Tennyson, The Lotos-Eaters and Ulysses

Ulysses and The Lotos-Eaters

Much Victorian poetry is tinged with a melancholy for a lost world, a yearning for a quasi-mythological time of peace which was denied to the men and women of 19th century England. While these people faced momentous economic, political, and social change, the poets among them gave expression to the inner feeling of loss which haunted the most introspective of them. Is it any wonder that Tennyson regularly chooses themes from Greek mythology and Arthurian legend? Does not Hardy look to the natural world to express his deep sadness, which during this period was being replaced with urban, industrial thoroughfares and factories? And why else would Arnold in Dover Beach say about the ‘eternal note of sadness’:

“Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean…”

Undoubtedly one of the greatest at giving expression to this side of the Victorian zeitgeist is Tennyson. His skill with syntax and form, his choice of theme, and his management of the metre of the English language has caused me to return to it again and again. Ulysses contained the first verses I intentionally memorised as poetry, and I regularly intend (and often fail) to keep them in my brain.

However, although this sadness is present in much of his poetry, the response of his characters to it is not so uniform. In The Lotos-Eaters and Ulysses Tennyson presents us with essentially the same problem - the struggle and suffering we face in life - and also gives us two possible responses: courage or resignation. By drawing on the same source material (the Odyssey) these two poems bring these responses into contrast, and hopefully in some way can provide us with the opportunity to reflect on ourselves, and our response to the struggle for life we all have.

The Lotos-Eaters

"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land,
"This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."

Thus begins The Lotos-Eaters. And can these lines summarise the whole poem? Almost. For the mariners who eat the lotos and choose to forget the lives they left behind, this is the last ounce of courage they will need. Soon they will indeed be rolled shoreward and enjoy being “propt on beds of amaranth and moly”.

If you haven’t yet read the poem, I recommend doing so [1]. It is structured into two main sections. Firstly, the narrative contextualises the second part of the poem and gives the reader the background. Secondly, the Choric Song of the Lotos-Eaters is given, separated into eight distinct sections.

Narrative context. The mariners are washed ashore and we receive an enchanting description of the island which they are on. They are then approached by the ‘mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters’ with the Lotos. Some of the mariners eat the fruit; those who accept it enter a half-dream, with their fellow mariners voices now seeming ‘as voices from the grave’. We are introduced to two major themes: sleep and memory/imagination. This section ends with:

And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, "We will return no more";
And all at once they sang, "Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam."

The Choric Song is split into eight stanzas:

The Eaters extol the sweet music which draws them deeper into this sleep-like state. It is sweeter than the gentle plants on the island, which seems to absorb them in its branches. In some sense, the music unites them with the natural world, for it ‘brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.’

They complain: is it not unfair that only the mariners should toil, when all around them has rest from the sorrows of life? Not only one sorrow, but relentlessly ‘from one sorrow to another thrown’.And why, if they are ‘the crown of things’, should they have the most suffering?

Their struggle for life is contrasted with the apple. The apple is fed by the world and receives all it needs without any labour.

All its allotted length of days
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil.

The refrain of ‘Let us alone.’ promotes the isolationist attitude of the mariners. To them, ‘Hateful is the dark-blue sky’, and again they question ‘should all life labour be?’ Death is preferable to the constant labour of living. If the mariners cannot have ‘long rest, dreamful ease’, then they will only settle for ‘dark death’.

The sweetness of the Lotos and the peace of the Lotos-Eaters is extolled. The mariners want to ‘lend [their] hearts and spirits wholly’ to ‘mild-minded melancholy’, which was similarly ascribed to the first eaters.

This memory of their family is dear to them, but the disturbance they would cause to return to their lives is too great a cost to seek to realise the memory. They understand the world has changed, and they don’t want to return to that ‘little isle’. They don’t want to heap ‘Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,’.

The life of labour off the Lotos island is again contrasted with the life of peace they enjoy by eating the Lotos.

The climax of the poem. The Lotos-Eaters seek to achieve an apotheosis of sorts through the Lotos flower. They will join the Gods living about the vicissitudes of human life. The critique against constant labour, toil and suffering reaches its height in a brief reference to the torments of hell. Why should those who live a life of suffering go on to everlasting suffering? Even those who escape this judgement only go on to rest their weary limbs. Therefore, why should the Lotos-Eaters not enjoy this state, but without the toil?

Sleep and rest

Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

Under the influence of the Lotos, the mariners abandon their lives of labouring and instead give themselves over to sleep and rest. In a world where burden is heaped upon burden, and no one has a spare moment to fold their wings, the mariners claim ‘there is no joy but calm!’ Not even the demands of morality can move them from their island, for...

…What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?

With no end in sight, and the high cost of action, there is nothing more reasonable than to accept the rest which is given to them.

Memory and imagination

To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy…

What do the mariners think of while in their ‘half-dream’? Their wives, their children, their Fatherland. And this is not insincere, the mariners genuinely desire these things. But between them and their homes is the weary sea, the weary oar, and the task of wandering the fields of barren foam. This is too high a price to pay, especially when the land they would return to has likely changed and broken. ‘Let what is broken so remain’. Therefore the mariners will settle with the memory of the old days and an imagined dream of this life.

Isolation

Let us alone.

The mariners choose isolation. Whether it is the isolation of the Lotos island surrounded by the sea, or like the Gods in golden houses, smiling in secret, the mariners want to be cut off from the rest of the world. They want nothing to do with good or evil, with a life full of labour.

The Lotos-Eaters presents men who have assessed the world around them, and decided that the labour which is necessary to oppose entropy, maintain themselves, and prevent the slow growth of evil is too much. Instead of the labour of the oar, these men seek quiet repose.

I do not think Tennyson presents us with this picture for us to condemn the mariners in their choice. It was written after an 1829 trek to conflict-torn northern Spain. The violence and suffering which living things continually face is a real challenge to a desire to work for good. Sometimes, it would be better to just give up and enjoy what you can rather than fight for an unachievable goal.

Ulysses

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone…

So speaks Ulysses (or Odysseus), who after returning to Ithaca from his wanderings now spends his days overseeing ‘a savage race.’ Ulysses was himself one who was offered the Lotos flower and refused it. In the Odyssey Ulysses has to force the mariners back onto the ship, so he is a natural counterpoint to the voice of the Lotos-Eaters. However, as we will see, Ulysses is not just willing to row home to his Fatherland. Ulysses apparently has an inner drive which forces him to keep moving, whatever the cost.

Again, if you haven’t read it, do so. It’s much shorter than The Lotos-Eaters [2]. It is structured into three stanzas: Ulysses at home, Ulysses passing the sceptre to Telemachus, and Ulysses departing on his voyage.

Ulysses at home

It little profits that 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,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

Ulysses expresses his discontentment with his current state. He is an ‘idle king’, who’s hearth is still, and his land’s crags are barren. His wife is aged, those he rules over are savage, and they pay no mind to their ruler. He sees ‘little profit’ in his life at present, and goes on to contrast this with his old life:

…I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;

Unlike the ‘savage race’ he rules over who give him no respect, when roaming he was not the least among cities and governments, but was honoured among them. His heart was hungry for travel, and this was not just a passing fancy. It is now identical with his name. Ulysses is roaming with a hungry heart. When he does not travel, he is not himself.

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.

Unlike the barrier between Ulysses and the people and land he currently rules over, his previous experience was not separated from the man ‘Ulysses’. He is a part of all he has met; if you remove Ulysses, the event changes. How different from the men who ‘know not me!’ Yet this is not enough, for experience itself is simply a doorway which ‘that untravell’d world’ gleams through.

…Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains…

Ulysses’s ‘hungry heart’ is not satisfied with even ‘life piled on life’. He seeks more and more, and knows that little remains of his own life. We end with his resolve to do something new, to ‘follow knowledge like a sinking star’.

Passing the sceptre to Telemachus

We have a brief interlude, where Ulysses turns away from his own concerns and towards his son, ‘whom I leave the sceptre and the isle.’

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Unlike the aloof attitude Ulysses takes to his people, he trusts that Telemachus will engage in the slow labour of making these people mild. Telemachus will work in ‘soft degrees’ to eventually create a useful and good community out of this ‘savage race’. However, Ulysses seems to see this work as unavailable to him.

He works his work, I mine.

To Ulysses the labour he must complete is the roaming of the seas and the seeking of new experience.

Departing on his voyage

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—

Ulysses approaches his voyage, everything lies ready. He has his mariners with him, who alongside him ‘ever with a frolic welcome took, the thunder and the sunshine.’ (As an aside, isn’t it ironic that in the Odyssey these are the very same men who speak in The Lotos-Eaters?)

Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

Ulysses turns to acknowledge once again his old age, yet with hope that in these last days of his life he may still achieve something of ‘noble note’.

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.

After a resounding call to ‘push off’ and ‘smite the sounding furrows’, Ulysses seems to take an almost ambivalent attitude to the outcome of the journey. He doesn’t even have a destination, other than ‘beyond the sunset’. Whether or not the gulfs wash him down, or he touches the Happy Isles, he doesn’t care. For him, the work is what matters, not the outcome. The poem ends with a call to, no matter their age, ‘strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’

Life in all it includes
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life!

Ulysses does not simply want an easy life, he doesn't even seem to want a good life. Ulysses wants life, whether that includes enjoyment or suffering. Life, for Ulysses, cannot be simply breathing, it cannot mean simply existing. It must be used, it must shine with use. As already quoted:

…I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly…

He will drink deeply of all that being alive has to offer, for it is being alive that matters to him. He finds it dull to pause, let alone make an end! Yet ‘death comes to all’. He knows that there will come a time where action is unavailable to him, and this thought drives him once out to the sea which at one point held him captive.

Action in the evening of life

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.

Ulysses knows that his physical strength is leaving him. No longer will he ‘drink delight of battle with [his] peers, far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.’ Yet in spite of this, the much that is taken, he still sees much that abides. Perhaps he has been made weak by ‘time and fate’, but his will remains. His temper remains. He may be old, but as the deep calls out to him:

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.

And seek a newer world he will.

Wandering

I cannot rest from travel…
…I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart

Ulysses seems to see himself as almost cursed with this yearning for new experience. He cannot remain still, but must continue striving for new places. Even the work which remains to do at home, that of taming the savage people he rules, he leaves to his son. He does not have the will or the time to do it. He must return to the sea, without any apparent expectation of return. The handing of the sceptre and the Isle to Telemachus is final, and Ulysses sets sail.

When first read, this poem appears to be a triumphant work about the fight for life in the face of oncoming death. It is fair to read it that way, and there is much to be commendable. Yet Ulysses is not simply about taking action even when old age and decay is creeping in, nor is it simply about jumping at whatever comes, whether joy or sorrow.

Ulysses is also the story of an obsessive old man who cannot face the work which the world has given him to do. He refuses to spend his twilight years tending to the people who he rules over, instead he sets sail once again with his mariners on another voyage. One wonder what his ‘aged wife’, Penelope, makes of his voyage, especially after her refusal of the suitors?

Comparison

From Ulysses

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life!

And from The Lotos-Eaters

All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.

Ulysses, constantly striving and acting, unsatisfied with just breathing. The mariners, desiring either long rest, or if they can’t have that, death. Ulysses seeks one last venture before ‘death closes all’. The mariners consider death preferable to one last venture through the ‘hateful dark-blue sea’.

Perhaps we would wish we were one more than the other. Personally, in my desires I would rather be Ulysses, but in my life I often prefer to be the mariners. Yet I don’t think that either of them could be considered a healthy response. The mariners refuse to get involved in the practicalities of improving our world. Philosophical reflection on the apparent meaninglessness of toil is justified, and reality is often confusing. But this does not change the fact that we are here, and there is work to do. Ecclesiastes offers a healthier perspective

I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and do good while they live, and also that every man should eat and drink and find satisfaction in all his labour— this is the gift of God.

Yet Ulysses also refuses to engage in this work. He perhaps has a better attitude to life, seeking to make the most of the gift he has been given, whether that brings joy or suffering. But he does not seek to apply this to the good of the world around him. He returns to the sea, when there remains the work of refining the people he rules. Instead this is left to Telemachus.

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Regardless, both these poems are excellent and worthy of being pondered further. We all have to deal with a variety of personality dispositions, choices, and life situations. The character profiles we receive through poems, novels, and plays enable us to reflect on ourselves, and see more clearly where our tendencies lie.