ULYSSES

You are led to this room, which was the nuptial bedroom of the earl Francesco Milzetti and his wife Giacinta Marchetti, from the Companion room: these two rooms are a little self-sufficient flat.
The iconographical theme is linked to the room: in fact the freschi describe Ulysses’s return to Ithaca and on the middle of the ceiling the scene of the uniting of Ulysses and Penelope is represented: they are walking on roses’ petals together with Minerva, Eros and a maid keeping a torch; in the backdrop, other servants are making the bed.
The walls are covered with material and the freschi are of green, light blue and red.
Around the scene on the ceiling are represented:
- The return of Telemachus;
- Ulysses being recognised by his dog Argo;
- Ulysses and Telemachus hiding their weapons;
- Penelope listening to Ulysses who is dressed as a beggar;
- The recognition of Ulysses by Euriclea;
- Ulysses fighting and beating Procis;
- Euriclea telling Penelope about the return of Ulysses;
- Ulysses resting after the battle.
The two pictures represented in raised plaster are of:
- Minerva asking Iuppiter about the destiny of Ithaca;
- Minerva brings Ulysses towards peace.
The floor, as in many other rooms, has been restored.
In this room the ornamentation is a uniting of traditional classical motives and ceramic decorations: the raffaellesques are lighter and calligraphic; frames and mouldings , coloured of green, red and blue, are finely drawn with motives that we can find in majolica.
This room, with the War and Peace one, will become a model for the ornamentation of houses in Faenza until the first years of 1900: the ornamentation will be more and more composite, having then a preference for simpler handicraft forms, as the lace.

(in italiano)

Uniting of Ulysses and Penelope
(middle of the ceiling)

Uniting of Ulysses and Penelope
(middle of the ceiling)

Ulysses being recognised by Euriclea

Ulysses being recognised by Argo

1. It little profits that an idle king
2. By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
3. Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
4. Unequal laws unto a savage race,
5. That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
   
6. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
7. Life to the lees: all time I have enjoyed
8. Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
9. That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
10. Trough scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
11. Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
12. For always roaming with a hungry heart
13. Much have I seen and known; cities of men
14. And manners, climates, councils, governments,
15. Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
16. And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
17. Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
18. I am part of all that I have met;
19. Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
20. Gleams that untravelled world, whose margins fades
21. For ever and for ever when I move.
22. How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
23. To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
24. As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
25. Were all too little, and of one to me
26. Little remains: but every hour is saved
27. From that eternal silence, something more,
28. A bringer of new things: and vile it were
29. For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
30. And this gray spirit yearning in desire
31. To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
32. Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
    
33. This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
34. To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-
35. Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
36. This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
37. A rugged people, and trough soft degrees
38. Subdue them to the useful and the good.
39. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
40. Of common duties, decent not to fail
41. In offices of tenderness, and pay
42. Meet adoration to my households gods,
43. When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
    
44. There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail:
45. There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
46. Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me –
47. That ever with a frolic welcome took
48. The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
49. Free hearts, free foreheads – you and I are old;
50. Old age hath yet his honours and his toil;
51. Death closes all: but something ere the end,
52. Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
53. Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
54. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
55. The long day wanes the slow moon climbs: the deep
56. Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
57. ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
58. Push off, and sitting well in order smite
59. The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
60. To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
61. Of all the western stars, until I die.
62. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
63. It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
64. And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
65. Though much is taken, much abides; and though
66. We are not to now that strength which in old days
67. Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
68. One equal temper of heroic hearts,
69. Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
70. To strive, to seek, to find; and not to yield.

This poem consists in four stanzas of several lengths; the verses are jambic pentameters and there is no rhyme pattern. Every stanza deals with an argument of Ulysses’s monologue:

I stanza) Ulysses complains his present condition, which consists in a boring life, "an aged wife, unequal laws and savage race" (lines 3-4);

II stanza) he regrets his past life and all the places he has visited, but he actually has not satisfied his thirst of knowledge and wants to travel until his death ("how dull is it to pause, to make an end"-line22; "and this gray spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge" lines 30-31);

III stanza) he addresses to his son Telemachus, to whom he leaves his kingdom; although loves him and believes he will better Ithaca, he criticise him, saying he is conformist ("centred in the sphere of common duties"-lines 30-31);

IV stanza) he addresses to his old crew, which shares with Ulysses the thirst of knowledge.

Tennyson uses several sound devices to add musicality to the poem: f. i. we find assonances ("it/little/profits/king"-line1), alliterations ("some/suns/stores"-line 29), repetitions ("that hoard, and sleep, and feed and know not me"-line 5). All this conveys the idea of unsatisfaction and boredom; moreover, it reproduces almost realistically the rhythm and fluency of the speech of Ulysses’s dramatic monologue.
The simile ("like a sinking star"-line31) and the metaphors ("I will drink life to the lees"-lines 6-7; "with a hungry heart"-line 12; "drunk delight of battle"-line 16; "to rust unburnished"-line 23) refers to ordinary experiences of life and war.

In this poem we can recognise as features of a dramatic monologue:

• the use of first person singular;
• references to listeners who do not appear in the poem (the mariners);
• the presence of precise references to places (lines 44-45; 54-56);
• the revelation of Ulysses’s personality just before his death.

The main themes of this poem are:

• the melancholy of approaching death ("death closes all"-line 51; "made weak by time and fate"-line 69);
• the wish to know and have new experiences;
• the choice of overcoming death through actions.

We might say that Ulysses embodies Tennyson’s feelings and ideals: his life in Ithaca stands for the Victorian life, that the poet wants to overcome; in addition Ulysses is described as a romantic hero, who follows his ideals against the conformism of his contemporary society and, in particular, of his son. Ulysses becomes the expression of the dynamic man of Tennyson’s times, who believes that he has the right and the duty to exploit all the possibilities of human intelligence; the hero represents also the poet alter-ego, giving expression to his torturing doubts about man’s role and destiny after death.
Tennyson’s Ulysses has much in common with Dante’s, who induced his companions to leave Ithaca and their families "per seguir virtute e conoscenza", ("to follow knowledge"-line 31) but unlike Dante’s Ulysses , Tennyson’s is not going to break a divine law.