Sensation and Memory in Tennyson's "Ulysses" Author(s): L. M. Findlay Source: Victorian Poetry, Vol. 19, No.

2 (Summer, 1981), pp. 139-149 Published by: West Virginia University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40035465 . Accessed: 03/05/2011 05:08
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Memory Tennyson's "Ulysses"

L. M. FINDLAY

Sensation

and

in

is an arena where past and present, CONSCIOUSNESS sensation interact. This situation affords memory and opportunities for creation and control of "reality"that were as evident to classical adepts of ars memoria as they are to modern students of psychology and phenomenology.1 However, awareness of the conditions of consciousness does not mean that we can fully comprehend and control its processes. Tennyson, strugglingto come to terms with the death of Hallam, was painfully aware of his own mental frailty and the accommodations made by consciousness to grief. The reality of personal loss had to be placed in some wider context lest it cloud his mind forever. In "Ulysses"Tennyson adopts a persona famed for his shrewdnessand ability to survive, though now close to the end of his life. Will physical extremity induce a comparable mental extremity, or will heroic toughmindedness intercede? We are all familiar with the ambiguity of Tennyson's answer. The present essay attempts a fresh resolution of this ambiguity according to the consciousness activated in "Ulysses"by spatial and other sensory references,2and by their interaction with memory in Ulysses, Tennyson, and ourselves. Ulysses' perceptions and recollections are vivid, impressive, rich in resonance. However, their details are not

'Cf. Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (London, 1966), chs. 1 and 2. There has been a markedemphasis recently on sensation as a conceptual activity, whetherall sense-data is seen as ultimately linguistic (the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) or visual. Cf., e.g., Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writingsof Benjamin Lee Whorf(1897-1941), ed. John B. Carroll(New York, 1956); Colin Murray Turbayne, The Myth of Metaphor (Yak Univ. Press, 1962), p. 104; and Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking (Univ. of California Press, 1969), pp. 226-253. 2For a general comment on such terms, see Christopher Kicks, lennyson (London, 1971), p. 303. For a comparison with Dante see James G. Taaffe, "Circle Imagery in Tennyson's In Memoriam? VP, 1 (1963), 123-131. For his geometry of the emotions see David F. Goslee, "Spatial and Temporal Vision in Early Tennyson," VP, 11 (1973), 323-329; and Gerhard Joseph, Tennysonian Love: The Strange Diagonal (Uriw. of Minnesota Press, 1969), pp. 34, 98-101, and "Tennyson's Optics: The Eagle's Gaze," PMLA, 92 (1977), 420-428. Quotations from Tennyson's poetry follow The Poems of Tennyson, ed. Christopher Ricks (London, 1969).

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VICTORIAN POETRY

uniformly attractive, nor are their resonances entirely under his control. We participate in Ulysses' mental life with increasing vigilance and are eventually led beyond him by allusion to alternative versions of the Ulysses theme. I Sense experience in "Ulysses"is grounded in the four elements, but it is never value-free. References to earth, air, fire, and water convey mood and express judgment. The expansive ocean is firmly established as Ulysses' element, in contrast to the confining crags of Ithaca. Ulysses sees his life in terms of drinking "delight of battle," and the ocean as a possible final resting place. Appetite and elemental affinity are as closely matched in him as in the land-bound Ithacanswho "hoard,and sleep, and feed." This much is apparent to any attentive reader of the poem. References to sound and hearing are more equivocal, especially when linked to reputation as in the double-edged hyperbole of "I am become a name," or the ominously vague hope of "Some work of noble note." There is a disquieting contrast between the reassuringly specific sounds from Ulysses' past- the ringing clash of arms at Troy, the smack of oars in "sounding furrows"- and the ultimate ambiguity of death, "that eternal silence." The present mediation between past and future is ambiguously animistic: "the deep/ Moans round with many voices." Ulysses' element communicates with him in a way unmatched by Penelope and Telemachus, but in a way that may not be entirely to his credit. Tactile references reinforce the contrast between Ulysses and the Ithacans. Their ruggedness will gradually be worn away by the "soft degrees" of Telemachus' reform, whereas Ulysses and his mariners have savored more violent and fleeting encounters. They have moved through the vexations of the sea3and the clash of battle, and Ulysses now conceives himself as "a part of all that [he has] met," apparently oblivious to the burden of self-diffusion in his words. The sense of touch is significantly emptied of physical reference in the psychic metaphor of "my purpose holds," preparing us for the pathos of "It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles." The potentially emotive verb "touch" suggests the intensity of Ulysses' desire to relive his past experience with Achilles, but the dominant navigational sense of the term here indicates that renewal of human acquaintance may not be granted to a man who has shown himself neither capable nor desirous of more than casual contact.

}Vexare means to shake or jostle. See, e.g., Aeneidvi. 355-356; De rerum natura vi. 430.

L M. FINDLAY / 141
Hearing and touch make an important contribution to the rich texture of "Ulysses," but the preponderant sensory detail is visual or spatial, a fitting emphasis in a poem where memory is so prominent. Most adepts of ars memoria support Cicero's contention that sight, as the strongest of the senses, plays the major role in re-creatingthe past.4 In "Ulysses"the visualspatial dimension manifests itself on all levels from syntax and prosody through a full range of lexical and symbolic effects. A consideration of the "spatial form" of the poem indicates that the movement of each section creates a spatial equivalent for the situation it presents.5 This is evident in the opening lines of "Ulysses," where the unequivocal subject of the first sentence ("I") is placed in medias res, but not in furtherance of some briskly epic purpose. Ulysses is syntactically immured at the center of hostile circumstance, flanked on one side by stultifying things and on the other by equally distasteful activities. The second section of the poem (11.6-32) is essentially linear in effect. Elan is a matter of memory for Ulysses now. His past is presented in an episodic measure, sometimes staccato or fractured, sometimes fluent through several lines, but always enforcing the notion of the hero's appetite for adventure and the obstacles facing him.6 The third section (11.33-43) is much smoother than the second. The apostrophe to Telemacluis is prosodically apt: seven of the ten lines are enjambed, and less strenuously than elsewhere in the poem, thereby supporting the idea of a smooth transition of power from father to son and the need to pursue a gradualist course. The final section of the poem reverts to the episodic measure of the second, but there is a further complication. The contradictions of Ulysses' situation are more manifest than ever and are expressed by the contest among will, precedent, possibility, and the palpable inertia of the present. These tensions are maintained till the final line, where the forces that oppose Ulysses' resolve are given the last word: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."7

4See De Oratore II. lxxxvii and Yates, The Art of Memory, pp. 19ff. For a rigorous investigation of the "metaphoricity of metaphor," see Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, trans. R. Czerny with K. Mclaughlan and J. Costello, S. J. (Toronto Univ. Press, 1977), 143177. 5See Joseph Frank, "Spatial Form in Modern Literature,"SR, 53 (1945), 22 1-240;433-456; 643-653; Murray Krieger, "The Ekphrastic Principle and the Still Movement of Poetry; or Laokoon Revisited," The Play and Place of Criticism(Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1967);and the stimulating essays in NLH, 3, iii (Spring, 1972). 6At this stage I wish to avoid the evaluative terms used by John Pettigrew, who sees the first and third sections as revealing "less attractive characteristics," the second and fourth disclosing "an essentially heroic Ulysses." See "Tennyson's 'Ulysses': A Reconciliation of Opposites," VP, 1 (1963), 37. 7Cf. Ricks, Tennyson, p. 126.

142 / VICTORIAN POETRY Inferences based on prosodic evidence are necessarily provisional. However, the sense of movement in the four sections of the poem and the spatial configurations suggested by each are greatly strengthened by Tennyson's use of locations. The main contrast is between the closed, stable environment associated with the circle, and the very different environment associated with infinite linearity. The poem opens with Ulysses trapped at the center of domestic and political obligation, "By this still hearth,among these barren crags." Ulysses' sense of entrapment contrasts starkly with Telemachus, "centred in the sphere / Of common duties," and the more noticeably so because of the affinities with the linear established in the second section of the poem. Ulysses' restlessness is well captured in the contrast between the topography of Ithacaand Troy: the congested skies of the one, the spacious plains and uncluttered horizons of the other. But Ulysses is most at home on the "dark broad seas," kinesis made measureless. Descriptions of movement across the seas abound in the poem, and their details and resonance furnish important clues to the nature and justification of Ulysses' wanderlust. One of the most striking of these references takes the form of an axiom:
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.

This spatial stylization might have used the term "arc,"thereby pointing to navigation and the fact that Ulysses' metaphor is shaped by the experiences of his odyssey. By preferring"arch"Tennyson evokes furtherassociations: through architecture with the pillars of Hercules and the limits of the known world; through Homeric an he with the past and the onset of death.8 The arch of years is also to be found in Dante's Purgatorio, where Sapia describes herself as "gia discendendo l'arco d'i miei anni";9that is, at the stage in her life when, to be sapient, she ought to have turned her thoughts to God. But it is Sapia herself who describes a parabola, whereas Ulysses moves and sees through a parabolic vista, steering a course towards the regressive horizon. Whether or not Tennyson intended us to see a veiled

"See, e.g.. Homer: The Odyssey, trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb Classical Library(New York, 1919), i. 188; ii. 254; xi.438. For Odysseus' imminent bloody retribution (j)honou archen), see xxiv. 165. 9Purgatono xiu.1 14. All quotations in the original follow Dante Alighieri: The Divine Comedy, trans, with commentary by Charles S. Singleton, Bollingen Series 80 (Princeton Univ. Press, 1970-75). The translation used is the 1805 one by Henry Cary, which Tennyson seems to have known better than Henry Boyd's. Cf. Convivio IV.xxiii.6-1 1 fora detailed exposition of this idea. Byron plays on the shift from triumphalarch to vacant ark on the flood of boundless misery in Chi/de Harold's Pilgrimage IV. xcii. Scholars have noted how this poem anticipates the sentiments of Ulysses at several points.

L M. FINDLA Y / 143 reference here to optical possibilities in a railway tunnel,10he seems to be making full use of the "eruditus oculos" ascribed to him by Arthur Hallam,1' and we are certainly invited to ponder Ulysses' spatial metaphor for life. Changes in perception due to movement do not promote in Ulysses a chastening sense of the relativity of his views. His eyes continue to stare avidly ahead. Not for him the cloistered vision of "The Palace of Art"with its "shadowed grots of arches interlaced." But does he at this stage offer us more than man as projectile, life as compulsive tourism? The image of the arch is supported by another striking passage a few lines later:
And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

The key question here is whether Ulysses can point to knowledge as the justification for his wandering. The syntax invites us to connect the "sinking star" with Ulysses as well as with knowledge. The ambiguity seems deliberate: Ulysses' capacity to know dwindles with his vital powers rather than providing consolation in old age. But is following knowledge certainly equivalent to knowing? The uneasiness of Ulysses'formulation is sustained in the notion of going beyond "human thought." The transcendence involved is more than intellectual swagger. The "bound" in question may mean a boundary or a leap. The sense of a margin or limit clearly dominates, but signifies metahuman stamina, not apotheosis. Ulysses' ambition is horizontal, not vertical, its emphasis quantitative rather than qualitative, despite his opening attempt to distinguish between stagnation and real living. The secondary suggestion of thought as a series of leaps reminds us that Ulysses' mind has bounded back and forth throughout the poem. However, we are still not certain about the natureand value of Ulysses' thinking and knowledge. He himself has pointed to the limited awareness of the Ithacans who "know not" him, unlike the marinerswith whom he has "toiled, and wrought, and thought." One might expect "fought"instead of "thought" here; the cerebral substitution is uneasy, like all such references in the poem. But the Tennyson canon contains numerous explorations of epistemology that distinguish between true and false, ephemeral and

l()Thissuggestion is made by Paul Turner, Tennyson, Routledge Author Guides (London, 1976), p. 88. "See Extract from A Review of Tennyson s Poems, Published in The Englishman s Magazine, 1831," Remains in Verseand Prose of Arthur Henry Hal/am (London, 1863), p. 304.

144 / VICTORIAN POETRY lasting knowledge.12 After indicating his son in a rather wooden way and Ulysses gestures more expansively, "Therelies the port,"13 follows this with the third version of the spatial image that is central to his conception of cognition and life:
for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths until I die. Of all the western stars,

The exceeding of the bounds of human thought is now translated into navigational terms, and we feel the incremental force, physical and metaphysical, of "beyond."There seems at first sight no way of being surer about this passage than about its two predecessors. However, the obvious Homeric allusion helps clarify matters. In his annotated edition of 77?^ Poems of Tennyson Christopher Ricks states that the poet is adapting Odyssey v. 270-275 at this point, but misses Tennyson's irony. The baths of Ocean (loetron Okeanoio) figure once only in the Odyssey,14and the crucial circumstance is that Ulysses sets out alone from Calypso's isle after showing great caution and shrewdness in determining whether Calypso had set a trap for him on his hazardous journey. Ulysses is prepared to "endure, with a heart within ... patient of affliction,"15but nevertheless builds his raft with great care and takes the helm vigilantly while Calypso summons a warm breeze to waft him on his way. The main implications of this Homeric echo seem clear. Ulysses is on his own, despite his invocation of the mariners, but is incapable of the careful calculation and vigorous self-reliance of earlier days. He acknowledges his loss of strength but not the full measure of his isolation. His visionary capacities, such as they are, are hobbled to his own needs. The affirmation, "Much have I seen and known," is subtly questioned by Tennyson. Ulysses may be wide-ranging and synthetic in his perceptions, fitting past and present detail to his image for resolute advance- unlike the analytical Telemachus "discerning to fulfil"- but this does not of itself make him a "lord of large experience"like

l2See, e.g., "The Progress of Spring," 11.10 1ff .; "The Two Voices," 11.169ff.;In Memoriam, 24ff. Prologue, XVI, CXIV, CXXlX;"The Last Tournament,"11. 597ff.;"Mechanophilus,"11. This distinction has been shrewdly discussed indifferent connections by Edgar Hill Duncan, "Tennyson: A Modern Appraisal," 7^^,4(1959), 13-30;and G. Robert Stange, "Tennyson's Garden of Art: A Study of the Hesperides," PMLA, 67 (1952), 732-748. l3The relative weakness of the verb "to be is appropriate to Telemachus. The use of "lies" once again seems strategically ambiguous, keeping the possibility of Ulysses' self-deception before us. l4This usage also occurs at Iliad xviii, 489 where there is a contrast between the stars that bathe in ocean and the sole exception, Orion. 15 The Odyssey of Homer, trans. S. H. Butcher and A. Lang (London, 1921), p. 84.

L M. FINDLAY / 145
Hallam, one who knows neither entrapment nor anomie because his "faith has centre everywhere, / Nor cares to fix itself to form."16 II A fuller appreciation of the interplay of sensation and memory in the poem can be gained by considering the nature of UJysses'imagination, as revealed in his use of figurative language. The most sustained figures in the poem are, of course, not epic similes but those spatial images already discussed. Puns and animistic devices have also been mentioned. The latter may be partially defended as true to the Homeric world, consistent with the impulses behind the naming of the Happy Isles, though they also reveal Ulysses' displacement of humanity from his family and nation to the milieu of his heroic endeavors. The reliance on synecdoche and metonymy is almost inevitable in a poem whose persona is a part of all that he has met, intently manipulating details rich in personal association. These devices can be used pejoratively- "As though to breathe were life"17 but more often they show Ulysses focusing on the salient virtues of himself and his crew: "My mariners, / Souls . . . Free hearts, free foreheads . . . We are not now that strength . . . One equal temper of heroic hearts." But what is the status of such a "free"heart? How does it sit with Ulysses' "hungryheart," and is the freedom involved the kind that comes with wisdom, as Cicero reminds us in Paradoxa StoicorumV* It may be a dubious form of hero's in MaudlM.87.19Furthermore,the detachment, like the "heart-free" "freeforeheads" seem to have little in common with the brows that witness so much grief in Homer.20The Virgilian and Ciceromanfrons is certainly the mirror of feeling, and hearts and foreheads will thus registerthe same in any trusting company. But in this case such unanimity of the inner and outer man ought not to obscure Ulysses' gift for craftiness. Ulysses affirms his kinship in idealized terms. Idealization is itself akin to euphemism, and it is not surprising to see a euphemistic element in the references to death that outnumber the unequivocal admission, "until I die": "that eternal

IASeeIn Memoriam XLII.7; XXX1II.2-4. Ulysses seems closer to Lucretius' proposition that there can be no center in infinity: De rerum natura 1.1070-71: "non medium nil esse potest . . . infinita." l7The scepter passed on to Telemachus may also depreciate by association. The Greek skeptron originally meant a prop or crutch for the lame or aged, the kind of appendage odious to Ulysses. Cf. Odyssey xiii.437; xiv.31; xvii.199; xviii.103. I8V.33: "dictum est igitur ab eruditissimis viris, nisi sapientem liberum esse neminem." Hallam seems to have this passage in mind in his "Essay on the Philosophical Writings of Cicero," Remains in Verse and Prose, p. 209. l9Cf.also The Princess V.409; "Oenone," 11. 167ff.; In Memoriam XXXVIII, CVI: "Mine be the strength";and "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," 11.1 22ff. 20See,e.g., Odyssey xxii.86, 94, 296.

POETRY 146/ VICTORIAN

silence . . . When I am gone ... It may be that the gulfs will wash us down." The forces of negation and privation are also apparent, in the incidences of litotes, for example: "I cannot rest from travel . . . not least, but honoured of them all ... decent not to fail . . . Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods." The use of this form of emphasis keeps the alternatives to Ulysses' chosen course constantly before us. However, a more important source of the imaginative energies in the poem lies in another cluster of related devices: antithesis, tautology, repetition, and redundancy. The basis of the poem in contrast occasions such apparently balanced propositions as "To rust unburnished, not to shine in use... all times I have enjoyed / Greatly, have suffered greatly . . . Though much is taken, much abides ... He works his work, I mine." The sense of measured discrimination is deceptive. Closer scrutiny discloses a self-glorifying impulse, confirming the suspicion that Ulysses' greatness has more quantity than quality, while the reference to Telemachus is damnably neat, the kind of sundering that might gratify a martial mind addicted to swift decisions but not a devotee of thought and knowledge. This particular antithesis is also tautologous ("He works his work") and underscores the self-referring insularity of different philosophies of life. (Sound is evaluative here too, pedestrian and ugly repetition giving way to the rising assonance of "I mine.") Redundancy may strike us at first as simple emphasis, as in the "barren crags" at the beginning of the poem. But there is a definite cumulative effect to formulations such as these: "For ever and for ever ... to pause, to make an end ... all times . . . always ... all experience . . . something more, / A bringer of new things... to store and hoard myself . ..yearning in and desire ... my son, mine own... slow prudence ... toiled, . . . old; / Old age ... old days . . . something . . . Some work . . . that wrought which we are, we are." These are surely the accents of self-persuasion. Ulysses' repetition and circular logic are deeply ironic in a poem that strives to establish his affinities with the new and the infinitely linear. The illusory progress of such restatement suggests that the gratifications of Ulysses' "hungry heart" and mind are at least in part deceptive. Not surprisingly, he cannot steer clear of hyperbole either, but again Tennyson uses ironic echo to aid our interpretation. When Ulysses declares that "Life piled on life / Were all too little," it is difficult not to think of death: corpses heaped on the battlefield, and the barrows of the dead;21 or the titanic stratagem of piling Ossa on Olympus, Pelion on Ossa.

21 See, e.g., Iliad xxiii; Odyssey i.239; iv.584; xxiv.80; Electra's description of Trojan and In Memoriam CXXVII.7-8: "The red fool-fury of the carnage, Choephoroi, 11.35Off.; Seine / Should pile her barricades with dead."

L M. FINDLAY / 147
Homer points to the foolishness of such overreachingthrough the blighting of the youthful promise of Ephialtes and Otus.22 Dante mentions only Ephialtes (Fialte), but stresses the fact that his weapons are now immobile: "le braccia ch'el mend, gia mai non move" (Inferno xxxi. 94-96). Ulysses' ambitions are horizontal, but the language wherein he expresses them has admonitory associations with illegitimate revolt and a doom designed to terrify one who would "shine in use." A similar process is at work in the concluding referenceto "thatstrength which in old days / Moved earth and heaven." There seems to be a titanic force again in mind, but the reader's first connection may not be with Ulysses and his crew but with the power of their greatest foe, constantly referred to as the Earth-Shaker (Poseidaon enosichthon). Misled by memory, Ulysses seems intent on giving Poseidon another chance, now that he is no longer under the protection of Pallas Athene nor accompanied by his crew. "Ulysses" is a richly ambivalent poem, nor would one wish to reduce its meaning to one narrowly programmatic reading. However, one needs somehow to come to terms with the contradictions in the poem, whether or not Tennyson ever did- or Hallam ever could have:
But a still deeper feeling is caused by that immediate knowledge of the past which is supplied I fear these expressions will be thought to border on mysticism. Yet I must by memory believe that if any one, in the least accustomed to analyse his feelings, will take the pains to reflect on it, he may remembermoments in which the burdenof this mystery has lain heavy on him; in which he has felt it miserableto exist, as it were, piecemeal, and in the continual flux of a stream; in which he has wondered, as at a new thing, how we can be, and have been, and not be that which we have been. But the yearnings of the human soul for the irrecoverablepast are checked by a stern knowledge of impossibility. So also in its eager rushings towards the future, its desire of that mysterious something which now is not, but which in another minute we shall be, the soul is checked by a lesson of experience, which teaches her that she cannot carry into that future the actual mode of her existence. But were these impossibilities removed, were it conceivable that the soul in one state should co-exist with the soul in another, how impetuous would be that desire of reunion, which even the awful laws of time cannot entirely forbid!21

The imagery and sentiments of Hallam's prose have much in common with Tennyson's poem. However, Hallam checks his impetuous urge to recover the irrecoverable, though vividly aware of the allure of such an enterprise. Ulysses in old age has forsaken discretion for valor, a shift of allegiance more understandable than admirable. Homer and Dante have already been invoked in an attempt to clarify some of Tennyson's ambiguities. Such a procedure is always hazardous, but Tennyson seems deliberately to activate our memories of the Odyssey and Divine Comedy in order to suggest the most appropriate response to Ulysses' nostalgia. A concluding comparison of Tennyson and Dante may

22Odysseyxi.3l 1-320. A. Dwight Culler notes the Homeric echo in the course of a reading of the poem quite different from mine. Sec 77??Poetry of Tennyson (Yale Univ. Press, 1977), p. 94. 21"OnSympathy," Remains in Verse and Prose, p. 105.

148 / VICTORIAN POETRY shed further light on the question of Ulysses' nobility and the probity of Tennyson's entwining of memory and truth. Two passages from Dante recommend themselves in this connection, one well known to commentators on "Ulysses,"the other not. The general situation of Ulysses by the seashore at dusk, a "gray spirit yearning in desire" to be embarked again on his endless quest but physically incapable of such motion, offers an ironic parallel to the eagerness of the true pilgrims in Dante:
Noi eravam lunghesso mare ancora, come gente che pensa a suo cammino, che va col cuore e col corpo dimora. (Purg. ii. 10-12) Meanwhile we linger'd by the water's brink, Like men, who, musing on their road, in thought Journey, while motionless the body rests.

Pious eagerness is appeased by the Angel of Faith whose swift bark has no need of sail or oar. This is divine transcendence not egotistic distortion of the facts of nature. Tennyson could not explicitly introduce a Christian moral context into his poem without violating its special nature. "Ulysses" implicates such a context with great tact. The second apposite passage from Dante is the account of the last voyage of Ulisse in Inferno xxvi. It is rich in poetic justice. Ulisse suffers as the larger tongue of a double flame shared with Diomedes because of their fraudulent acquisition of the Palladium. Dante is relentlessly censorious, despite his eagerness to learn more about Ulisse ("rediche del disio ver' lei mi piego!"). The witlessness of the last voyage ("folle volo") will end with Poseidon having the last word: "41 mar fu sovra noi richiuso." Ulisse takes the form most graphically epitomizing his verbal trickery:
Lo maggior corno de la fiamma antica comincio a crollarsi mormorando, pur come quella cui vento affatica; indi la cima qua e la menando, come fosse la lingua che parlasse, gitto voce di fuori e disse. {Inf. xxvi. 85-90) Of the old flame forthwith the greater horn Began to roll, murmuring, as a fire That labours with the wind, then to and fro Wagging the top, as a tongue uttering sounds, Threw out its voice and spake.

Tongue and breath were the favorite instruments of Ulisse when alive, and they are the symbols of his torture in hell. As if this were not enough for Dante's allegorical purposes, he has Ulisse dramatize his talent for silver-

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tongued deception.24 He persuades his crew to go beyond the pillars of Hercules, appealing to them as brothers who share his lofty ideals. Then comes a damaging admission:
Li miei compagni fee' io si aguti, con questa orazion picciola, al cammino, che a pena poscia li avrei ritenuti. (xxvi. 121-123) With these few words 1 sharpened for the voyage The mind of my associates, that I then Could scarcely have withheld them.

The 1rati have now become compagni, and Ulisse mockingly confesses to the uncertainty of his control over those whom he has just fatally manipulated. He is alone, having wilfully turned the poop of his vessel to the morning (and the known world). His true kin are neither his crew nor his family, but other arch-deceivers like Diomedes. It seems possible that Tennyson followed the principle at work in Dante's portrayal of Ulisse. The form of Ulisse embodies a moral judgment, and his brilliant, hollow rhetoric justifies his condemnation. Tennyson's Ulysses is as much alone as Ulisse. Ulysses' notions of knowledge and truth are distorted, if not entirely specious; his desires now mock his failing physical powers; and, the most pathetic plague of all, his dazzling powers of persuasion now play upon himself. He is convinced by his orazion picciola, and his frustrations increase commensurately;we need not be won over by his words and may thus increase our obligation to Tennyson as moral tutor and master poet. Sensory references and figurative language collaborate effectively to this poem immediacy and unity and to encourage our participation in give Ulysses' mental life; but our memories are not identical with his. The allusive fabric of the poem controls its larger meanings- one might say its ethical import- in an aptly unobtrusive way that curbs the claims of Ulysses. Memory can create the present and future in the image of the past, but only at a price. It allows Ulysses to sustain the galling illusion of heroic quest, just as it undermines Tennyson's resolve to go on living after the death of Hallam. In "Ulysses" there is a vivid dramatization of tendencies Tennyson shares with his persona, but the pains and consolations of personal memory are placed in the cautionary context of that collective literary memory where Homer and Dante reign.

24Foran alert and suggestive treatment of Ulysses as "self-assuredrhetorician"like Ulisse, see James R. Kincaid, Tennyson's Major Poems: The Comic and Ironic Patterns (Yale Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 44-45.