English Language Arts Tennysons the Lotos Eaters and Homers the Odyssey Essay
The Lotos-Eaters is a verse form by Alfred Tennyson, 1st Businesswoman Tennyson, published in Tennyson's 1832 verse collection. It was inspired past his trip to Kingdom of spain with his close friend Arthur Hallam, where they visited the Pyrenees mountains. The poem describes a grouping of mariners who, upon eating the lotos, are put into an altered state and isolated from the exterior world. The title and concept derives from the lotus-eaters in Greek mythology.
Background [edit]
In the summer of 1829, Tennyson and Arthur Hallam fabricated a expedition into conflict-torn northern Espana. The scenery and experience influenced a few of his poems, including Oenone, The Lotos-Eaters and Mariana in the South.[ane]
These three poems, and some others, were later revised for Tennyson's 1842 collection.[2] In this revision Tennyson takes the opportunity to rewrite a section of The Lotos Eaters by inserting a new stanza before the concluding stanza. The new stanza describes how someone may have the feelings of wholeness even when there is cracking loss. It is alleged by some that the stanza refers to the sense of loss felt by Tennyson upon the expiry of Hallam in 1833.[3]
Poem [edit]
The mariners are put into an altered state when they consume the lotos. During this fourth dimension, they are isolated from the globe:[4]
Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them
And gustatory modality, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far abroad did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, equally voices from the grave;
And deep-asleep he seem'd, however all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make. (lines 28–36)
The mariners explicate that they want to leave reality and their worldly cares:[4]
Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with precipitous distress,
While all things else take remainder from weariness?
All things take balance: why should we toil lonely,
We only toil, who are the outset of things,
And brand perpetual moan,
Still from 1 sorrow to another thrown;
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy lotion;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
'There is no joy but calm!"—
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things? (lines 57–69)
The mariners demonstrate that they realise what actions they are committing and the potential results that volition follow, but they believe that their devastation will bring nearly peace:[5]
Let u.s. lonely. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To state of war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing upwards the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence—ripen, fall, and end:
Requite us long rest or death, night expiry, or dreamful ease. (lines 88–98)
Although the mariners are isolated from the world, they are connected in that they act in unison. This human relationship continues until the very cease when the narrator describes their brotherhood as they abandon the world:[vi]
Permit us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-country to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie abreast their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curlicue'd
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;
Where they smiling in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming upwards, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of picayune significant tho' the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly trivial dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer—some, 'tis whisper'd—downward in hell
Endure countless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, sleep is more sweetness than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, air current and wave and oar;
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more than. (lines 154–173)
Themes [edit]
The form of the verse form contains a dramatic monologue, which connects it to "Ulysses", St. Simeon Stylites, and Rizpah. However, Tennyson changes the monologue format to let for ironies to exist revealed.[7] The story of The Lotos-Eaters comes from Homer's The Odyssey. Notwithstanding, the story of the mariners in Homer's piece of work has a different result from Tennyson'southward since the latter's mariners are able to recognize morality. Their arguments are also connected to the words spoken by Despair in Edmund Spenser'due south The Faerie Queene, Book One. With the connexion to Spenser, Tennyson's story depicts the mariners as going against Christianity. However, the reader is the i who is in the true dilemma, as literary critic James R. Kincaid argues, "The final irony is that both the courageous Ulysses and the mariners who eat the lotos have an easier time of it than the reader; they, at to the lowest degree, can make choices and dissolve the tension."[5]
Tennyson ironically invokes The Lover's Tale line 118, "A portion of the pleasant yesterday", in line 92 of The Lotos-Eaters: "Portions and parcels of the dreadful past". In the reversal, the thought of fourth dimension every bit a protector of an individual is reversed to draw time as the destroyer of the individual. There is besides a twist of the traditionally comic apply of repetition inside the refrain "Let the states alone", which is instead used in a desperate and negative fashion. The use of irony within The Lotos-Eaters is different from Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott since "the Lady" lacks control over her life. The mariners inside The Lotos-Eaters are able to make an argument, and they debate that decease is a completion of life. With this argument, they push button for a release of tension that serves simply to create more tension. Thus, the mariners are appealing yet unappealing at the same fourth dimension.[8]
In structure, The Lotos-Eaters is somewhere between the course of Oenone and "The Hesperides". In terms of story, The Lotos-Eaters is not obscure like "The Hesperides" nor as extensive as Oenone but information technology yet relies on a frame like the other ii. The frame is like "The Hesperides" as it connects two different types of reality, i of separation and one of being connected to the world. Like Oenone, the frame outlines the song within the verse form, and it allows the existence of two different perspectives that can exist mixed at various points within the poem. The perspective of the mariners is continued to the perspective of the reader in a similar mode found in "The Hesperides", and the reader is called to follow that point of view to enjoy the verse form. Every bit such, the reader is a participant within the work but they are not guided past Tennyson to a specific answer. As James Kincaid argues, "in this poem the reader takes over the role of voyager the mariners renounce, using sympathy for a sail and judgment for a rudder. And if, as many have argued, the verse form is 'about' the conflict betwixt isolation and communality, this meaning emerges in the procedure of reading."[9]
The poem discusses the tension betwixt isolation and beingness a member of a community, which besides involves the reader of the poem. In the song, at that place are many images that are supposed to appeal to the reader. This allows for a sympathy with the mariners. When the mariners ask why everything else too them are immune peace, it is uncertain as to whether they are asking most humanity in general or merely near their ain country of existence. The reader is disconnected at that moment from the mariner, particularly when the reader is not able to escape into the earth of bliss that comes from eating lotos. As such, the questioning is transformed into an expression of self-compassion. The reader is able to render to being sympathetic with the mariners when they seek to exist united with the world. They describe a system of completion, life unto death, like to Keats's "To Fall", merely then they reject the system birthday. Instead, they merely want death without having to experience growth and completion before death.[x]
Critical response [edit]
Tennyson'southward 1832 drove of poems was received negatively by the Quarterly Review. In item, the Apr 1833 review by John Croker stated that The Lotos-Eaters was "a kind of classical opium-eaters" and "Our readers will, we think, agree that this is admirable feature; and that the singers of this vocal must have made pretty free with the intoxicating fruit. How they got abode y'all must read in Homer: — Mr Tennyson — himself, nosotros presume, a dreamy lotos-eater, a delicious lotus-eater — leaves them in full song."[11]
In popular culture [edit]
The British romantic composer Edward Elgar fix to music the starting time stanza of the "Choric Song" portion of the poem for a cappella choir in 1907-8. The piece of work, "There is Sweetness Music" (op. 53, no. 1), is a quasi double choir work, in which the female choir responds the male person choir in a dissimilar tonality. Another British romantic composer Hubert Parry wrote a one-half-hr-long choral setting of Tennyson'due south poem for soprano, choir, and orchestra.[12] In the song "Blown Away" past Youth Brigade, lines from the verse form are used, such equally "Decease is the end of life; ah, why/Should life all labour exist?/Let united states of america lonely. Time driveth onward fast" and "let u.s. lonely; what pleasure can we have to war with evil? is their any peace"
The verse form inspired, in part, the R.E.M. song "Lotus". "There's the great English language poem about the lotus eaters, who sit by the river and — I gauge it's supposed to exist about opium — never are involved in life. Mayhap there's a chip of that in there," said Peter Buck.[13]
In episode 5 of HBO'due south serial The White Lotus, Armond recites Choric Song IV of Tennyson's verse form. The episode is named "The Lotus-Eaters".
Meet as well [edit]
- Lotos Lodge
Notes [edit]
- ^ Thorn 1992 p. 67
- ^ Kincaid 1975 p. 17
- ^ Hughes 1988 p. 91
- ^ a b Kincaid 1975 p. 40
- ^ a b Kincaid 1975 p. 39
- ^ Kincaid 1975 pp. xl–41
- ^ Hughes 1988 pp. vii, 12
- ^ Kincaid 1975 pp. three, 12, 31, 39
- ^ Hughes 1988 pp. 87–89
- ^ Hughes 1988 pp. 89–xc
- ^ Thorn 1992 qtd. pp. 106–107
- ^ BBC Radio iii's The Choir program, broadcast 22 Jan 2012
- ^ Q mag, June 1999
References [edit]
- Hughes, Linda. The Manyfacèd Glass. Athens, Ohio: Ohio Academy Press, 1988.
- Kincaid, James. Tennyson'due south Major Poems. New Haven: Yale University Printing, 1975.
- Thorn, Michael. Tennyson. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992.
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The Lotos-Eaters public domain audiobook at LibriVox
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lotos-Eaters
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