@roseannetsullivan's Summer reading list led me here. I am glad that it did! This poem was one of the few things that learned in a college class. It remains one of my favorite poems.
I am an amateur, I enjoy literature and art and music for their own sake. As such, my unlearned opinion is that the critics of this poem have lives that are too small. "I must drink life to the lees. At all times I have enjoy’d Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone, on shore." I can still almost recite it from memory. As a freshman in college, I knew then that this is what a great man saw at the end of his life. That was what I wanted! Oh, to have been a brother warrior of Ulysses, to be with him when he started speaking this poem; rose to his feet; and then roared the conclusion to the dog and the fireplace. And yes! Let us sail beyond the sunset and find brave Achilles.
All of these years later, the offer still stands:
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
The sentiments of Tennyson's Ulysses may be foreign to Homer's Odysseus, but that is because they come from a later medieval conception of the character. This can be found near the end of Dante's Inferno, in which Ulysses tells the story of his becoming restless in Ithaca and making a final failed vogage into the West.
Matthew Arnold must have been hostile to Tennyson, because what he did was essentially to sneer at this poem and say 'ACKSHUALLY, the SOURCES don't back this up..' Heaven forbid that a millennia-old traditional theme should change and evolve in any way whatsoever.
“Something happens in lines 19 to 21, however, …”. I reread the poem aloud and forthwith switched from free to paid subscriber. Thank you for such an insightful commentary on this poem.
“Critics want the Victorian laurels to go to Whitman or Dickinson.”
Humph. I would not think highly of the judgment of one who placed Whitman above Tennyson. Dickinson…well, I admit that I haven’t read more than a fraction of her work, but she seems a different sort of creature, a sort of outsider artist.
Hopkins’ complaint of Tennyson (and Wordsworth!) was that he uses far too much “Parnassian.” But surely even H would admit Ulysses is “Inspiration,” every word; the Browning comparison is just, but precisely because everyone knows Browning couldn’t have written this.
I do love Tennyson, and wish that Basil Rathbone had recorded all of the Idylls. Yet Penelope was a greater treasure than any ambition of Ulysses, and he a fool to leave her.
To have sailed the seas, and felts its winds, before one is old, to have done deeds of beknown, and survived to old age, is something. Having a son to leave everything to, who is capable and bold, is a blessing, it leaves one free for a final throw, and what ever comes up, will be on a ship, in the winds, till they either they give out or one's breath does. What better way to go out, than on the sea and who knows what one will find.
TS Eliot thought enough of this one to quote it in the "Dry Salvages" "The sea has many voices/ Many gods and many voices " also "Old men should be explorers" in East Coker
Yes not to mention Prufrock 'I shall grow old, I shall grow old, I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled'. Eliot oddly preoccupied with the dismalness of old age while still quite young himself! In his early 30s when he wrote Gerontion. (Sorry about the half-written post below, I switched from phone to desktop!)
"Unwillingly, perhaps" reminds me of Andre Gide's response when asked to name the greatest French poet: "Victor Hugo, alas.” I used to know snippets of "Ulysses" by heart" and responded rapturously to the swelling tide of rhetoric at the end. I was less suspicious of rhetoric then.
"All experience is an arch wherethro’ / Gleams that untravell’d world" always makes me think of Keats's lines in "Ode to a Nightingale"--"magic casements, opening on the foam / Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn."
@roseannetsullivan's Summer reading list led me here. I am glad that it did! This poem was one of the few things that learned in a college class. It remains one of my favorite poems.
I am an amateur, I enjoy literature and art and music for their own sake. As such, my unlearned opinion is that the critics of this poem have lives that are too small. "I must drink life to the lees. At all times I have enjoy’d Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone, on shore." I can still almost recite it from memory. As a freshman in college, I knew then that this is what a great man saw at the end of his life. That was what I wanted! Oh, to have been a brother warrior of Ulysses, to be with him when he started speaking this poem; rose to his feet; and then roared the conclusion to the dog and the fireplace. And yes! Let us sail beyond the sunset and find brave Achilles.
All of these years later, the offer still stands:
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, 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.
'Like or dislike him, he towers'
yeah - we are as *gnats* compared
The sentiments of Tennyson's Ulysses may be foreign to Homer's Odysseus, but that is because they come from a later medieval conception of the character. This can be found near the end of Dante's Inferno, in which Ulysses tells the story of his becoming restless in Ithaca and making a final failed vogage into the West.
Matthew Arnold must have been hostile to Tennyson, because what he did was essentially to sneer at this poem and say 'ACKSHUALLY, the SOURCES don't back this up..' Heaven forbid that a millennia-old traditional theme should change and evolve in any way whatsoever.
“Something happens in lines 19 to 21, however, …”. I reread the poem aloud and forthwith switched from free to paid subscriber. Thank you for such an insightful commentary on this poem.
“Critics want the Victorian laurels to go to Whitman or Dickinson.”
Humph. I would not think highly of the judgment of one who placed Whitman above Tennyson. Dickinson…well, I admit that I haven’t read more than a fraction of her work, but she seems a different sort of creature, a sort of outsider artist.
Anyway this is a great poem by a great poet.
Hopkins’ complaint of Tennyson (and Wordsworth!) was that he uses far too much “Parnassian.” But surely even H would admit Ulysses is “Inspiration,” every word; the Browning comparison is just, but precisely because everyone knows Browning couldn’t have written this.
I do love Tennyson, and wish that Basil Rathbone had recorded all of the Idylls. Yet Penelope was a greater treasure than any ambition of Ulysses, and he a fool to leave her.
I fell hard in love with this poem as a teen and still am swept away by its power, every time.
To have sailed the seas, and felts its winds, before one is old, to have done deeds of beknown, and survived to old age, is something. Having a son to leave everything to, who is capable and bold, is a blessing, it leaves one free for a final throw, and what ever comes up, will be on a ship, in the winds, till they either they give out or one's breath does. What better way to go out, than on the sea and who knows what one will find.
TS Eliot thought enough of this one to quote it in the "Dry Salvages" "The sea has many voices/ Many gods and many voices " also "Old men should be explorers" in East Coker
See also the early Eliot in "Gerontion": "I am an old man, / A dull head among windy places"
Yes not to mention Prufrock 'I shall grow old, I shall grow old, I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled'. Eliot oddly preoccupied with the dismalness of old age while still quite young himself! In his early 30s when he wrote Gerontion. (Sorry about the half-written post below, I switched from phone to desktop!)
"Unwillingly, perhaps" reminds me of Andre Gide's response when asked to name the greatest French poet: "Victor Hugo, alas.” I used to know snippets of "Ulysses" by heart" and responded rapturously to the swelling tide of rhetoric at the end. I was less suspicious of rhetoric then.
"All experience is an arch wherethro’ / Gleams that untravell’d world" always makes me think of Keats's lines in "Ode to a Nightingale"--"magic casements, opening on the foam / Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn."
I really enjoyed this explication of Tennyson's great poem.
Well maybe I'm simple and undiscerning, but I love this poem and the man's spirit.