Улисс Теннисона: Стремление к новым горизонтам

Poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"Ulysses" is a poem in blank verse by the Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), written in 1833 and published in 1842 in his well received second volume of poetry. An oft quoted poem, it is a popular example of the dramatic monologue. Facing old age, mythical hero Ulysses describes his discontent and restlessness upon returning to his kingdom, Ithaca, after his far ranging travels. Despite his reunion with his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus, Ulysses yearns to explore again. The character of Ulysses (in Greek, Odysseus) has been explored widely in literature. The adventures of Odysseus were first recorded in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey (c. 800–700 BC), and Tennyson draws on Homer's narrative in the poem. Most critics, however, find that Tennyson's Ulysses recalls Dante's Ulisse in his Inferno (c. 1320). In Dante's re telling, Ulisse is condemned to hell among the false counsellors, both for his pursuit of knowledge beyond human bounds and for creating the deception of the Trojan horse. For much of this poem's history, readers viewed Ulysses as resolute and heroic, admiring him for his determination "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield". The view that Tennyson intended a heroic character is supported by his statements about the poem, and by the events in his life—the death of his closest friend—that prompted him to write it. In the twentieth century, some new interpretations of "Ulysses" highlighted potential ironies in the poem. They argued, for example, that Ulysses wishes to selfishly abandon his kingdom and family, and they questioned more positive assessments of Ulysses' character by demonstrating how he resembles flawed protagonists in earlier literature.

The poem's seventy lines of blank verse are presented as a dramatic monologue. Scholars disagree on how Ulysses' speech functions in this format; it is not necessarily clear to whom Ulysses is speaking, if anyone, and from what location. Some see the verse turning from a soliloquy to a public address, as Ulysses seems to speak to himself in the first movement, then to turn to an audience as he introduces his son, and then to relocate to the seashore where he addresses his mariners. In this interpretation, the comparatively direct and honest language of the first movement is set against the more politically minded tone of the last two movements. For example, the second paragraph (33–43) about Telemachus, in which Ulysses muses again about domestic life, is a "revised version [of lines 1–5] for public consumption": a "savage race" is revised to a "rugged people". The ironic interpretations of "Ulysses" may be the result of the modern tendency to consider the narrator of a dramatic monologue as necessarily "unreliable". According to critic Dwight Culler, the poem has been a victim of revisionist readings in which the reader expects to reconstruct the truth from a misleading narrator's accidental revelations. (Compare the more obvious use of this approach in Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess".) Culler himself views "Ulysses" as a dialectic in which the speaker weighs the virtues of a contemplative and an active approach to life; Ulysses moves through four emotional stages that are self revelatory, not ironic: beginning with his rejection of the barren life to which he has returned in Ithaca, he then fondly recalls his heroic past, recognizes the validity of Telemachus' method of governing, and with these thoughts plans another journey.

Tennyson completed the poem on 20 October 1833, but it was not published until 1842, in his second collection of Poems. Unlike many of Tennyson's other important poems, "Ulysses" was not revised after its publication. Tennyson originally blocked out the poem in four paragraphs, broken before lines 6, 33 and 44. In this structure, the first and third paragraphs are thematically parallel, but may be read as interior and exterior monologues, respectively. However, the poem is often printed with the first paragraph break omitted.

Tennyson penned "Ulysses" after the death of his close Cambridge friend, the poet Arthur Henry Hallam (1811–1833), with whom Tennyson had a strong emotional bond. The two friends had spent much time discussing poetry and philosophy, writing verse, and travelling in southern France, the Pyrenees, and Germany. Tennyson considered Hallam destined for greatness, perhaps as a statesman. When Tennyson heard on 1 October 1833 of his friend's death, he was living in Somersby, Lincolnshire, in cramped quarters with his mother and nine of his ten siblings. His father had died in 1831, requiring Tennyson to return home and take responsibility for the family. Tennyson's friends were becoming increasingly concerned about his mental and physical health during this time. The family had little income, and three of Tennyson's brothers were mentally ill. Just as Tennyson's outlook was improving—he was adjusting to his new domestic duties, regaining contact with friends, and had published his 1832 book of poems—the news of Hallam's death arrived. Tennyson shared his grief with his sister, Emily, who had been engaged to Hallam. According to Victorian scholar Linda Hughes, the emotional gulf between the state of his domestic affairs and the loss of his special friendship informs the reading of "Ulysses"—particularly its treatment of domesticity. At one moment, Ulysses' discontent seems to mirror that of Tennyson, who would have been frustrated with managing the house in such a state of grief. At the next, Ulysses is determined to transcend his age and his environment by travelling again. It may be that Ulysses' determination to defy circumstance attracted Tennyson to the myth; he said that the poem "gave my feeling about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life". On another occasion, the poet stated, "There is more about myself in Ulysses, which was written under the sense of loss and that all had gone by, but that still life must be fought out to the end. It was more written with the feeling of his loss upon me than many poems in In Memoriam." Hallam's death influenced much of Tennyson's poetry, including perhaps his most highly regarded work, In Memoriam A. H. H., begun in 1833 and completed seventeen years later. Other critics find stylistic incongruities between the poem and its author that make "Ulysses" exceptional. W. W. Robson writes, "Tennyson, the responsible social being, the admirably serious and 'committed' individual, is uttering strenuous sentiments in the accent of Tennyson the most un strenuous, lonely and poignant of poets." He finds that Tennyson's two widely noted personae, the "responsible social being" and the melancholic poet, meet uniquely in "Ulysses", yet seem not to recognize each other within the text.