Living in the land of Lotos-eaters

I mentioned in my last entry I was reading some Tennyson. I'm always drawn back to his poems "The Lotos-Eaters" and "Ulysses."

"The Lotos-Eaters" (1832) is based on a brief passage in "The Odyssey" in which some of the Greeks land on an island and are entranced by "honey-sweet fruit." They decide they've had enough of the ocean, of war, of suffering, of memories. Ulysses drags them back to the ship, ties them to the benches and leaves the island.

So, those who eat the flowers live in a land of stupor. Above is a picture of the land.

I've always liked the poem because it shows that being happy is more than being content. The poem also highlights the illusions we create around ourselves ... and that maybe Ulysses was the man living the illusion. After all, all his men perish -- turned into pigs, drowned, eaten by monsters.

It makes a good companion to "Ulysses" (1833) in which Tennyson imagines life for the hero once he has settled back on Ithaca. Ulysses is bored, frustrated by the brutes around him:

It little profits that an idle king

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

The old hero sails off on his last adventure.

Ulysses is seen as irresponsible compared to his son Telemachus. It raises the question of his entire quest to return from Troy, of what he really wanted and the nature of his soul.