Today we discuss Dante and Virgil’s encounter with Ulysses. The Greek hero gives a cavalier and almost rousing account of himself, spit from the flames eternally consuming him deep in the pits of Hell. Dante’s Ulysses recounts himself extending his famous wanderings beyond Ithaca, and out to the edge of the world, where God sends a whirlwind to destroy him and his ships. Of his wanderlust he says “not tenderness for a son, nor filial duty towards my aged father, nor the love I owed Penelope, that would have made her glad, could overcome the fervor that was mine to gain experience of the world.”

With these words, we as readers must confront a problem we have encountered a few times already in this poem. What, if anything, distinguished the journey of Ulysses from the journey of Dante the pilgrim? And, by implication, what distinguishes Dante Christian epic from his predecessor’s pagan ones? Is his all-encompassing humanism a kind of romantic heroism? Or merely fine rhetoric dressing up selfishness and everyday vanity? His speech is brief and its conclusion – as is the conclusion of his voyage – is abrupt and flat. If Dante’s purpose with this was to limit the possible spell the always spell-binding Ulysses could cast on the reader, he seems to have failed, since we spend almost our whole conversation weighing the possible meanings of the ancient hero’s handful of lines. There may be progress in some human affairs – but there is never any on the Key to All Mythologies.