Welcome to the podcast An Ancient Language for a Modern Soul .Poemi Conviviali by Giovanni Pascoli. In today's episode we delve into “The Last Voyage”, a long and hauntingly beautiful poem that reimagines Odysseus’, or Ulysses’ - as he is also known- final journey. Unlike the well-known tale of Odysseus’ return to Ithaca, this poem portrays an aged Odysseus setting out once more for a final and fate voyage. With its twenty-four Cantos, “The Last Voyage” is the longest poem in the Poemi Conviviali collection, and in this episode we'll hear Canto I to XIV. I'm honoured to be joined today by Francesca Schironi, who is professor of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan. Her research spans Greek science, Hellenistic scholarship and papyrology, and she's the author of a monograph on Aristarchus of Samothrace. She has also written on the motive of Ulysses’ last voyage in late 19th- and early 20th-century literature. You will listen to this part of the poem in various translations. Cantos I to IV are taken from the translation by Robert Nugent and Egidio Lunardi, published in 1979. Canto V has been translated by Geoffrey Brock as part of his 2019 collection of Pascoli poems called Last Dream, and Canto VI to XIV have been translated by James Ackhurst and myself in the book Convivial Poems ,published by iIalica Press in 2022. The poem is read by David Carter. The music is by Mark Harmer at the Celtic harp.

ELENA

Welcome Francesca and thank you very much for being here.

FRANCESCA

Thank you very much for inviting me to join you and your wonderful project. I think it's a great project. It's a great website.

ELENA

Thank you.

FRANCESCA

Oh, thank you for doing it.

ELENA

That's lovely to hear. So Pascoli returns, so to speak, to the character of Odysseus, or Ulysses. in several poems: “The Sleep of Odysseus”, which listeners can find in episode 5 of this podcast, “The Last Voyage”, as well as in “The Return”, another poem from another collection called Odes and Hymns.While “The Sleep of Odysseus” recounts one of Odysseus’ perilous moments on the way home from Troy. “The Last Voyage” portrays him in his old age after years of peace in Ithaca, surrounded by family. In the opening cantos we see Odysseus wandering with an oar slung over his shoulder, seeking someone who has never seen the sea, so someone would mistake the ore for a farming tool. This image echoes the prophecy given by Tiresias in Book XI of the Odyssey: that Odysseus will find peace only when he reaches such a place where people don't know the sea. So Tiresias also foretells Odysseus’ death from the sea, quite literally. And so this is, to use a modern word, a spin-off of the Odyssey.

FRANCESCA

Yes, it is in the sense that even in the original Odyssey, there is this sense that there is something beyond his homecoming. You know, Odysseus would be on a journey again. But there is a big difference. I mean, Tiresias prophetizes this journey in the underworld, and it's clearly an inland journey because he has to find people who don't know the sea. So the odyssey will not be at sea, it will be inland and we don't know where, because Ithaca is a small island. And after that you will have this, that, that in Greek is “from the sea” : ex alos. If you read later in Book XXIII, Odysseus will retell this prophecy to his wife, Penelope. And it's clear that they understood, or especially his wife understands it as a peaceful. In fact, this is not the only possibility, because we know that in Antiquity, this myth has many variations. Even in Antiquity, we may be more familiar with one version of the story, but there are many others. And for this death ,there were others. One of which was the story that was contained in another poem called Telegony. Telegony is part of the cyclic poems, the poems that were written around the same time of … (written or composed, whichever theory you want to embrace), around the time of the Iliad and the Odyssey or before them, telling different stories. The Telegony is about Telegonus. Telegonus is this son that Achilles, sorry, Odysseus has with Circe. And so we don't have the poem, we have summaries, but the idea is that Odysseus first leaves Ithaca and go to Thesprotia, Thesprotia is originally in Northern Greece. There he marries and begets a child. Then he leaves and goes back to Ithaca. And where is there? And he's old. There's another child, Telegonus, who is the one he got from Circe, who tries to find his father and goes to Ithaca and kills Odysseus by mistake. And this is the death from the sea. In fact, he's not away from the sea . So there was another way to interpret this “from the sea”. Some scholars even now think think that actually the hint is this other myth where death for Ulysses arrives from the sea. So already in Antiquity, this “from the sea” is very ambiguous and there are different variations. So what Pascoli does is to, you know, add an additional version, which of course is not only born from Homer and the Greeks. It has this, you know, the fundamental step which is Dante’s Inferno XXVI , without which you would not have “The Last Voyage”, probably.

ELENA

That's very interesting, thank you. And we agree that this Odysseus in the last voyage is definitely not Dante's Ulysses or Odysseus, because this character is driven by a desire to go beyond the limits of human knowledge, whereas in the last voyage Odysseus just wants to relive his youth. So it's quite the opposite. There is this sense, I think, that the trouble, the, the fear rouge is still this desire of knowing something, but it's a different type of knowing, you know, for. For Dante's knowing forward and discover what is unknown. These old Ulysses in Pascal is some wants to know if what he remembers is true. So is the testing of his own memories of his own self. Because fundamentally this is the point, you know, at the end it will ask the silence, tell me who I am. So is this idea is, you know, going back to a past because I am what my past is, my what my deeds are, and fundamentally discovered that these deeds are not there. So interesting. Yes. And so, yes, in my own reading and my life as a scholar, I actually try to read the Conviviale collection as poems about relentless and impossible desire, because so powerful Odysseus desire is that he actually manages to convince his companions to join him on the voyage. And the companions are old men like him, but also are they even alive? Because if I remember correctly, in the Odyssey, they die in the voyage. So we sort of see that the poem operates in a context that it's maybe reality or even a blurred memory, perhaps, or even an old man's dream. Absolutely. Now this is the idea, in a sense, Pascal is already telling. I'm not following Homer because I'm bringing these companions alive back on stage when we know they all died. In fact, there has been scholars who have interpreted this poem as actually just a dream. This is all a dream that Odysseus has dreamt while sleeping next to Penelope, you know, as an old couple. So there is definitely this, you know, this. Is. Is this true? Whether it's true or not, I think is still. The meaning is still the same, you know, is still, as you were saying, this impossible desire, the desire of going back to a past that you cannot revive. Exactly. That perhaps never really existed and is. Yes. So the long the first part of this poem is very long, so I'd like to leave some time to the listener to enjoy the story. And we see each other again for the second part of the episode. So thank you very much, Francesca, for introducing the first part of the Last voyage. Thank you for having me.