Ulysses Ithaca Quotes

The third man,’ he answered, ‘is Ulysses who dwells in Ithaca. I can see him in an island sorrowing bitterly in the house of the nymph Calypso, who is keeping him prisoner, and he cannot reach his home for he has no ships nor sailors to take him over the sea.

Beneath it all I kept faith with Ithaca, travelled, Travelled and travelled, Suffering much, enjoying a little; Met strange people singing New myths; made myths myself. But this lion of the sea Salt-maned, scaly, wondrous of tail, Touched with power, insistent On this brief promontory... Puzzles.

Ars Poetica To look at the river made of time and water And remember that time is another river, To know that we are lost like the river And that faces dissolve like water. To be aware that waking dreams it is not asleep While it is another dream, and that the death That our flesh goes in fear of is that death Which comes every night and is called sleep. To see in the day or in the year a symbol Of the days of man and of his years, To transmute the outrage of the years Into a music, a murmur of voices, and a symbol, To see in death sleep, and in the sunset A sad gold—such is poetry, Which is immortal and poor. Poetry returns like the dawn and the sunset. At times in the evenings a face Looks at us out of the depths of a mirror; Art should be like that mirror Which reveals to us our own face. They say that Ulysses, sated with marvels, Wept tears of love at the sight of his Ithaca, Green and humble. Art is that Ithaca Of green eternity, not of marvels. It is also like the river with no end That flows and remains and is the mirror of one same Inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same And is another, like the river with no end.

INTRODUCTION It has long been the opinion of many of the more progressive teachers of the United States that, next to Herakles, Odysseus is the hero closest to child-life, and that the stories from the "Odyssey" are the most suitable for reading-lessons. These conclusions have been reached through independent experiments not related to educational work in foreign countries. While sojourning in Athens I had the pleasure of visiting the best schools, both public and private, and found the reading especially spirited. I examined the books in use and found the regular reading-books to consist of the classic tales of the country, the stories of Herakles, Theseus, Perseus, and so forth, in the reader succeeding the primer, and the stories of Odysseus, or Ulysses, as we commonly call him, following as a third book, answering to our second or third reader.