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Robert Graves (1895-1985)
There’s almost a sub genre of poems in English about Ulysses. They would make a fascinating anthology. and I’m steadily adding them to The Poetry Voice index. But in these poems Ulysses is usually heroic or admirable. Most often he’s someone to sympathise with. This poem is unsual in the way it treats its hero.
Graves fancied himself as a classicist. He also had an independent and often idiosyncratic view of the world.
Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)
Peter McDonald printed this as as the last poem in his edition of MacNeice’s ‘Collected poems’. It has an attractive combination of elegy, defeat and determination.
Thalassa is the Greek word for the sea. For a classicist like MacNeice, it’s overloaded with connotations. From Xenaphon and his ragged army, desperately trying to get home, to the image of ageing Ulysses, pushing out on one more journey.
This is taken from McDonald’s beautiful ‘Collected poems’ Faber and Faber, 2007
Ulysses again. But this time a celebration of the long and difficult journey, its pleasures and necessities. Without such a journey, Ithaka is just another rock. Without Ithaka, the journey is a random collection of terror and pleasure.
C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933) wrote in Greek and lived in Alexandria. He may well be one of the most interesting poets of the twentieth century. This poem is taken from C.P. Cavafy Collected poems (revised ed) translated by Keeley and Sherrard, edited by George Savidis. It’s a book full of unique magic.
Homer's story of Ulysses has attracted numerous poets over the years. In a previous episode, I read Tennyson’s, perhaps the most well known, in which the aging hero sets out again, admirable, undaunted and defiant. But the return of Ulysses to Ithaca can be read in other ways. Even within Homer's version, his actions are troubling. The wholesale slaughter of the suitors and the execution of the maids seem excessive rather than heroic.
And more prosaically, after all those adventures what would the morning after his triumph feel like. A.D Hope’s version is less heroic, less hopeful, perhaps more realistic.
A.D.Hope (1907-2000) was an Australian poet, an austere formalist, a writer of satires, considered by some to be one of the best Australian poets of the century, but often overlooked except for the much anthologised ‘Australia’. ‘The End of A Journey’ is taken from his 'Collected Poems 1930-1970'.
This is one of the great dramatic monolgues in English. It’s easy to be carried along by the speaker’s undimmed enthusiasm for exploration (mental or physical) and his reluctance to give into old age. The last two lines are justly famous. But in this poem, as in the best of Browning’s, what is being said is undercut by how it is said. If you pay attention, the poem is having its cake and eating it; admiring the exuberant old explorer, while allowing you to see his arrogance and selfishness.