Contradicting a long tradition of purgative, curative, redemptive, contemplative soul journeys – a tradition which still casts its shadows – Emerson tells us that ‘the soul is not a traveller’. 

We will endeavour to uncover the marks of this contrast with ‘the unharvested wine-dark sea’ of Homer. The last voyage of Ulysses, imagined by Dante in The Divine Comedy, is an excellent touchstone for the enquiry at hand. 

Maria Filomena Molder is Full Professor of Aesthetics at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. PhD in 1992 on Goethe’s Morphological Thought.