Commentary
In this poem, written in 1833 and
revised for publication in 1842,
Tennyson reworks the figure of Ulysses by drawing on the ancient
hero of Homer’s Odyssey (“Ulysses”
is the Roman form of the Greek “Odysseus”) and the medieval hero
of Dante’s Inferno. Homer’s Ulysses, as described
in Scroll XI of the Odyssey, learns from a prophecy that he will
take a final sea voyage after killing the suitors of his wife Penelope.
The details of this sea voyage are described by Dante in Canto XXVI
of the Inferno: Ulysses finds himself restless
in Ithaca and driven by “the longing I had to gain experience of
the world.” Dante’s Ulysses is a tragic figure who dies while sailing
too far in an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Tennyson combines
these two accounts by having Ulysses make his speech shortly after
returning to Ithaca and resuming his administrative responsibilities,
and shortly before embarking on his final voyage.
However, this poem also concerns the poet’s own personal
journey, for it was composed in the first few weeks after Tennyson
learned of the death of his dear college friend Arthur Henry Hallam
in 1833.
Like In Memoriam, then, this poem is also an elegy
for a deeply cherished friend. Ulysses, who symbolizes the grieving
poet, proclaims his resolution to push onward in spite of the awareness
that “death closes all” (line 51).
As Tennyson himself stated, the poem expresses his own “need of
going forward and braving the struggle of life” after the loss of
his beloved Hallam.
The poem’s final line, “to strive, to seek, to find, and
not to yield,” came to serve as a motto for the poet’s Victorian
contemporaries: the poem’s hero longs to flee the tedium of daily
life “among these barren crags” (line 2)
and to enter a mythical dimension “beyond the sunset, and the baths
of all the western stars” (lines 60–61);
as such, he was a model of individual self-assertion and the Romantic
rebellion against bourgeois conformity. Thus for Tennyson’s immediate
audience, the figure of Ulysses held not only mythological meaning, but
stood as an important contemporary cultural icon as well.
“Ulysses,” like many of Tennyson’s other poems, deals
with the desire to reach beyond the limits of one’s field of vision
and the mundane details of everyday life. Ulysses is the antithesis
of the mariners in “The Lotos-Eaters,” who proclaim “we will no
longer roam” and desire only to relax amidst the Lotos fields. In contrast,
Ulysses “cannot rest from travel” and longs to roam the globe (line 6).
Like the Lady of Shallot, who longs for the worldly experiences
she has been denied, Ulysses hungers to explore the untraveled world.
As in all dramatic monologues, here the character of the
speaker emerges almost unintentionally from his own words. Ulysses’
incompetence as a ruler is evidenced by his preference for potential
quests rather than his present responsibilities. He devotes a full 26 lines
to his own egotistical proclamation of his zeal for the wandering
life, and another 26 lines
to the exhortation of his mariners to roam the seas with him. However,
he offers only 11 lines
of lukewarm praise to his son concerning the governance of the kingdom
in his absence, and a mere two words about his “aged wife” Penelope.
Thus, the speaker’s own words betray his abdication of responsibility
and his specificity of purpose.
