Ulysses by A. Tennyson
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The dramatic monologue
The poem Ulysses, written in the autumn of 1833 by Alfred Lord Tennyson, is one of the great dramatic monologue of the Victorian Age. A speaker, using an argumentative tone, addresses his meditations to an imaginary silent listener. The main sources of this monologue are Homer's Odyssey (XI) and Dante's
Inferno ( XXVI)
Tennyson's sources
What do you remember about Homer's and Dante's Ulysses? Write a short paragraph.
Ulysses
Read the lines and try to understand the meaning
1 It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees:……….
18 I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
56 ……………………………………..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.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
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.
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees:……….
18 I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
56 ……………………………………..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.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
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.
Focus on language
In the first stanza Ulysses expresses his contempt for his people and wife, using words with negative connotations; underline them
Focus on meaning
In the third stanza there is a central metaphor conveying Ulysses's concept of life and experience (lines 19-21)
- What is experience compared to?
- What is the untravelled world?
Who does Ulysses stand for?
Read the paragraph below and fill in the missing words.
Ulysses becomes the
's alter ego, giving expression to his torturing doubts about man's
and destiny after
and, at the same time, he becomes a metaphor for human existence , where the optimism owing to intellectual
is never separated from the melancholic awareness of
Writing
In the autumn of 1833, when his depression over the death of his closest friend Arthur Hallam reached its peak, Tennyson wrote Ulysses, a dramatic monologue celebrating man's attempt of giving purpose to his own life even if he is approaching death. Write a short essay ( 20/25 lines)
Credits
Pagina a cura di Tonia Calò
Ulisse tra mito, arte e letteratura