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Evan Ulman

Stephen Hinds

HONORS 210 B

December 14, 2018

A Newer World: Grief and Renewal from Homer to Tennyson

Psychologists postulate that there are five stages of grief: first denial, then anger, then

bargaining, then depression, followed finally by acceptance and renewal. After the death of his

dear friend, Arthur Hallam, Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote a series of poems mourning Hallam’s

death, later published together in a collection called In Memoriam (1850).1 To gather the strength

to confront the reality of his friend’s death, Tennyson distanced himself from the content of his

poems by setting them in ancient Greek environs. Tennyson had been educated in the classics at

an early age and his first poem was in the style of an epic, and so it makes sense that in two of

the In Memoriam poems Tennyson reimagines scenes from The Odyssey. Of these two poems,

the first, The Lotos-Eaters (1832), represents depression and the second, Ulysses (1833),

represents acceptance. In these poems, Tennyson reconvenes with the classical tradition to cope

with the loss of one of his contemporaries.

In this paper, I will first compare the similarities between The Odyssey and Tennyson’s

two poems, as well as the similarities between The Lotos-Eaters and Ulysses themselves. In

doing so, I will shed light on the relevant aspects of the classical tradition that Tennyson seeks to

channel in his reimagining. Then I will contrast the pieces to find the differences in theme, and

then analyze these differences in order to postulate why Tennyson chose The Odyssey as the

vehicle to express his grief. I will conclude with a reflection on the universality of the classical

1 DeM&B p. 201
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tradition, explaining why 8th century BCE epic poetry would resonate with a 19th century CE

poet, and furthermore, why that 19th century poet’s work still resonates with 21st century readers.

The scene from which Tennyson takes his inspiration for The Lotos-Eaters takes up a

mere paragraph off Book 9 of The Odyssey, and it is bookended by other vignettes which retell

Odysseus’s struggle to return home. The story proceeding the lotos-eaters tells of how Odysseus

and his men slayed a vengeful band of Kikones, and a later story retells how Odysseus bested a

cyclops with a taste for human flesh. The common theme in these vignettes is a sense of danger,

but the lotos-eaters scene differs from others Homer describes because the danger Odysseus and

his men face is foreboding and ominous, but not physical. While the lotos-eaters “did not plan

death for [Odysseus’s] comrades,” eating the lotos plants did make them “forgetful of their

homeward way,” which to Odysseus is unacceptable. The men must be bound and dragged to the

ships to avoid the temptation of staying on the island forever. Tennyson picks up on this sense of

danger, describing the land of the lotus-eaters in contradictory and unsettling terms. On the

island it seems to be “always afternoon,” yet in the sky “stood the moon.” A “slender stream”

appears to alternatingly “fall and pause and fall,” and “three mountain-tops…[stand] sunset-

flush’d” and “shadowy” at the same time. Tennyson’s use of ethereal language seems to imply

that Odysseus’s men are suffering from hallucinatory effects before they even encounter the

lotos-eaters. The lotos has the same effect on the men in Tennyson’s retelling as it does in

Homer’s original, as the men promise to “return no more” to their “island home.” The Lotos-

Eaters diverges most significantly from the original story in its conclusion: instead of continuing

their journey, the men decide to “not wander more” and stay in the land of the lotos-eaters

forever. Ulysses also bears some resemblance to the original text, with important caveats.

Tennyson’s scene of Odysseus urging his men to leave Ithaca and go on another voyage is

inspired by a prophecy Odysseus receives, but the scene is otherwise not described by Homer.
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Therefore, Ulysses serves as a trailer for a sequel Homer never had the chance to write, and as a

thought experiment for how Odysseus would react to domestic life after years of war and travel.

While Tennyson takes his inspiration from scenes in The Odyssey, the similarities between his

work and Homer’s quickly run out. For one, Odysseus addresses “[his] mariners,” even though

in The Odyssey the “Souls that…toil’d, and wrought, and thought with [him]” died before

making it home to Ithaca. In the original prophecy, Odysseus is told that he must go to a place so

far inland that its inhabitants have never known the sea, and yet in Ulysses, he plans “To sail

beyond the sunset, and the baths/Of all the western stars until I die.” These instances of artistic

license allow Tennyson to retell parts of The Odyssey in a way to fits with his themes of grief,

acceptance, and renewal.

Ulysses and The Lotos-Eaters share some thematic elements. Where they are most

similar, however, is where they diverge the most from Homer’s epic. Most notably, they both

reject The Odyssey’s theme of nostos, which is a desire or duty to return home that was important

in Greek culture. In The Lotos-Eaters, the men in chorus admit that while “it was sweet to dream

of Fatherland/Of child, of wife, and slave,” that those dreams were “evermore.” Odysseus, who

in The Odyssey managed to wrangle his men back to the ship, is nowhere to been seen after the

first line of the poem; his first cry of “courage” goes unanswered. In Ulysses, Tennyson goes as

far as imagining that Odysseus himself had rejected nostos as he complains of his “aged wife”

and that his people no longer “know” him, and so he “cannot rest from travel.” This rejection of

nostos is not only a rejection of the will to return home, but also an abdication of duty for what

Greek society requires Odysseus and his men do. In The Lotos-Eaters, the men ask “why/Should

life all labor be…utterly consumed with sharp distress,/While all things else have rest from

weariness?” In Ulysses, Odysseus leaves the governance of Ithaca to Telemachus, his son and

heir, who despite being “well-loved” by his father, is left to “[work] his work” while Odysseus
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works his. Tennyson’s rejection of nostos is a sacrilegious retelling of The Odyssey, but it also

allows him to free up the characters to do things Homer would otherwise not have them do. For

Tennyson, this allows him to speak through the characters’ voices and do and fulfill his wishes to

reconvene with the dead. In Ulysses, Odysseus rallies his men to follow him on another voyage

by promising them that they will again “see the great Achilles, whom we knew,” and in The

Lotos-Eaters, the men decide to stay in the island in order “To muse and brood and live again in

memory,/With those old faces of our infancy.” Overall, the similarities in both poems imply that

Tennyson did intend that they be read together, as a diptych of sorts.

Despite these similarities, the poems react to the rejection of nostos in different ways. In

The Lotos-Eaters, Tennyson allows the characters to give up and wallow in their depression,

speaking through them as if in invitation to “not wander more.” But by the time he writes

Ulysses, Tennyson has made an about face: he concludes that the only way to move on from

despair is “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” Whereas Tennyson had been thrown into

a fit of depression following the death of his friend, Ulysses is a testament to moving on from

grief. “Death closes all,” Tennyson writes, “but something ere the end,/Some work of noble note,

may yet be done,/Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.” Tennyson reportedly suffered

from suicidal thoughts throughout his life, and so it is possible that the “work of noble note”

refers to Tennyson’s own projected poetic career.2 Tennyson highlights this transition by

repeating some of the same themes from The Lotos-Eaters in Ulysses, but in different contexts

and to different effects. In The Lotos-Eaters, the mariners have “hearts worn out by many wars,”

whereas in Ulysses, the men are described as being “One equal temper of heroic hearts.” And

while the moon in The Lotos-Eaters represents the end of day and “the end of life,” in Ulysses, it

is a call to “Push off” and “To sail beyond the sunset” for “’T is not too late to seek a newer

2 Source
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world.” Tennyson accepts in both poems that life is finite, and in The Lotos-Eaters the mariners

ask “What is it that will last?/All things are taken from us, and become/Portions and parcels of

the dreadful past.” Furthermore, the mariners question whether there is “any peace/In ever

climbing up the climbing wave,” choosing either “death, or dreamful ease” as preferable options

to continuing living. In Ulysses, however, he strikes a more hopeful tone, even though “little

remains” of Odysseus’ time on earth, “every hour is saved/From that eternal silence, something

more,/A bringer of new things.” Whereas in The Lotos-Eaters Tennyson responded to grief with

depression, in Ulysses, he accepts that even though death will ultimately take us all, we must

continue on.

It would seem more obvious for Tennyson to choose tragedy as the genre to express his

grief, considering that the ancient Greeks are as famous for their tragedies as for their dramas,

but he instead chose an epic poem. Epic poetry is better known for encapsulating statements of

national culture which describe the origins of different aspects of the society’s macrocosm. As its

name implies, epic poetry seeks to describe lofty ideals of great importance. For example,

Virgil’s The Aeneid describes the birth of Rome and Camões The Lusiads describes Vasco da

Gama’s voyage to India. Epics are written for mass consumption and are therefore intended to

impart meaning on a general audience. The themes of Tennyson’s poems are of far lesser scope

than the typical epic, and are personal rather than public: grief, guilt, hopelessness, acceptance,

and renewal. But by choosing The Odyssey as a vehicle to express these themes, Tennyson

magnifies his emotions onto a universal and timeless scale worthy of the epic tradition. Rather

than write intimately of how Hallam’s death made himself, the poet, feel, Tennyson imagines

himself in Odysseus’ place, longing to return to a way of life which he once knew. Tennyson

understood that one’s struggle with grief and depression can be just as arduous an undertaking as

battling cyclopes and evading vengeful gods, and therefore sees himself in Odysseus’ struggles.
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The Odyssey also has the benefit of timelessness. Its story is familiar to the general public, and so

Tennyson would not have to explain the reference to his readers. Therefore, when Tennyson

subverts the original plot by allowing the mariners to remain on the island of the lotos-eaters and

by imagining Odysseus as restless and eager to abandon the home he spent so many years

struggling to return to, Tennyson knows that audience will recognize the differences and take

meaning from them. The Odyssey is a work of cultural significance, not just to the Greeks, but to

all subsequent cultures on the European continent. As such, its influence on someone as educated

as Tennyson is to be expected.

If Tennyson took inspiration from The Odyssey because of its importance to Western

culture, that leaves the question of how the work of an 8th century BCE Greek poet—a person to

whom historians are unable to decisively determine was indeed a real person—could have

relevance in the lives of Victorian, and indeed, modern-day readers. No small part of this

equation is that The Odyssey, having been recorded in written language which has allowed it to

be preserved for posterity, has survived the millennia relatively intact, whereas other stories from

ancient civilizations have been lost to the ages. For the classical tradition to have remained a

tradition up until the present day, it needs to have a reason to still be practiced. We implicitly

value that which is old, because to achieve such age, something must generally be of good

quality or particular merit. But what has made The Odyssey worthy of preservation? As

Tennyson discovers, The Odyssey encapsulates the timelessness of the human condition—“Tho’

much is taken, much abides.” Odysseus is relatable because he is human; he often makes

mistakes, such as taunting the defeated cyclops and incurring the wrath of Poseidon, or illogical

choices, such as turning down an offer of immortality from the minor goddess Circe. And he is

admirable for his polytropos: his wit, skill, and guile—he is above all else heroic, and is

therefore someone to root for. By invoking Odysseus’ journey home in his own reflection on his
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journey from depression to acceptance, Tennyson proves how relatable The Odyssey is.

Furthermore, by choosing a work of timeless inspiration such as The Odyssey, Tennyson ensures

that his own poetry, which also involve highly relatable themes such as grief and renewal,

remains relatable today. Odysseus’ challenge to his men can be read as a challenge to us all, a

reminder “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”