DOI: 10.53084/22209050_2023_28_131

O.P. Tsybenko
ARDORE DANTESCO: The "flame" of the new Odysseus in Dante and his "combustion" in Arturo Graf. Arturo Graf (1848–1913). The Last Voyage of Ulysses (1901)
(Translation from Italian by O.P. Tsybenko)

Abstract: Antiquity left as a legacy to the culture of subsequent centuries essentially two images of Odysseus – the original positive hero and the negative antihero derived from him. The hypostases of the positive heroic image of Odysseus determine one of the most spectacular episodes of Homer's "Odyssey", which also became the connecting link between the story of Odysseus and the entire plot system of Greek mythology. This is a visit to the other world in order to receive a prediction about the future fate of the hero – Νέκυια ("Odyssey", XII). The "Odyssey" was both a plot and genre model for the Roman national epic, and the main myth of Roman history in general – Virgil's "Aeneid", and the story about Aeneas's visit to the other world, written on the model of Homer's Νέκυια, became equally a panoramic picture of Roman history not only of mythical, but also of historical times. In the "Aeneid", Odysseus,
the main and direct destroyer of Troy, is no longer a positive hero, but an exclusively
negative one ("formidable", "terrible", "insidious", "inventor of crimes" – durus, pellax,
dirus, scelerumque inventor Ulixes). All the hatred of the Romans for their eternal enemies the Greeks is concentrated on Odysseus. When Dante, led by the creator of the "Aeneid"(!), meets Odysseus, he is no longer the hero of Homer, but the antihero of Virgil: in Dante's "Inferno", Odysseus is assigned to the eighth bolgia of the eighth circle (canto XXVI), where "arrangers of ambushes and givers of treacherous advice." However, through the mouth of Odysseus, Dante here sets out the story of "the last journey of Ulysses," which is not only opposed to Homer's "Odyssey," but also rejects it altogether. Dante's ardore of the Odyssey finds a new "ignition" in the poem "The Last Voyage of Ulysses" by Arturo Graf, the publication of which was several years ahead of the poem of the same name by Giovanni Pascoli. A. Count's poem also follows the main idea of A. Tennyson's poem. A remarkable parallel to the Odysseus of A. Graf (and to the Odysseus of A. Tennyson) is the "Conversation of Christopher Columbus and Pedro Gutierrez" from "Small Moral Essays" by Giacomo Leopardi. Here we publish a fragment of poem of Arturo Graf "The last Voyage of Ulysses".

Keywords: Νέκυια (Nekyia), Odysseus, Ulysses, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Divine Comedy, Inferno, canto XXVI, Arturo Graf, The Last Voyage of Ulysses

To cite this article: Tsybenko O.P. ARDORE DANTESCO: The "flame" of the new Odysseus in Dante and his "combustion" in Arturo Graf. Arturo Graf (1848–1913). The Last Voyage of Ulysses (1901). Translation from Italian by O.P. Tsybenko. Aristeas 28 (2023): 131–149.


Author:

O.P. Tsybenko