Tithonus (poem)
Encyclopedia
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92), originally written in 1833 as "Tithon" and completed in 1859. It first appeared in the February edition of the Cornhill Magazine
Cornhill Magazine
The Cornhill Magazine was a Victorian magazine and literary journal named after Cornhill Street in London.Cornhill was founded by George Murray Smith in 1860 and was published until 1975. It was a literary journal with a selection of articles on diverse subjects and serialisations of new novels...
in 1860. Faced with old age, Tithonus
Tithonus
In Greek mythology, Tithonus or Tithonos was the lover of Eos, Titan of the dawn. He was a Trojan by birth, the son of King Laomedon of Troy by a water nymph named Strymo . The mythology reflected by the fifth-century vase-painters of Athens envisaged Tithonus as a rhapsode, as the lyre in his...
, weary of his immortality, yearns for death. The poem is a dramatic monologue
Dramatic monologue
M. H. Abrams notes the following three features of the dramatic monologue as it applies to poetry:-Types of monologues:One of the most important influences on the development of the dramatic monologue is the Romantic poets...
with Tithonus addressing his consort Eos
Eos
In Greek mythology, Eos is the Titan goddess of the dawn, who rose from her home at the edge of Oceanus, the ocean that surrounds the world, to herald her brother Helios, the Sun.- Greek literature :...
, the goddess of the dawn.
Overview
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
, Tithonus was a Trojan
Troy
Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...
by birth, the son of King Laomedon
Laomedon
In Greek mythology, Laomedon was a Trojan king, son of Ilus, brother of Ganymede and Assaracus, and father of Priam, Astyoche, Lampus, Hicetaon, Clytius, Cilla, Proclia, Aethilla, Medesicaste, Clytodora, and Hesione...
of Troy
Troy
Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...
by a water nymph named Strymo ("harsh"). Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn, abducted Ganymede
Ganymede (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Ganymede is a divine hero whose homeland was Troy. Homer describes Ganymede as the most beautiful of mortals. In the best-known myth, he is abducted by Zeus, in the form of an eagle, to serve as cup-bearer in Olympus. Some interpretations of the myth treat it as an allegory of...
and Tithonus from the royal house of Troy to be her consorts. When Zeus stole Ganymede from her to be his cup-bearer, as a repayment, Eos asked for Tithonus to be made immortal, but forgot to ask for eternal youth. Tithonus indeed lived forever but grew ever older. In later tellings, Eos eventually turned him into a cricket to relieve him of such an existence. In the poem however, it is Eos, and not Zeus, who grants Tithonus immortality.
In the poem, Tithonus asks Eos for the gift of immortality, which she readily grants him, but forgets to ask for eternal youth along with it. As time wears on, age catches up with him. Wasted and withered, Tithonus is reduced to a mere shadow of himself. But since he is immortal, he cannot die and is destined to live forever, growing older and older with each passing day.
The main classical source that Tennyson draws upon is from the story of Aphrodite
Aphrodite
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....
’s relationship with Anchises in the ancient Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. In this Aphrodite briefly tells of Eos’s foolishness in neglecting to ask Zeus for immortal youth for Tithonus along with his immortality.
The original version of the poem, named "Tithon", was written in 1833 shortly after Tennyson’s friend Arthur Henry Hallam’s death but was not published. When William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.-Biography:...
asked him for a submission to the Cornhill Magazine to be issued in January 1860 which he was editing, Tennyson made some substantial revisions to the text of the poem and submitted it under the title "Tithonus". It was published in the February edition. It was finally published by Tennyson in an anthology in the Enoch Arden volume in 1864.
Synopsis and structure
The poem begins with Tithonus speaking to Eos "at the quiet limit of the world" (line 7) where he lives with her. Confronted with old age and its attendant pains, he contemplates upon death and mortality, and mourns the fact that he being immortal, death cannot release him from his miserable existence. He recounts how Eos choosing him to be her lover had filled him with so much pride that he had seemed "To his great heart none other than a God!" (14).Though she ungrudgingly granted him immortality at his asking, he could not escape the ravages of time. The HoursHorae
In Greek mythology the Horae or Hours were the goddesses of the seasons and the natural portions of time. They were originally the personifications of nature in its different seasonal aspects, but in later times they were regarded as goddessess of order in general and natural justice...
aged him and his youth and beauty faded away− "But thy strong Hours indignant work'd their wills / And beat me down and marr'd and wasted me" (18-19). He asks Eos to set him free− "Let me go; take back thy gift." (27)− and questions why should one desire for that which is unattainable.
_-_dawn_(1881).jpg)
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
sang as Ilion (Troy) was being built. In the final section, weary of life and immortality, he longs for release from his wretched existence and yearns for death to overcome him. He feels that "men that have the power to die" (70) are happy and fortunate. He asks Eos that he be released and restored to the earth for his "immortal age" (22) can no longer be reconciled with her "immortal youth" (22):
Release me, and restore me to the ground;
Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave:
Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn;
I earth in earth forget these empty courts,
And thee returning on thy silver wheels. (72-76)
Interpretations
Ulysses (poem)
"Ulysses" is a poem in blank verse by the Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson , written in 1833 and published in 1842 in Tennyson's well-received second volume of poetry. An oft-quoted poem, it is popularly used to illustrate the dramatic monologue form...
", and "Tiresias" which were written by Tennyson following the death of his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. His death greatly influenced much of Tennyson’s later poetry. According to critic Mary Donahue, “It is not that anything so obvious and simple as the identification of Eos with Hallam is possible or that the emotional relationship between Tennyson and Hallam is wholly clarified by ‘Tithonus’ But it is clear that, in choosing the mask of Tithonus, Tennyson reached out to two of the most basic symbols, those of love between man and woman and the frustration of love by age, to express the peculiar nature of his own emotional injury.” Victorian scholar Matthew Reynolds wrote, “Grieving for Arthur Hallam, Tennyson wrote poems which describe what they themselves possess: a life unusually, but not eternally, prolonged through time.”
Tithonus’s suffering is a reminder of the futility of attempting to “pass beyond the goal of ordinance” (30). It is a poignant expression of the inevitability of death and of the necessity of accepting it as such. Tithonus has to bear the consequences of varying from “the kindly race of men” (29). Though he succeeds in defying death, his youth and beauty desert him in his old age. He can only ask for release. But death does not come to him later even when he begs for it. He is destined to live forever as a “white-haired shadow” (8) and forever roam “the ever-silent spaces of the East” (9). In being immortal, Tithonus ceases to be himself, sacrifices his mortal identity.
Tennyson described "Tithonus" in a letter as “a pendent to the "Ulysses" in my former volumes.” Tithonus’s character offers a strong contrast to that of Ulysses. The two poems are matched and opposed as the utterances of Greek and Trojan, victor and vanquished, hero and victim. According to critic William E. Cain, "Tithonus has discovered the curse of fulfillment, of having his carelessly worded wish come true. He lives where no man ought to live, on the other side of the horizon, the other side of the border that Ulysses could only plan to cross.
According to Victorian scholar A. A. Markley, "Tithonus" offers a viewpoint opposite to that of "Ulysses" on the theme of the acceptance of death. He writes that “while 'Ulysses' explores the human spirit that refuses to accept death, 'Tithonus' explores the human acceptance of the inevitability, and even the appropriateness, of death as the end of the life cycle. The two poems offer two extreme views of facing death, each one which balances the other when they are read together− clearly one of Tennyson’s original intentions when he first drafted them in 1833. Nevertheless, reading 'Tithonus' purely as a pendant to 'Ulysses' has led to unnecessarily reductive readings of both poems.”
Legacy
The title of After Many a SummerAfter Many a Summer
After Many a Summer is a novel by Aldous Huxley that tells the story of a Hollywood millionaire who fears his impending death; it was published in the United States as After Many a Summer Dies the Swan...
, a novel by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
originally published in 1939 and retitled After Many a Summer Dies the Swan when published in the USA, is taken from the fourth line of the poem. It tells the story of a Hollywood millionaire who, fearing his impending death, employs a scientist to help him achieve immortality.
A season 6 episode of the X-Files entitled "Tithonus". It tells the story of a man cursed with immortality who works as a photographer taking photos of individuals whom he can sense are close to death. He snaps these photos in the hopes of seeing the Grim Reaper and finally dying after decades trapped in the land of the living.
External links
- Alfred Tennyson's "Tithonus" from The Victorian Web
- The Setting of "Tithonus" from The Victorian Web
- Balancing Passion and Reason in Tennyson's "Tithonus" and Jane Eyre from The Victorian Web
- Audio reading of the poem by John DerbyshireJohn DerbyshireJohn Derbyshire is a British-American writer. His columns in National Review and cover a broad range of political-cultural topics, including immigration, China, history, mathematics, and race. Derbyshire's 1996 novel, Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, was a New York Times "Notable Book of the...