Welcome to the podcast An Ancient Language for a Modern Soul. Poemi Conviviali by Giovanni Pascoli. In this episode, we will finally hear how Odysseus’ last voyage really ends. And I'm here with Professor Francesca Schironi -again- to continue our conversation about this beautiful poem. For those who are just tuning in now, Professor Schironi teaches classics at the University of Michigan, and she has written on several very important topics, including the motive of Ulysses last voyage in modern literature, including Pascoli's version. So you will listen to the second and final part of the poem in various translations. Canto XV to XXIII are taken from the translation by Deborah Brown, Richard Jackson and Susan Thomas in the book The Last Voyage, published in 2010 by Red Hen Press. But Canto XXI is translated by Taije Silverman, and you can read it on the website of Poetry Foundation under Taije’s name. The last canto is from the translation by James Ackhurst and me, published by italica Press in 2022. The poem is read by Ali Harmer, accompanied by Mark Harmer at the Celtic harp.
ELENA
Hello again, Francesca, and thank you very much again for being here.
FRANCESCA
Thank you very much again for inviting me for a second part.
ELENA
So in the poem now, Odysseus and his old companions have finally departed for their voyage backwards back to the adventures of their youth. And Odysseus, we said, doesn't seek the unknown like in the retelling that Dante provides in Canto XXVI of the Divine Comedy. And he is not going home like in Homer. He does, however, revisit many of the places of his first voyage. He goes to the island of Circe, he wants to meet the cyclops Polyphemus again. And finally he wants to hear the Sirens song again.
FRANCESCA
So the episode of the Cyclops is the most developed by Pascoli. And this is one that attracted my attraction, my attention as a classicist, because what happens is that the episode starts with a description of the island of the Cyclops, and then with the cave of the Cyclops. And what is interesting is that Pascoli fundamentally follows Homer, meaning he really translates line by line, the description of Homer, so that any readers who really think to be reading the original, so they expect that the story also, you know, goes off exactly like Homer recounts it. And this is where Pascoli innovates, because after describing the island and the cave, so everyone thinks, okay, this is it, we are there. Who appears is not the cycle, but it is a woman with a baby at her breast, who asks him again using the line that Polyphemus uses, where they come from and what they're looking for. And so Odysseus is taken by surprise and he thinks that perhaps Polyphemus has learned civilised life and has taken a wife. So he's asking, okay, what is your husband? Because, you know, I met your husband in the past. I, you know, I knew him, and start recounting the story. But the wife of course, doesn't know what he's talking about. And he's asking, okay, what are you here for? For plundering, for taking our goods? Which is again is another quotation from Homer. And then she answer herself and said, no, of course you are not, because you're old. And so you cannot, you know, you don't even have the strength fundamentally to do any plundering, which is the first, you know, plunging into reality for Odysseus because he's old, he's not the hero he remembers to have been. And perhaps he'd never been such a hero, but certainly now he's an old man. The, the husband, a certain point comes back and again he is not Polyphemus. And at this point Odysseus, who really wants to find the Cyclops, asks him, okay, but where was this cyclops? So this terrible giant with one eye and I blinded this eye. And everyone is puzzled. And a certain point, the husband thinks that perhaps this story is what lies behind the old story that the husband, the father of his wife told him that there was, you know, a steep volcano and you know, the, whole of the volcano was red. And so that perhaps might be behind this story of this Cyclops and these giants that Odysseus blinded. So he gets all excited and he ask, so who drill his eye in the night? And I'm actually quoting my translation. And the answer of the husband is “to the mountain? the eye? drilled? Nobody:. Which again, I think is a very interesting twist with tradition because as everyone knows, Odysseus told the cyclops that his name was Ou-tis, Nobody, so that when he blinded him, the cyclops could not ask for help saying, nobody blinded me. And but here, of course, the “nobody” has a totally different meaning because it's simply saying the story does not exist. You're just a crazy old man. And then Odysseus flies, goes away, leaves the island and goes in search of the, the truth, the story, you know, that the song of the sirens and that even in Homer, it is this song that tells a lot of things that men don't know and everyone wants to hear, but is a very dangerous song because, you know, ships crash onto the rocks. And this is exactly what happens, buy this time even in a worse. Remember in the original, Odisseys asks his companions to… for them to completely isolate their ears with wax so that they cannot hear. Whereas he wants to hear, but he’s bound to the mast of the boat so that he cannot try to reach them because they're dangerous. Here, instead, he hears everything and crashes on the rocks. But here's actually nothing. It simply crashes on the rocks asking one last question, which is “Tell me at least who I am and why it was, what this quest was for”. For his past, for his identity. So this voyage is a failed quest. And as we're saying, that it’s a desire that is never fulfilled, is definitely part of this poem because he's desiring to know his past himself. Some people say that, you know, Circe stands for love.This episode of the Polyphemus is glory and the last one is truth. And none of these quests is successful. So it's a very, it's a very pessimistic poem, I would say.
ELENA
Yes, exactly.
FRANCESCA
So three goals of desire are not fulfilled here. The major goals of humankind. And it's a very interesting retelling, if you like, that Pascoli does of the Odyssey and the Divine Comedy. And I think we can see here, like his own imprint, like his own biographical and poetical imprint onto the story of Odysseus.
ELENA
Absolutely.
FRANCESCA
And I mean, at least this is the way I've read it. I'm not the only one who read it in this way. But you know, one thing that struck me is when, this is in the first part, when he sails with his friends, which we discussed about, you know, these are companions that somehow are alive again. But what he does is that he leaves without telling his wife and his son. He just escapes. So he's eloping, betraying his family. And again, first of all, this is different, for example, from what happens in Tennyson and other other poets who discuss this and took up the same idea of the last voyage. There is always a moment when Odysseus greets his family, which is denied in “The Last Voyage” by Pascoli. And you know, exactly knowing Pascoli in his biography, Pascoli was someone who, as we know, remained extremely attached to his original family. He lived with his sister. You know, there is a lot of speculation of him not wanting to get married, not wanting to leave his house, being really attached in a very peculiar way to this sister. Basically, family is central in the poetics of Pascoli, so the fact that you have this Odysseus that doesn't care about abandoning his family for something that turns out to be a failed quest, nothing at all. I wonder whether there is this sense of… Odysseus has been also not a model, you know, someone that, you know, has this hope and abandons the only tangible thing that he has, which is family. And again, it might be that I'm too much into thinking about this myth from other modern authors who certainly turn Odysseus into a negative model. But I wonder whether this also might be something that can be explored further. That, you know, he’s a deluded man, is someone who thinks to that life is elsewhere whereas his life is actually in Ithaca with his family, and he doesn't care about abandoning it. That's amazing. And of course, then there is also the poetics of Pascoli and this is another way to read this poem, not in a biographical way, but as a poetical statement, because again, there is this famous Pascoli, we call him the poetics of the little child, which is this idea that to make poetry you have to go back to your childhood, which again, is still biographical, because again, this attachment of his original family is still part of, you know, “I'm a little child and I want to stay with my family”. But this little child has the advantage of being able to see nature and the world around him with fresh eyes, with no bias, with no layers or cultural layers that we all have when we grow up. Which is great, because this is what makes the poetry of Pascoli great. But of course, when we are talking about reception and an idea of poetics, that is a continuous dialogue with the past, he becomes extremely critical of this type of poetics, because fundamentally, what Pascoli is saying actually, he actually says, when he writes about his poetics, you know, that we have made up, you know, our tradition reading the Latins, and the Latins had made their own tradition reading the Greeks. And there's this, you know, baggage in a sense, that we have, which he doesn't seem to, which is, of course, Pascoli was extremely learned in a sense, but he disguised this his baggage when he writes poetry. But so what he writes is. His poetry is not made with books. Of course, poetry is made with books. But then Pascoli is to somehow make whatever he does in a way that he sounds like is a little child speaking. But as was I was saying before, which is, you know, intertextuality with the Odyssey in the Polyphemus’ episode clearly points to the fact that he's extremely learned, but in a sense is extremely innovative in turning the episode of the last voyage elaborated by Homer in a certain way, by Dante in a certain way, in a totally different direction. So this, I would say, is detachment from the tradition. Yes, that's Pascoli’s own take on it.
ELENA
Yes. And so the last question for me would be, because I think now listeners are quite curious to hear the story of the Cyclops from Pascoli's voice, but… were there any creative responses to Pascoli's poem?
FRANCESCA
What is quite interesting that at the time when Pascali writes this poem, around the same period, we have a series of others. Because, so just to give you a sense, and this is not responses, of course, after Tennyson who writes the old “Ulysses” in 1842, you have Graf’s “Last Voyage”, which is 1897. Then we have D' Annunzio in Maya also have another Ulysses that goes in a last voyage in 1903, which is the year before “The Last Voyage” of Pascoli. Then we have a response to d' Annunzio by Gozzano in “The Hypothesis”, where clearly he goes against this super mystic Odysseus of D’Annunzio. So what I'm saying is that this is a poem, a myth that elicits a series of responses around a certain period of time. Pascoli writes in that period, and as far as I'm aware, I didn't notice any response. For example, Gozzano probably knew this poem. What we have then are later reworkings. And by later I mean after World War I or World War II, in fact, in two of them, in which is not again a direct response. So Pascoli is not quoted, but it’s a different way of dealing with this search of truth. Because in a sense, what Pascoli has is this man who asks who I am. “What am I? Was my past, was my life spent well? “ Which is an existential question. That is, I think, responded by Dalla Piccola. Dalla Piccola writes an opera which is Ulysses in 1968. He clearly acknowledges plenty of influences in the preface of the librettos. There's also Pascoli, but there are many others. But one thing that caught my eye is that of course it’s an opera, it's very reduced. But there is an episode which is placed in Hades and Odysseus ask, you know who, you know, “Who am I? What am I searching for?” Which in a sense is echoing the last question of Odysseus in “The Last Voyage”. The ending of this opera is is very ambiguous. This Odysseus is another one who also wants to search, to travel, to find wonder in life. And at the end, and I'm just again quoting, there's this: “And he said, if a voyage could break the silence, the mystery. Lord, my heart and the sea are not alone, alone any longer.” So there is this Lord, what this Lord is, we don't know. It might be God, it might be just spirit, a spiritual answer, spirituality agreement, something in line with a spirituality, spiritual fulfilment, which, which in any case is a positive end, because he is not alone any longer. Whereas, you know, the other Odysseus of Pascoli was just, you know, dying, asking a question without receiving any answer. The latest responses are two that are different, very different. One is Savinio’s Capitano Ulisse of 1934 and the other is Malerba’s Ithaca Forever, much more recent novel, 1997. They are very different, but they have something that is common, which is that in both cases Odysseus refuses to embark in a last voyage, saying I'm fed up of this tradition. This is in the case of Savinio and in case of Malerba. And this is, I think is a good conclusion: this Odysseus is still tempted to go away once he sees a ship off the coast of Ithaca. So he's about to. He's actually trying to attract the attention of the sailors to be invited. But then when the ship is approaching, he decides to let it go and to stay in Ithaca forever. The title of the novel, and it turns out that he decides to write down his memory and fundamentally is actually Homer is seen as Homer. So in a sense this is a recuperation of the tradition. So whereas, you know, Pascoli denied in a sense the tradition, what you have with Malerba, I think, is, you know, an Odysseus that actually finds his memory and puts together one of the most beautiful poem we've ever had.
ELENA
Wow, this is fascinating. I was not aware of the authors that you quoted and now I really want to read them or listen to them because one of them is an opera, as you said. And so this was a great conversation, Francesca, and I want to let the listeners enjoy the last part of the last voyage. So thank you very much, Francesca, again and to the listeners, thank you for listening to this podcast.
FRANCESCA
Thank you very much to you, Elena, for inviting me. Bye.