“Ulysses” is a textbook poem by the English poet Alfred Tennyson , composed in 1833 and published 9 years later. Russian-speaking readers know in translations of Konstantin Balmont and Grigory Kruzhkov .
The poem is a dramatic monologue of Odysseus (Ulysses), set out in white verse . Having reunited with his family on his return to Ithaca , the tireless traveler quickly got bored. The banality of everyday life abhor him. In his monologue, Odysseus shares his plans with his former companions, already old, to embark on a new voyage - “fight and seek, find and not give up” ( Eng. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield ).
Ulysses entered the history of literature as a standard of Victorian poetry, which was subject to compulsory study in English schools of the late XIX and early XX centuries. In the words of Ulysses, an insatiable thirst for knowledge, trials, wanderings, any new experience was read. Ulysses’s appeal was in tune with the official ideology of British imperialism [1] - to bring the Union Jack to the most remote corners of the planet, to tirelessly expand the borders of the British Empire - the longest in the history of mankind.
The last line of the poem [2] became winged, was used as the motto of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in London (2012) [3] . Many educational institutions have chosen it as their motto. It is known to the Russian reader thanks to the novel by V. Kaverin “ Two Captains ” and its adaptations [4] . Paraphrased, as a leitmotif, she entered the opera Ulysses by Luigi Dallapiccola . The last three lines of Ulysses are carved on a memorial cross erected on the Hut Point Peninsula [5] in honor of the polar explorer Robert Scott and his comrades who died in 1912 during the return trip from the South Pole [6] .
In the 007: Skyfall Bond blockbuster, M quotes the last lines of the poem in his explanation to the parliamentary committee. The poem is also cited in the films “ Society of Dead Poets ” and “ One Week ”, in the epigraph to the novel by Alistair Macklin “The Ship of His Majesty Ulysses”.
Notes
- ↑ Patrick Brantlinger. Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914 . Cornell University Press, 1990. Page 36.
- ↑ Version by K. Balmont: “seek, find, dare, not yield.”
- ↑ Inspiration for the Olympians . // vokrugsveta.ru. Date of treatment March 22, 2012. Archived May 31, 2012.
- ↑ Z. M. Kanevsky. Riddles and tragedies of the Arctic. Knowledge, 1991. Page 57.
- ↑ At the top of Observation Hill , next to the McMurdo Antarctic Station .
- ↑ R. F. Scott, “Expedition to the South Pole. 1910-1912 Farewell Letters ”, 2008.