A line, from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "Ulysses," that has taken me a bit to come to understand, partly out of awe, mostly of laziness, goes "yet all experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world, whose margins fade for ever and for ever when I move." I don't claim to grasp it fully even now, but a more blunt, prosaic wording might be: "All my experience is behind me, in the past, and is like a doorway to the limitless realm of wisdom and knowledge which lies beyond its frame; but the more I absorb of that knowledge and wisdom into my experience, the pathway to that realm shrinks, or seems to, since that realm, in being absorbed, becomes less expansive; but in moving through life, I don't just devour knowledge, I also consume life, or have it consumed anyway [Ulysses immediately goes on to rage against stopping and how the little life our human mortality grants us is hardly enough; he basically agrees with the ancient rabbis while also railing against our modern retirement], so the opportunity to experience and learn diminishes against the clock." (This, folks, is what separates poetry from prose.) Ulysses is a troubling figure to empathize with; his cunning brought about the successful sack of Troy in the Iliad; Dante casts him into the 8th pit of the 8th circle of the Inferno, for generally being a "false counsellor" or "fraudulent rhetorician," depending on your interpretation; and while Tennyson wrote this great dramatic monologue out of a need to go on after the death of his great friend and mentor, he molds his Ulysses after Dante's man. Ulysses' obsession is with knowledge, and having soaked up what the ancient world had to offer, the only place left is "beyond the baths of the Western stars," "beyond the utmost bound of human thought"; that way lies death, and his quest is a suicide mission--it is well-nigh homicidal. He mentions his son Telemachus; I have only now had any inkling of explaining this rather jarring stanza, which seems shoved in like nuts in a fruitcake. The stanza itself tosses Telemachus aside, making him little more than a domestic; to what extent this is true of Telemachus, we don't know, and likely neither does Ulysses, who isn't that interested anyway. So why mention him at all? Self-service: in bringing him up, perhaps he is protesting that his son is important to him so Ulysses isn't such a cold person after all, even if he does frame his son as a servant carrying out necessary duties that don't interest Ulysses. Worse yet, though, is his attitude towards his men, his "mariners." He never says he loves anyone; it's either "those that loved me" or "alone," and his interest in his men extends only to how far they participated in his quests, and how they helped him in achieving experience and knowledge. Yet, what wisdom! "Though much is taken, much abides" is the take-away of the poem.
As I said, though, he is dangerous to understand empathetically, and I so frequently fear that I do. I have lost friends, loves, seen much and done some, but have I reacted? In tears, sad, angry tears? No, not much so. I was thankful to have experienced, like attaining a specimen to add to my collection: so academic, so studious--"Thanks for the memories." It is (was) a cool detachment; Ulysses claims "I am a part of all that I have met," but behind that I think is a vain casting of oneself into parts of importance, not of one deeply involved with and attached to something, who feels empathy with people and places and events and things. The irony, to empathize with a man who lacks practically any empathy. Ulysses is a bus, all bump and go: he is more interested in moving, in going to destinations, rather than the destinations themselves: in experiencing over experiences. I let a man go easily, a man leaving me, partly because I knew uncontrollable circumstances could not be overcome, but mostly because I was hungry to add to my empirical charts, another datum gained. I was also buffering against loss, as I have come to learn. But to have been in the moment, riding along the point of convergence where emotion, thought, and the polar aspects of time meet? To have liked, maybe loved; in short, to stop and smell the rose? And to have subsumed the anguish and bitterness under logic and observational study? This is to become a person who intones with Ulysses "those that loved me, and alone."
We are all fools, made weak by time and fate--"you've been a fool, and so have I." In the end, Ulysses will have been the biggest of fools, for he is blind to the greatest, most edifying aspect of wisdom and knowledge: people learn best how to move through life by the trans-causal relationship between the deep, personal, involved experiences of one's own, and those of others. The only requirement in critical analysis of art, for example, is to bring one's whole self before the work and then hold dialogue with it. He could have found untravelled worlds locally if he had bothered to see them in family and comrades, but most importantly in himself. There lies the problem; he is "always roaming with a hungry heart" because his heart is empty; Ulysses is a void; he must always travel, always explore, because there is nothing within, no flowers in his garden or birdhouse in his soul. Do you, Reader, have nothing but nothing inside? Our pains may make us wish so, but joy reprimands that. Terrible sorrow awaits practically everyone, and we will experience it no matter how we choose to do so. Do not welcome pain--"I consider it morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged"--but when it comes, do not stand by and observe how the frost kills the roses, and you taking notes and marking charts. Be upset, then accept, and finally move in to cultivate your roses again, now into a hardier beauty. Detachment, like all defense mechanisms, helps us survive, not thrive. To make your garden grow, you must learn and truly be a part of all you have known, which happens only when all you have known becomes a part of you. Who knows: when you stop to smell the roses, do the roses smell you?
Sir John Gielgud reciting the end of "Ulysses," with the middle section of Holst's "Jupiter" in accompaniment.
And the song I referenced in the latter half of this post:
