Berghahn Books

Tennyson: 'Ulysses'
Author(s): ARNOLD P. HINCHLIFFE
Source: Critical Survey, Vol. 6, No. 1/2 (SUMMER 1973), pp. 64-68
Published by: Berghahn Books
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41553913
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Critical Survey

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 64 James Booth
Further Reading: F. R. Leavis, Revaluation , London
Aesthete - the one Aesthete of genius.') Graham Ho
development and relates him to the Romantic mov
History without Footnotes', in The Well Wrought U
the poem.) William Empson, The Structure of Complex
the emotional and personal aspect of the poem.)

ARNOLD P. HINCHLIFFE

Tennyson: 'Ulysses'
It little profits that an idle king, A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Unequal laws unto a savage race, Of common duties, decent not to fail
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not In me.
offices of tenderness, and pay
I cannot rest from travel : I will drink Meet adoration to my household gods,
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy 'd When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Souk that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; me -

For always roaming with a hungry heart That ever with a frolic welcome took
Much have I seen and known; cities of men The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
And manners, climates, councils, governments, Free hearts, free foreheads - you and I are old;
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Death closes all : but something ere the end,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
I am a part of all that I have met; Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks :
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
For ever and for ever when I move.
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
How dull it is to pause, to make an end, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use ! Push off, and sitting well in order smite
As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
Were all too little, and of one to me To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Little remains : but every hour is saved Of all the western stars, until I die.
From that eternal silence, something more, It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
A bringer of new things ; and vile it were It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
And this gray spirit yearning in desire Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
To follow knowledge like a sinking star, We are not now that strength which in old days
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
This is my son, mine own Telemachus, One equal temper of heroic hearts,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle - Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

Stead, in The New Poetic [1964], illustrates the

The condescending twentieth
condescending to a poetcentury to a poet reader like tends Tennyson: to be
like Tennyson: modern view that Tennyson and his audience
he is too moralistic, he rambles, he ruminates - joined in a pact to deceive themselves about
to borrow T. S. Eliot's crushing verb. G. K. themselves and their society, and used poetry

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 Tennyson : ' Ulysse У 65
to decorate the moral law. We mistrust both his unhappy events the one that concerns us is the
popularity and his enormous output, anddeath, in 1833, of Tennyson's close friend
reduce this vast work to a mere handful of
Arthur Hallam, since it was this loss which
successful poems, of which 'Ulysses' is one.
produced poems like 'Ulysses' and In Memoriam .
Tennyson himself admitted:
Even a sympathetic critic like Robin Mayhead
writes that it would be hard to deny greatness
There is more about myself in Ulysses,
of a kind [italics mine] to the author of 'Ulysses'
which was written under the sense of loss and
[The Pelican Guide to English Literature , Vol 6,
that all had gone by, but that life must be
p. 242]. The dispute about Tennyson's fought out to the end. It was more written
greatness is not merely modern. Alfred
with the feeling of his loss upon me than
Austin, writing in 1870, asked what Tennyson's
many poems in In Memoriam.
faults were and concluded that his only fault
[quoted Christopher Ricks, p. 122]
was not being great enough to commit any :
'Ulysses', then, is a fighting poem, and takes
He knows what he can do, and he does it.
the form of a dramatic monologue; sur-
It is delicate, subtle, pathetic, sometimes
prisingly, since Tennyson wrote bad verse for
even solemn ; it is anything else you like ; but
drama, it is a success, although it lacks the
it is never great.
naturalness poets like T. S. Eliot have shown
[ The Critical Heritage , p. 297]
using this form. Tennyson cannot even create
The volumes of 1830 and 1832 cannot be that sense of character we feel in the poems of
entirely dismissed as musical Keepsake poetry his contemporary, Browning, but he does
since they contain poems like 'Mariana,' 'The generate a feeling of confidence. His model was
Two Voices' and 'The Lotos Eaters' and theyclearly the speeches in Books I and II of
were generally well received apart fromParadise a Lost , and that source is useful to the
destructive review in the Quarterly by J. W. reader in more ways than one since Milton's
Croker who hoped to repeat the success of his speeches demonstrate the art of political
attack on Keats in 1818. Tennyson was speaking and specious argument.
hypersensitive to criticism and this attack may The word 'profits' in the first line should
explain the ten year silence between 1832 andsuggest to us not economics but the Gospel
1842, but he also appears to have been according to St. Matthew (Ch. 16, v. 26) : the
extremely reluctant to publish (and exposepoem is about right action leading to salvation.
himself to criticism) and was only compelledThe adjective 'idle' nullifies its noun 'king'
to produce the volume of 1842 when threatswhile the stillness of the hearth suggests
of publication from America could no longerstagnancy rather than cosy restfulness; and
be ignored. But the years 1833 - 40 were the crags are 'barren' but we do not pause
richly creative and Tennyson wrote 'Ulysses,'here to reflect that crags usually are barren.
'Tithonus,' 'Morte D'Arthur,' 'Locksley Hall' Here it seems yet another burden imposed
and sections of In Memoriam . The 1 842 volume, upon Ulysses just as he is 'match'd' with an
therefore, contained a judicious selection ofaged wife - suggesting firstly that she is not his
early poems and those not yet published butmatch and secondly that she is not his choice.
created during the so-called silence. She is 'aged', and it is not until the final
Tennyson was extremely sensitive: Sir section of the poem that Ulysses concedes his
Harold Nicolson, in Tennyson: Aspects of Hisage too; but then he describes himself as
Life , Character and Poetry [1923] finds themerely 'old'. The verbs 'mete' and 'dole'
essential Tennyson as 'a morbid and unhappy convey the menial form his actions have to
mystic' (p. 27) and he is generally thought oftake, which is reinforced by the unequal
as our most melancholy poet. But consideringnature of the laws (but whose fault is that?)
the circumstances of his early life we mightand the savage nature of a race whose aims can
well agree with J. B. Steane [ Tennyson , 1966, be summed up in one of Tennyson's sonorous
p. 1 5] in describing him as 'among the lists: 'hoard', 'sleep' and 'feed'. How could
strongest and most resilient.' Of the many such a people know or understand the Ulysses

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 66 Arnold P. Hinchlijfe
who has travelled far, been honoured
is satisfactorily among
arranged to employ the talents
many races and always enjoyed
of each and or suffered
Ulysses can now look down to the
'greatly' ? port where the vessel 'puffs her sail' - a
Ulysses now recaptures that glorious past: suitably ample image to introduce those 'broad
his fame, exploits, his expansive greatness seas' which, ominously, 'gloom' and are
which recognises - we are appealed to here - 'dark.' Nevertheless this is the context for
that the present stagnation is death to a man 'free hearts' and 'free foreheads' which have
who has, in the haunting phrase, 'drunk ever enjoyed or suffered sunshine and thunder.
delight of battle with my peers, /Far on the Something, Ulysses suggests, may yet be done
ringing plains of windy Troy.' Tennyson to complement the past before death puts an
shifts dullness (i.e. boredom) swiftly into its end to him; for death is common to all and
sense of not remaining bright, with the cluster would take him from the still hearth. Until
of images about rust, burnishing and shining that time life is movement, and Ulysses'
that recollect the gleaming world seen through purpose is to move until stopped. We might
the arch of experience. We have a sense of notice - but only fleetingly - that Tennyson
wasteful neglect; merely to breathe is not to has shifted the yearning, desire, the 'hungry
live, to live is, surely, to 'follow knowledge', heart' to the will : if the body is made weak by
even if this is compared to the pursuit of a time 'and fate' (presumably Penelope is merely
sinking star. Thus Tennyson shifts his argument aged by time ?) the will remains strong and the
from one emotional point to another with all final line has four verbs to confirm the busy,
the appearance of reasonableness : Ulysses heroic endeavour. But also, noticeably,
finds his domestic context dull and boring; it Ulysses is lonely. He is not understood by his
is inappropriate to that gloriously active past savage race; he is matched by a wife who
which made him a man of action for whom cannot understand his desire to go on roaming,
and though he may love Telemachus he
inaction is both wasteful and wicked ; therefore
cannot understand a man whose sphere is
he must do what he has been destined to do,
which is to find out new things : the pursuitcentred
of on common duties. Ulysses misses not
knowledge - which is hardly what, in retro- merely the action but the society of other
spect, he could be seen as doing on those active men, his peers, and by gathering his
windy Trojan plains. But what of his dutiesantique
as mariners together he will once more
a king? find himself in a society that thinks like him,
Fortunately this responsibility can be shif- whose hearts are 'one equal temper' and who
ted. If Ulysses is not at home at home there is will not be indifferent to those memories of the
his son Telemachus who is not merely 'Well- past which compel an escape from this present
loved of me' but also has the right qualities to dullness, which insist that one does not give in
'subdue' patiently this rugged people to 'the or give up, but continue: - 'to strive, to seek,
useful and the good'. Conveniently for Ulysses to find and not to yield.'
Telemachus is 'centred in the sphere/Of It was this wholesome impression of fighting
common duties': his horizons are, therefore, the good fight which struck the readers of the
fixed, and his character is limited to those fixed 1842 volume : Tennyson had emerged into the
horizons by the same process which make daylight to inspire a generation with hope and
Ulysses' horizon an arch 'wherethro' /Gleams faith in progress whatever the difficulties. Sir
that untravell'd world' whose margin fades as Robert Peel, for example, read the poem with
one approaches it. Telemachus, moreover, is approval and arranged a State pension !
decent and will not fail in the small, ordinary Hallam, in his essay of 1831, discussing the
emotions, like tenderness to loved ones, and 'five distinctive excellencies' of Tennyson
ordinary respect for the gods - that is the listed, as the second, his power 'of embodying
household gods, with a small 'g'. Such gods himself in ideal characters, or rather moods of
are inappropriate to one who 'strove with character, with such extreme accuracy of
Gods' who have, by now, got a capital G ! Thus adjustment . . .' [quoted Ricks, p. 75] and
the division of labour between father and son 'Ulysses' has never lacked praise for its power,

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 Tennyson : e Ulysses 5 67
is not simply
persuasiveness and moral, uplifting tone, awhat
modern response. Goldwin
Smith,
R. H. Hutton called, in 1888, thein'friendly
an article of 1885 on 'The War
picture of the insatiable craving
Passages in for new
Mauď wrote:
experience, enterprise, and adventure, when
under the control of a luminous reason and
Even the Homeric Ulysses, the man of
purpose and action, seeking with most
self-controlled will' [The Critical Heritage ,
definite aims to regain his own house and
p. 356]. That Tennyson intended this impres-
that of his companions, becomes a 'hungry
sion is suggested by the omission of the poem
'Tithonus'. The first version 'Tithon' was
heart,' roaming aimlessly to 'lands beyond
the sunset,' in the vain hope of being
written in 1833 (but not published until i860)
'washed down by the gulf to the Happy
and shows another way of looking at Hallam's
Isles,' merely to relieve his ennui, and
death. To say that Tennyson faced up to it
dragging his companions with him. We say
would be too positive a description of his
he roams aimlessly - we should rather say,
response. In 'Tithonus' he argues that immor-
he intends to roam, but stands for ever a
tality is not a blessing and where Ulysses longs
listless and melancholy figure on the shore.
for life piled on life in grandiloquent manner
[The Critical Heritage , p. 188]
Tithonus yearns for death amidst hypnotically
But Tennyson's subject is not the Homeric
beautiful nature and decay. But is 'Ulysses5
really a fighting poem ? As with Satan's
Ulysses. Homer gives no account of the last
speeches in Hell there are doubts on the first
voyage or death of his hero though other poets
reading and these doubts grow on say any
that he was killed by his son Telegonus,
whose mother was the enchantress Circe.
second reading. Ulysses complains of idleness,
yet being king of a savage race oughtTennyson's
to keep debt, which he acknowledged,
him busy ; he is contemptuous of his wife
was and
to Dante, who meets Ulysses in Canto 26 of
yet Penelope's history is always at theThe Inferno
back of among the Counsellors of Fraud,
our minds. Ulysses wishes to drink life to the us that it was Ulysses who suggested
reminding
lees but the lees of wine are best left un-drunk. the stratagem of the Wooden Horse at Troy.
And the speaking voice, in spite of what it Virgil compels Ulysses to tell the story of his
says, sounds very much like the voices inlast voyage which appears to have been Dante's
'Tithonus' and 'The Lotos Eaters' : it is weary,invention and which, although it actually took
particularly in a line like 55 which slidesplace, was brief since God's whirlwind strikes
slowly into the 'Moans' of line 56. How the ship and sinks it. There is, therefore,
convenient it is to find one's character above
interplay between this poem and the known
subduing a race to the useful and the good,
outcome of the last voyage just as Penelope's
which are hardly negligible qualities though
history is known and gives the poem resonances
their achievement requires patience and
beyond its intentions. Christopher Ricks
rather unglamorous industry; and how suggests
con- that the recurrent argument about
descending of him to recognise that Tele-
how much Ulysses is admired or endorsed
machus is fit for such industry - and, by like Milton's Satan) may be neither a
(much
implication, little more. For, in spite ofmatter
that of ambivalence nor technical clumsi-
phrase 'Well-loved of me' the tone is distant
ness. He points to the awkward passage about
and probably dismissive. From line 52 Telemachus and suggests that this awkward-
onwards there is a frequent use of 'may': itness may derive from Tennyson's inability to
may be, it may be . . . which rather contra-write about father-son relationships with any
dicts the note of strong will on which the poem conviction: the material is recalcitrant. But
ends; and strong will itself, like restlessness, is the poem is ambivalent. Basil Willey, in More
not exclusively a good thing. Ulysses may beNineteenth Century Studies [1956], includes
Tennyson in his group of 'honest Doubters'
meeting a challenge or avoiding it, and his call
to action may be a more insidious form of and shows how an early poem like 'The Two
escapism than lotos-eating: the refusal to be Voices' reveals a basic conflict between
that dull person who is good and useful. Thisscience and religion, a conflict that produces

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 68 Arnold P. Hinchliffe
the pressures which make this poem
opment. and a
[The Critical Heritage , p
poem like 'Ulysses' so compelling.
man praises Thehim in a suitable m
unconscious troubles the conscious
voyaging: utterance;
Hallam's death was the catalyst for Tennyson
His very faults, doubts, swervings, doublings
to write about his personal dilemma and the
upon himself, have been typical of our age.
general problem of the time. This is not a
We are like the voyagers of a ship, casting
conspiracy to deceive, rather an attempt to
off for new seas, distant shores. We would
synthesize or make sense of the two voices in
still dwell in the old suffocating and dead
the Victorian age. Tennyson lived as much as
haunts, remembering and magnifying their
possible in solitude, a melancholy private man,
pleasant experiences only, and more than
yet he was also Poet Laureate, a public figure
once impelled to jump ashore before it is too
and, as Gladstone saw, too intimately and
late, and stay where our fathers stayed, and
essentially a poet of the nineteenth century to
live as they lived.
separate himself from its leading character-
It is a dilemma
istics - the progress of science and that
a seems
vastcuriously
commercial, mechanical and industrial
appropriate devel-
to our times.

Further Reading: Tennyson: The Critical Heritage , London, 1967, edited by John Jump, is a handsome collection of
contemporary reviews and comments about Tennyson. Christopher Ricks, Tennyson , London, 1972, deals with the
'black blood* of the Tennysons in detail as well as looking at the poetry critically. Unfortunately this volume has no
bibliography. This deficiency is remedied inj. В. Steane, Tennyson , London, 1966, a short and readable account of
the poet. The Pelican Guide to English Literature Vol 6, 'From Dickens to Hardy* has a chapter on Tennyson by Robin
Mayhead and there is a useful chapter in Basil Willey, More Nineteenth Century Studies , London, 1956.

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