In Book Nine, lines 84-105 of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus tells his host, King Alcinous of the Phaeacians, about a near-catastrophe in the land of the Lotos-Eaters. The inhabitants of this land eat a magical, addictive herb, and feed it to Odysseus’ men, rendering them apathetic and unwilling to continue the journey home. Odysseus never actually meets the Lotos-Eaters or eats the herb, so he is able to drag his men back to the ship and lock them up while he single-handedly sets sail. This tiny episode has stirred the imaginations of artists, writers, and composers for almost 3,000 years, serving as a warning about the seductive attraction of drugs and alcohol, the vapid and lazy values of consumerist culture, or the dehumanizing and infantilizing effects of mechanical and electronic conveniences. From Tennyson’s poem, “The Lotos-Eaters” to the Eagles’ “Hotel California,” we readily recognize Homer’s hedonists.
Tennyson’s choice of this episode as the basis for his poem was certainly influenced by his own struggles with alcohol and his family’s history of drug addiction and mental illness. Throughout most of Tennyson’s life, narcotics were unregulated and widely available. Laudanum, a solution of ten-percent opium in alcohol, was in virtually every home and was even used to quiet crying babies. The addictive properties of narcotics were not unknown. Thomas de Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater appeared in 1821 and describes the horror of addiction in harrowing detail. It was thought, however, that self-control and good moral character could control it. Families like Tennyson’s, with an alcoholic father and three siblings who were confined to asylums for addiction, were said to have “black blood,” and were considered to be morally degenerate. The first attempt in England to restrict narcotics was the Pharmacy Act of 1868. In America, narcotics were unregulated until the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914.
Tennyson began writing “The Lotos-Eaters” in 1830 while in the Spanish Pyrenees with his dear friend, Arthur Hallam, inspired, he reported, by a waterfall. He put the poem in final form in 1833, the same year as Hallam’s sudden death, which Tennyson commemorated in his poem, “In Memoriam.” Young Tennyson was very shy about publishing his work, and Hallam played an important role in helping Tennyson acquire the confidence and courage he lacked.
The structure of “The Lotos-Eaters” is unusual. The first 45 lines consist of five Spenserian stanzas. The first two lines quote Odysseus, urging his men to show courage as they approach the unknown land. Lines 1 to 45 are narrated by an omniscient speaker who ends the section by quoting one of Odysseus’ men. The latter part of the poem, lines 46 to 173, consists of a “Choric Song,” presumably sung by a chorus of Odysseus’ men, in eight stanzas of varying lengths and rhyme patterns. The poem ends inconclusively. The reader never learns whether or how the men escape the trap they have fallen into.
In lines 1 through 45, the Spenserian stanzas are reminiscent of the heroic and morally exacting stories in The Faerie Queene. Odysseus demands and exemplifies the courageous spirit of cooperative labor and self-sacrifice, and the uniform marching of the fastidiously crafted stanzas parallels this. The “downward smoke” mentioned twice in lines 8 and 10 is puzzling at first, but refers to a waterfall that feeds this “land of streams” (line 10). The inverted image is suggestive of the smoke rising from an opium pipe. Time seems strangely distorted or stopped altogether. It “seemed always afternoon” (line 4), and was a “land where all things always seem’d the same!” The Lotos-Eaters arrive and feed the enchanted herb to Odysseus’ men, who hear music, become lethargic, and refuse to continue their journey home. They are clearly under the influence of a powerful drug.
In lines 46 through 173, the first stanza begins with four lines that might begin a Spenserian stanza, but lines 50 through 52 rhyme, and so do lines 53 through 56, as though the sleepy singer has lost track of the structure and simply repeats the same rhyme. The pentameter and hexameter lines in the first 45 lines are replaced by occasional trimeter lines, as though the singer has nodded off before finishing the line. Starting in the fourth stanza of the Choric Song, the singers replace their supplications for rest with supplications for death. They prefer melancholy recollections of their former lives to the effort of struggling to regain them. In lines 153-5 Tennyson ironically echoes his poem “Ulysses,” also written in 1833 during his trip to Spain. The singer proposes that the sailors all swear an oath never to leave Lotos-land:
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with equal mind,
In the hollow Logos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
In “Ulysses,” the last four lines of the poem show Ulysses asking his men to join him in testing themselves with him against the gods and nature:
. . .that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Does this echo of “equal mind” and “equal temper” suggest that the speaker of stanza eight of the Choric Song is Odysseus? Has he eaten the lotos? Has he abandoned his destiny? Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters” reflects not only the poet’s trepidation about his own tendency to alcoholism and his fear of addiction and mental illness, but also, by comparing the character of Ulysses in his poem, “Ulysses” to the unnamed Odysseus in “The Lotos-Eaters,” his lack of confidence in his own ability to take risks and share his poetry with the world.
A recurring theme in many of Tennyson’s poems is the withdrawal from active life that afflicts the artist. In “The Lotos-Eaters,” the men hear music and compose songs after being affected by the lotos drug, but they lose the ability to take action in pursuit of their goals or in heroic battle with their antagonists. In “Ulysses,” the title character betrays a mild contempt for his unheroic and comparatively inactive son, Telemachus, who endeavors
. . .by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good. (lines 36-38)
. . .He works his work, I mine. (line 43)
In “The Lady of Shalott,” the title character has been cursed by a spell that prevents her, on pain of death, from pursuing her beloved Lancelot. She is confined to a tower where she weaves a tapestry that, like Tennyson’s poetry, portrays the images reflected in her mirror. All three poems contrast the wild and exciting life of action with the passive life of reflection, art, and civilization. Tennyson, like the lotos eaters, Telemachus, and the Lady of Shalott, was allotted a passive life. His artistic talent enabled him to create reflected beauty, but like a drug addiction or magical spell, it excluded him, with regret, from full and active participation in life.
Glenn Wright is a retired teacher living in Anchorage, Alaska, with his wife, Dorothy, and their dog, Bethany. He writes poetry in order to challenge what angers him, to ponder what puzzles him, and to celebrate what delights him.