Finally, Ulysses. We've waited long enough. Here he is in all his insane glory: a figure out of classical literature, whom Dante couldn't know, whom Dante wants to know, whom Dante admires, whom Dante damns.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore Ulysses' monologue in this first of three episodes on this most-written-about passage from INFERNO. In this episode, we'll discuss what Ulysses says, rather than what it means, untying some of the knots to better understand the gorgeous poetry at the root of his speech.

Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[02:31] My English translation of this passage, INFERNO, Canto XXVI, lines 85 - 142--but really going all the way back to line 25. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment, just scroll down this page.

[10:30] Some historical background: the Vivaldi brothers sail into the void in 1291.

[12:21]   The structure of Ulysses' monologue: nine-line segments with one three-line aside.

[13:53] Ulysses is the bigger horn in the flame and begins his monologue in the middle of his story.

[18:40] Ulysses' real motivation: discontent masquerading as exploration.

[22:14] Ulysses' journey around the Mediterranean--in other words, geography as doom.

[25:02] Ulysses' rousing speech to his companions.

[29:19] Ulysses' three-line aside to Virgil and Dante the pilgrim.

[30:28] Ulysses' voyage across the open Atlantic.

[34:18] The utter strangeness of the tallest mountain on earth.

[38:03] Ulysses' death is the first death in a poem about the dead.

And here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXVI, Lines 85 – 142

The bigger horn of the ancient flame

Began to quiver, murmuring

As if it were affected by the wind.

 

Then, shimmering its tip this way and that

As if it itself were a tongue that could speak,

It brought out its voice and said, “When

 

“I left Circe, who’d kept

Me for more than a year at a spot not far from Gaeta,

Before Aeneas named it that,

 

“Neither any affection for my son, nor any reverence

Toward my old father, nor the debt of love

I owed to Penelope, which would have pleased her,

 

“Could vanquish the ardor inside me

That wanted to experience the wide world,

Including all the vices and heroics of humanity.

 

“So I set out on the deep, open sea

With only one ship and just such few

Companions who had not abandoned me.

 

“I saw one coast, then another, all the way out to Spain,

Even as far as Morocco, as well as the island of Sardinia

And the other islands that bathe in that sea.

 

“I and my companions had gotten old and slow

When we made it to the narrow strait

Where Hercules had marked off the warning

 

“Limits beyond which men shouldn’t venture.

Off the starboard side, I took my leave of Seville

And off the port, I’d already taken my leave of Ceuta.

 

“‘O brothers,’ I said, ‘who through a hundred thousand

Dangers have made it to the West,

To this last little bit of readiness

 

“‘That still hangs on in our senses,

Do not deny yourselves the experience

On beyond the sun, of an unpeopled world.

 

“‘Give full credit to your origins!

You were not created to live like beasts

But to live in the search for virtue and knowledge.’

 

“I had made my companions so impassioned

With my little speech for the journey ahead,

I could hardly have held them back from it.

 

“We set our stern toward the sunrise

And turned our oars into wings for our mad flight,

Always gaining our way on the port side.

 

“All the stars that surround the antipodes

Already glimmered in the night, while our own from back home were so low,

They didn’t even rise above the ocean’s floor.

 

“Five times we had seen the light

Beneath the moon wax and wane

Since we’d started on this high pass,

 

“When a mountain rose up, still dim

In the distance. It seemed to me

I’d never seen any taller.

 

“We let out cries of joy, although they soon morphed into grief.

For a whirlwind came out of that new land

And struck the prow of the ship.

 

“Three times it spun the ship around in all that water.

At the fourth, our stern reared up to a height

And the prow went plunging down, as it pleased another,

Until the sea shut tight over us.”