:: the end of the odyssey - tennyson's ulysses ::

hey, guys.
I just read don juan, childe harolde's pilgrimage, and beppo (byron) (which I already mentioned) (except that I hadn't quite finished dj then). I will probably be saying something soon about what I thought of them (AWESOME except a little edgy; beautiful prose but the story wasn't; hilarious but poking fun at virtue). in any discussion of them, I'll probably say exactly what was in the parentheses, only wordier. keep an eye out. ha ha. 
       but today I bring you my thoughts on the odyssey, homer's odysseus, and tennyson's version. ...I have a really bad habit of writing in a condescending voice (and "condescending" means talking down to you.
       no, can't take credit for that one. I saw it on pinterest). if you think I'm being condescending 1. I'm not doing it on purpose, I just have a snotty voice 2. talk back to my opinions at the screen. tell me about your alternate opinion (trust me, it feels so much better. although I get funny looks when I'm yelling at a screen...). 
       anyway. homer's odyssey! aka death! gore! and rich young promiscuous drunks! ...um, yeah.
       
       homer's odyssey has garnered a reputation for having a happy ending. odysseus returns and kills the bad guys; he comes into his own, loved and welcomed by his son and wife and household. everybody cheers, and we all live happily ever after. it wasn't until I read the odyssey for reals in my senior year writing class that I even knew: it doesn't really end. 
       sure, the book-itself's end is happy -- odysseus is home and the gods are appeased and everyone is rejoicing. the part I hadn't known before (and this is right after O and P have just been reunited) was this:

                                               "Then said Odysseus:
  'My dear, we have not won through to the end.
  One trial -- I do not know how long -- is left for me 
  to see fulfilled. Teiresias' ghost forewarned me
  the night I stood upon the shore of Death, asking
  about my friends' homecoming and my own. ...
  
  Teiresias told me I must take an oar 
  and trudge the mainland, going from town to town,
  until I discover men who have never known
  the salt blue sea, nor flavor of salt meat --
  strangers to painted prows, to watercraft
  and oars like wings, dipping across the water.
  The moment of revelation he foretold
  was this, for you may share the prophecy:
  some traveller falling in with me will say:
  "A winnowing fan, that on your shoulder, sir?"
  There I must plant my oar, on the very spot,
  with burnt offerings to Poseidon of the Waters:
  a ram, a bull, a great buck boar. Thereafter
  when I come home again, I am to slay
  full hekatombs to the gods who own broad heaven,
  one by one. 
                       Then death will drift upon me
  from seaward, mild as air, mild as your hand,
  in my well-tended weariness of age,
  contented folk around me on our island.
  He said all this must come.'" 
{book 23, lines 279-283; 298-319} 

odysseus was going to have to leave again, go on another journey, before he could come home for good and die in peace. 
       I know. I was kind of burnt, too. (lame way to treat this poor dude. lame lame lame.) it made me appreciate tennyson's poem 'ulysses' much more, though -- and that's really where I was going with this. 'ulysses' (the roman name) is about odysseus (the greek name) as he decides to go on that last journey. the time has come.  

       at the first, the poem portrays odysseus as a proud man -- "Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole / Unequal laws unto a savage race, / That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me." his wife is old; his race is savage, while he, both literally and figuratively, sits above them; they are concerned with the basic necessities of life, while he sees beyond and yearns for something higher. odysseus regrets that his people don't recognize him as someone great ("and know not me"). he scorns their ignorance. 
       this desire for recognition continues as he turns to the reader in a soliloquy, revisiting the scenes of his triumph, reliving the glorious days of his strength. here the poem takes a turn, and he is no more the powerful but caged king of the poem's beginning. then he seemed contained, restless, like a lion; now he is an old man, nodding over a cup of wine as he says, "when I was your age..." his spirit, though, yearns to finish his days, not in unrecognized decrepit age, but once again as odysseus the fearless, the courageous, the bold.  
       he leaves his kingdom to his son -- it's almost a will, knowing he is not coming back to rule again -- and seeks the other sailors who are still alive, to see if they want to come on this last voyage. odysseus wants to distinguish himself by "Some work of noble note" that "may yet be done"; and so he leaves ithaka "to sail beyond the sunset...till I die." although he has been made "weak by time and fate," he has rediscovered himself: the strong, proud warrior -- of another age, perhaps, but still the odysseus of adventures. he sails away, carried on by his strength of will; unwilling to die in obscurity, he finally proves himself to himself by facing death; learning "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

       long explanation, I know, but the ulysses here matches homer's odysseus. homer's man is also proud and rather vain of his part in the trojan war (though understandably so). he wants recognition -- a difficulty when he returns as a beggar and has to resist his desire to plunge in and set everything right. he does get restless: he even tires of kalypso, and yearns for home. (as a side note, I think this is an aspect of his restlessness: he loves the excitement of adventure, and while he wants the comfort of home, the draw for him is the struggle along the way. if his home had been nonexistent, he would have wanted to leave kalypso anyway, I think. home wasn't what he exclusively yearned for.) 
       
       homer doesn't address what happened after odysseus's return. it’s clear that O will not be allowed to stay home forever (book 23, lines 280-281, as quoted above). still, we don't know when this “trial” would occur. (that's part of the intrigue of tennyson's poem for me.)       
       as far as O's personality goes, though, tennyson's portrayal seems pretty consistent: a proud adventurer, restless when inactive -- who now, after years of stagnation, wants one last adventure before death.