Tennyson and Ulysses

Tennyson wrote “Ulysses” shortly after his best friend’s death. In the poem we hear Ulysses, home from the Wars for only a short time, speaking of his readiness for new adventure. He begins by saying “It little profits an idle king/by this still hearth, among these barren crags,/match’d with an aged wife I mete and dole/unequal laws unto a savage race.” He feels useless, too old to rule over his wild people; the hearth, recognized as the central area of the home and symbolic of the state of family life is still. It being still, and he an “idle” king, tells us he feels stagnant, that being home makes him feel his age, though throughout the world people love him, respect him, honor him: “cities of men and manners, climates, councils, governments,/myself not least, but honour’d of them all.”

Ulysses is seemingly experiencing an attack of wanderlust, and as he goes on, becomes more and more passionate until he has slipped into the form of rhetoric, a persuasive argument using emotional appeal. If he leaves, his son will take his place; Ulysses describes him as perfect for the job, yet there is condescension in his description—his son is “most blameless…centered in the sphere/Of common duties, decent not to fail/In offices of tenderness…He works his work, I mine.”—in other words, not an adventurer, but more officious. Ulysses implies his “work” was better somehow than what his son could do as a good ruler—which raises questions of whether or not Ulysses himself was a good king. After all, he wanted adventure before, ended up being gone for years, during which—if you’ve read Homer’s “Odyssey,” you know--his friends all died, his family fell apart, and his kingdom nearly did as well. Now, after a short time home, he is ready to shirk his duties and responsibilities yet again. Unfortunately, Ulysses has the heart of a hero, and this makes him selfish; is he responsible, however, for his character? Fate has given him duties, but not the character to carry them out. Like anyone, Ulysses yearns to live the life that he is meant for, and that life has little room for the formalities of Kingship.

Ulysses says that even many lives would not be enough to sate his thirst for adventure, but every moment would be a moment taken away from his time in the afterlife—“Life piled on life/were all too little, and of one to me little remains, but every hour is saved/From that eternal silence…” In his eagerness for adventure, Ulysses is willing to forget the toll his first absence had on his family and kingdom. He is feeling his age, and wants one more adventure before death—“You and I are old; old age hath yet his honor and his toil;/Death closes all: but something ere the end, some work of noble note may yet be done.”

In the last stanza, Ulysses looks out to the sea. We find that it is twilight, that he sees the spirits of his fellow mariners. In speaking to them, Ulysses is inviting his death, and we realize that all the speech beforehand is leading to this point. He is bored, feeling useless, and knows that he is too old for real adventure. The sea issues out voices (the deep/Moans round with many voices) to which Ulysses responds invitingly—he calls his friends ghosts out of the water in which they died, and encourages them to “seek a newer world…to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all western stars…” These references are to places that are imaginatively limitless, mysterious; they offer the thrill of the unknown, and the promise of greatness, though from them no one has ever returned. Underneath this wish to sail is the knowledge that he alone has survived his adventures, and that he could not survive another. His plans for journeying become a journey of the soul, eagerness to let loose of his ennui and sadness and take on the adventure of the unknown. Ulysses is “one equal temper of heroic hearts” and though “made weak by time” has the will to not submit on Death’s terms, but to submit on his own—his body made weak by time, but his will is “not to yield”—he will find adventure even in dying, and even for that, be a hero still.