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I Have Questions About Ulysses
Of Tennyson fame, not James Joyce
Ulysses is his Latin name. The Greek is originally Odysseus; hence Homer’s epic poem of his voyage home is called the Odyssey. I have been fascinated with Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem Ulysses since I was sixteen years old. It is so beautiful and inspiring. But it took me many years to begin suspecting that there might be more to it beneath the surface.
Tennyson envisions Ulysses as an old man, finally restored to the kingship of his little Mediterranean island Ithaca (to which he had labored for so many years to return) — but waxing bored with the daily grind and wanting adventure again. Right off the bat, if you are familiar with the legend, you realize how unfair this is to his faithful wife Penelope, who resisted suitors for 20 long years as she waited for her husband to get back. All he has to say about her in Tennyson is that he is “match’d with an aged wife.” How ungrateful and dismissive can a guy get?
Maybe he wasn’t such a prize, himself.
The oft-quoted poem’s end, in which he addresses his old shipmates — his mariners — with poetic imagery of never giving in to age but determining to continue exploring and adventuring to the ends of the earth for as long as their spirits exist, has been quoted by all sorts of people for generations, even NASA…
