victim of revisionist readings in which the reader expects to reconstruct the truth from a misleading narrator's accidental revelations.

Culler himself views "Ulysses" as a dialectic in which the speaker weighs the virtues of a contemplative and an active approach to life;[8] Ulysses moves through four emotional stages that are self-revelatory, not ironic: beginning with his rejection of the barren life to which he has returned in Ithaca, he then fondly recalls his heroic past, recognizes the validity of Telemachus' method of governing, and with these thoughts plans another journey.

[12] When Tennyson heard on 1 October 1833 of his friend's death, he was living in Somersby, Lincolnshire, in cramped quarters with his mother and nine of his ten siblings.

It may be that Ulysses' determination to defy circumstance attracted Tennyson to the myth;[14] he said that the poem "gave my feeling about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life".

"[16] Hallam's death influenced much of Tennyson's poetry, including perhaps his most highly regarded work, In Memoriam A.H.H., begun in 1833 and completed seventeen years later.

"[17] He finds that Tennyson's two widely noted personae, the "responsible social being" and the melancholic poet, meet uniquely in "Ulysses", yet seem not to recognize each other within the text.

Dante treats Ulisse, with his "zeal …/ T'explore the world", as an evil counsellor who lusts for adventure at the expense of his family and his duties in Ithaca.

(22–23) recalls Shakespeare's Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602):[26] perseverance, my dear lord, Keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail, In monumental mockery.

The strains of discontent and weakness in old age remain throughout the poem, but Tennyson finally leaves Ulysses "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield" (70), recalling the Dantesque damnable desire for knowledge beyond all bounds.

Quoting Dante's Ulisse: 'O brothers', said I, 'who are come despite Ten thousand perils to the West, let none, While still our senses hold the vigil slight Remaining to us ere our course is run, Be willing to forgo experience Of the unpeopled world beyond the sun.

Since Dante's Ulisse has already undertaken this voyage and recounts it in the Inferno, Ulysses' entire monologue can be envisioned as his recollection while situated in Hell.

Read straightforwardly, "Ulysses" promotes the questing spirit of youth, even in old age, and a refusal to resign and face life passively.

[35] Baum finds in Ulysses echoes of Lord Byron's flawed heroes, who similarly display conflicting emotions, self-critical introspection, and a rejection of social responsibility.

"Ulysses" is found lacking in narrative action; the hero's goal is vague, and by the poem's famous last line, it is not clear for what he is "striving", or to what he refuses to yield.

There is in this work a delightful epic tone, and a clear impassioned wisdom quietly carving its sage words and graceful figures on pale but lasting marble.

"[42] English theologian Richard Holt Hutton summarized the poem as Tennyson's "friendly picture of the insatiable craving for new experience, enterprise, and adventure, when under the control of a luminous reason and a self-controlled will.

"[43] The contemporary poet Matthew Arnold was early in observing the narrative irony of the poem: he found Ulysses' speech "the least plain, the most un-Homeric, which can possibly be conceived.

While "Ulysses" cannot be read as overtly imperialistic, Tennyson's later work as Poet Laureate sometimes argues for the value of Britain's colonies, or was accused of jingoism.

[49] Professor of literature Basil Willey commented in 1956, "In 'Ulysses' the sense that he must press on and not moulder in idleness is expressed objectively, through the classical story, and not subjectively as his own experience.

[Tennyson] comes here as near perfection in the grand manner as he ever did; the poem is flawless in tone from beginning to end; spare, grave, free from excessive decoration, and full of firmly controlled feeling.

The final line has been used as a motto by schools and other organisations; cited in a number of speeches; and is inscribed on a cross at Observation Hill, Antarctica, to commemorate explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his party, who died on their return trek from the South Pole in 1912.