| Title | : | The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0848809971 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780848809973 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 44 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1915 |
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems Reviews
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I had a hankering for reading a premise around love, so was decoyed into this by the title “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock“.
T S Eliot dodged me by offering a fallacious title! :-D
It doesn’t have to offer anything around love or romance. 😊
The prosaic name “J Alfred Prufrock”, suggested me some physics professor/scholar with an uninteresting name and a wearisome life, experiencing a lavish unusual love story/song!
But hold on, TS Eliot skilfully manoeuvred the readers into the intricacies and realities of life by offering a bewitching title! Neither is it a love story nor is the man a professor or a scholar. But yes, he is desolate, lonely, with truckload of complexes and bearing the tedium of the harsh raucous world!
He just wants to break free from the humdrumness, but fails to do so! He isn’t articulate and resorts to self-mockery and lastly lamenting over his failed desires!
It is a feat packed with irony!
He appears to be a middle-aged desolate and decrepit man.
Atleast once in a lifetime, we all have felt like Prufrock, filled with doubts, fears, inhibitions, and he turns out to be emblematic of it all!
It is an evocative and surprising poem filled with obscurity and mystery! It is a narration of desire and failure.
The poem opens with an epigraph from Dante’s Inferno. This contrast between the serious heavier epigraph and the lighter poem, is a perfect fusion of levity and sombreness!
The gist of epigraph-
A man condemned to hell in a “prison of flame” for his treacherous advice on earth to Pope, recites the humiliation of his wicked life to Dante, believing that Dante will never return to earth to report what he has confided.
I presume, that the epigraph finds an apt place, as later in the poem we realise that Prufrock is in a similar sombre and insipid situation, in a society, that is hellish for him, and can’t find any way out of it.
This epigraph very subtly foreshadows about what is to be offered ahead!
The opening line of the poem-
“Let us go then, you and I,”
I, is Prufrock, while in the opening line the identity of “You” remains obscure! We may easily assume it to be a lady-lover or the reader? Let us explore more.
The opening para, sets an apt environment in which he is – walking through the sordid streets of a city.
Prufrock takes some time off from the society, by getting into a somnolent/drowsy state, suggesting his mental state of indolence and inactivity. (mostly due to his spiritless and insipid life)
“And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?””
Above lines infuse tension, suggesting his fear of the society.
Moving ahead,
“And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,”
He looks back upon an event and reminisces the failure of the event.(We may conjecture it is as some failed love encounter)
“If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.””
Above lines, very well impart a clue about the identities of “you and I”. We can easily conclude “you” to be the one who settles a pillow by “her” head and Prufrock is all susceptible to be misunderstood by her!
Till now, the meter and tone are filled with Prufrock’s self-mockery and self-condemnation.
But now finally, in the last part of the poem, the tone is filled with romantic longing. (Finally, 😊)
He finally wants to escape the reality of the world into a world of mermaids.
(Don’t we all dream of escaping the unpleasant? It reminded me of Valancy from “The Blue Castle”)
“I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.”
This poem can be easily classified as a dramatic monologue of Prufrock while utilising his stream of consciousness/state-of-being!
Prufrock is aware of his infirmity, and incapability-
“I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.”
He is aware of being inferior.
Aware of the fact that he isn’t Prince Hamlet, the mermaids won’t sing back to him, and he is incapable of taking any firm decision, he finds refuge in self-mockery throughout the poem. (Atleast till the 75% mark)
He is also sensitive towards the criticism of the people-
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
The major theme of the poem is enshrouded with the dryness, humdrumness and tedium of the routine modern life.
A perfect metaphor to the futility of life.(Reminded me of The Songs of Solomon).
It additionally expounds the lack of communication and articulation-
“It is impossible to say just what I mean!”
It isn’t imperative to know whether “you” is a female or someone else, it is more important to know that Prufrock’s communication with “you” has failed, big-time!
Isolation, loneliness and estrangement from the society takes precedence!
There is no congruent structure to the poem and is free-flowing, inundated with self-mockery, lack of articulation of the narrator, and the failure of desires.
It appeared more like a collage to me, with all the above departments/themes arranged in no particular order/fashion, leaving it to the readers to decipher accordingly(giving a free-hand).
The poem propounds the veritable bitter-truths of life!
A perfect 4-star, for this not-a-love-song!
It was a mockery on me, as I picked up assuming it to be a love-laden-jaunty-ride :-D -
Review
3 of 5 stars to the poetry of
T.S. Eliot, specifically,
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems.
In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, a man confronts his physical sexuality during an elite social gathering. The man, J. Alfred Prufrock, breathes in his surroundings and then uses them to define his own appearance as the antithesis of what he sees. The man has no self-esteem and therefore constantly dwells on his negative attributes and less-than-perfect features. In the poem, Prufrock recites a long monologue that is characteristic of almost every other human being. T. S. Eliot uses Prufrock as a symbol, for humanity in general, to show how all persons are doubtful at times of their attractiveness.
Prufrock is a man of uncertain age. (Spender 31) Therefore, he can be portrayed as a teenager, a middle-aged man, or a person of any other age very easily. If one looks at Prufrock through the eyes of a teenager, he can easily be seen as a seventeen-year-old. While Prufrock is “like a patient etherized upon a table” (line 3), teenagers roam the halls at school like puppy dogs with their mouths open, dazed and lost in space. Both are in love with some beautiful woman and wander the paths practically drooling. While Prufrock is busy finding time “for a hundred indecisions, and a hundred visions and revision” (lines 32-33), teenagers are occupied thinking of ways to approach the person they want. Both seem to put facades on to make themselves sound better so that they will get the person they want to get. While Prufrock is worrying “with a bald spot in the middle of his hair - (How they will say his hair is growing thin!)” (lines 41-42), teenagers constantly, in vain, check their own hair in the mirror to see if it is just perfect! There are several similarities between young people like teenagers and Prufrock. However, not only does Prufrock resemble teenagers, but he also resembles middle-aged men who are hitting a mid-life crisis. They worry about their hair balding or becoming gray and whether they are attractive enough. They go out and try to reinvent themselves as different people just as Prufrock does with his revisions, decisions, and visions. Prufrock has characteristics of several different people of all ages. Eliot is showing that all men (women included) have doubts and occasional low self-esteem. Whether you are 17, 37, or 57, you are capable of having no confidence occasionally. This is Eliot’s generalization of all men.
Prufrock’s worries concerning his sexuality and appearance not only show his resemblance to all men, but they also stop him from continuing on with his life as a happy, caring, and normal man. “He is Eliot’s archetype of the great refusal, the man who fears to dare and so misses life... ...Prufrock initiates Eliot’s obsession with the lost opportunity and the missed life.” (Mayer 127) Prufrock is so busy concentrating on his less-than-perfect features and supposed negative attributes that he lets life pass him by. “I grow old... I grow old... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.” (Line 120-121) Prufrock loses the future by concentrating on the present. His inhibitions about the opposite sex hold him back. “‘Prufrock’ is built around the arid, timid, conventional persona of a man sexual enough to admit desire, but insufficiently sexual to do anything about it.” (Raffel 24) In every person’s life they feel like this occasionally. They love someone, but they hold themselves back because of some fear, etc. Eliot uses Prufrock as a symbol for all men again.
“Prufrock is inhibited, self-conscious, obsessed with image, self-possessed, and afraid... Fear is in the way - the fear to dare, to live honestly, to tell all, to be the Fool. The mermaids will not sing to Prufrock because he will not sing to anyone. His “love song” to himself is a cry of anguish...” (Mayer 128-129) While Prufrock sings to himself, men everywhere are busy talking outlook to the stars, the sky, and the moon about how much they wish they could get the girl they loved or be more handsome, more intelligent, or more loved. Some of these men will cry out in anguish and they will not tell anyone how they feel because of inhibitions. The mermaids (women) therefore will not sing to him if he will not sing to them! All men are afraid to tell a woman how they feel about them often in reality. They will stutter and beat around the bush. Besides the mermaids, there are several other minor characters who can support this theory. Prufrock talks about Prince Hamlet, Lazarus, the Footman, and an attendant lord. He has characteristics of all these men. He attends to others and never pleases himself like the attendant lord. “Hamlet embodies Prufrock’s aspirations to live - that is, to be or not to be”. (Mayer 117) All men have asked themselves that question; Should I do it or shouldn’t I? (Referring to asking someone out) All of these people have traits in common with Prufrock, moreover with every other man. Once again, Prufrock is shown to be a symbol for all men.
In the middle of the poem, Prufrock talks of other men and the effect of the yellow smoke that curled around the windows. “...And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows.” (lines 71-72) Prufrock obviously identifies with the lonely men (despite their shirt-sleeves), and perhaps sees their leaning out of the windows as symbolic of his own desire for contact with the world. (Spurr 7) Since Prufrock identifies with the lonely men, therefore, that is proof that others have felt this way. Prufrock, like all others often in their lives, back away from pursuing love from a paralyzing fear that results in the ultimate loss of the object he desires. “Prufrock watches his possible moment of greatness flicker because of his anxiety over his looks.” (Spurr 56) All men seem to follow in his footsteps.
If one looks at a few words specifically in the poem, like “let us go then, you and I” (line 1), one can see why Prufrock really is a symbol for all men in general. “The “you” and “I” of the first line present greater difficulties. Critics have commonly interpreted them as referring to two parts of Prufrock, carrying on a conversation with himself.” (Headings 24) Many times Prufrock seems to be having a conversation with someone else, perhaps another man, or even his object of love. However, the poem is really one long monologue. Prufrock is speaking to himself. Men in reality will often do the same when trying to make a decision. They will ask themselves whether they really love the woman, or want to marry her, or want to kiss her, etc. Talking to oneself is a common practice to make a decision.
J. Alfred Prufrock is a man who is in love with a certain woman, but he is somehow held back from approaching her. He feels unworthy of her, he feels unattractive, and for some reason he is sexually inhibited. At one time in their life, whether it be as a teenager, a middle-aged man, or an older person, men have felt like Prufrock. They have doubts, fears, and inhibitions. Prufrock is truly a symbol for all of humanity in general.
About Me
For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at
https://thisismytruthnow.com, where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by. Note: All written content is my original creation and copyrighted to me, but the graphics and images were linked from other sites and belong to them. Many thanks to their original creators. -
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is the most beautiful poem I have ever read. I'm not a big poetry connoisseur, so feel free to disagree.
I would eat this poem if I could. Or marry it. I would hold the hair of this poem while it puked, if it were the type of poem to drink heavily to the point of wretching, but it's not. This poem is far too good for those sort of shennanigans. (Instead, it partakes of tea and cakes and ices and lingers in dooryards and ponders the beauty and futility of life, which is why I love it so.)
I don't know about the rest of the poems in this book because Prufrock is so brilliant it burned all the rest of the pages of this book with its white-hot awesomeness. -
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
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It was a required reading at literature seminar. I like poetry in general, and I enjoyed many of these poems.
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“The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock” is, in my unimportant opinion, the most fundamental poem on the theme of immobility. It employs tension between what is romantic and what is modern to capture the trap of insecurity. In this way, “Prufrock” is a commentary not only on its protagonist (who is likely a form of Eliot himself) but also the shifting world at the turn of the 20th century. Prufrock reckons not only with the past, but also modernity.
Take the contrasting imagery of an “evening spread out against the sky” (reminiscent of Keats, Wordsworth, etc) and “a patient etherized upon a table”. Ether is not only an unexpected surprise, a break from verse and rhyme, but a distinctly modern invention.
Prufrock is unable to overcome his own feelings of inadequacy due to forces that are likely within himself, but also out of his control. Even mermaids, who are known to pursue men relentlessly, aren’t interested in Prufrock. Odysseus is only able to resist mermaids by being tied up; Prufrock knows they are not real.
In Eliot’s description of yellow fog, I can’t help but be reminded of chlorine gas, which was a new invention looming heavy over the turn of the century. Bright yellow, pungent, and heavier than air, chlorine settles where it is deployed, immobile. Those who come across it are said to have “drowned”, as the function of chlorine is to fill lungs with liquid and render the victim immobile (if not dead). Prufrock appears, upon entering a scientifically advanced but horrific and realistic modern world, a figure rendered immobile early on, drowning later.
“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
Even a “magic lantern” isn’t magic at all; it’s an early image projector, and one that had fallen out of disuse by the time Eliot wrote. -
Prufrock ... can any other poem excel in its description of the monotonous life of an average man!
Short on caprice to explain my love for this wholesome poem (modernism at its best). I’ll be back in my 30’s, maybe. Till then. -
This was a gloomy, depressing, bleak and confusing poem. I will confess to be "lost" with poetry. This was a stream of consciousness of a sad, unfulfilled, lonely and self effacing man. It is a famous work and the volume I had included some other material. I wish I could find poetry as moving as many say it is.
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I have measured out my life with coffee spoons
When I was asked by BBC Culture what would be my favourite line by the great poet T.S. Eliot, this famous expression from his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock came up instantly to my mind.
Not for my adoration for espresso (worship would be the appropriate term), but for being intrigued by how a simple line provides multiple figurative meanings..
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/2015...
The reference to the coffee spoon has various interpretations. Many people mistakenly thinks it is just humorous. However, this expression denotes that rationality, the carefulness in the way of thinking and the moderation in taking decisions, in accordance with the essential theme of the text which is despair, leaves little space for ambitions and leads to a mediocre monotone life.
The implied meaning of this expression is close to Nietzsche's (Yes, i'll mention him in every post, sue me) wonderful aphorism One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
Eliot’s metaphor indicates boredom and bitterness as through this poem the narrator is evaluating retrospectively his life and is regretting its mediocrity..
The poem, described as a drama of literary anguish, highlights the narrator's inertia, his cowardice to approach women, his ineptness and his spiritual flaccidity.
With his physiological and psychic states of apathy and inertia, he evokes ”Oblomov”, Ivan Goncharov’s famous character:
When you don't know what you're living for, you don't care how you live from one day to the next. You're happy the day has passed and the night has come, and in your sleep you bury the tedious question of what you lived for that day and what you're going to live for tomorrow.
The poem takes a form of a dramatic interior monologue or a modernist stream of consciousness, which according to J. Harlan and K. McCoy, epitomize(s) frustration and impotence of the modern individual" and "represent(s) thwarted desires and modern disillusionment.
Mr. “Prufrock”’s lassitude and defeatism are also a reminder of the Chekhovian characters.
Consequently, the little quantity a coffee spoon can hold is an allusion to the little his life experiences amount to, how insignificant are the steps the ineffectual and dull "Prufrock" has taken and his frustration over the lost opportunities.
“Prufrock" was incapable to take decisive actions. He has surrendered to the monotone acts and rituals (as same as we use the coffee spoon daily) and he fears to pursue change. He then uses the coffee spoon as a measure unit to assess his life, because he is diligent and meticulous and therefore doesn't dare to drop carelessly the sugar in his tea or coffee.
According to a different interpretation that I have read once, a literal one that tends to separate it from the rest of the poem, a coffee spoon alludes to the social, as we spend most of our time when drinking a coffee or a tea cup in the company of other people, discussing, debating and telling our secrets.. So whenever you are nostalgic or thinking of your life, others would be present in these memories and they are the witnesses of it. -
Poem review "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
“For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”
Prufrock, the main character of this poem, is exhibited during the uncertain times of the beginning of World War I. Published in 1915, T S Eliot presents one of his first published poems.
His verses narrate the experience of Prufrock, an urban man that deeply dwells in his own existential thoughts. Dominated by uncertain times, the main figure of the poem presents signs of disappointment and sexual frustration. The dramatic stage of Prufrock carries feelings of impotence and embarrassment, in an unapologetic world.
Prufrock, an alter-ego or simply a name from the vague memoir of the past? Is the character enduring different personalities? Is it simply a monologue or a dialogue between Prufrock and the reader? These poetic aspects emphasise the writer's state of mind. The message conveys a train wreck of thoughts and emotions that surpass what is logical and symbolic. However, it's certain that the writer's weaknesses are expressed like a suspended tune, a nonreciprocal tune about love, rejection and personal failure.
The main character and his fear of rejection:
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
The uncertainty of the future dwelled in frustration and anguish:
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worthwhile,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
The high number of allusions is another feature on Eliot's work. This poem makes allusions to other writers that served as inspiration - such as Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri.
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
Whether it's an alter ego or a simple imaginary character with existential dilemmas, this love song poem represents the exquisiteness of a modern individual: a type of exquisiteness that creates overwhelming questions about life.
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Note: Poem read individually from a different edition -
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a masterpiece, 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟, but, as a whole book of poems, it just functions like a pop album, meaning that there are two very good poems or hits (Rhapsody on a Windy Night is also brilliant) and the rest feel like fillers (which Eliot knew, for they are clearly jokes).
Let us go instead of Let's go (same goes for do not ask and maybe other cases) seems like a poetic inaccuracy to me (it would be great to have Ezra Pound's opinion on this [aren't all his corrections of The Waste Land fantastic? Pound was as knowledgable as gifted [he had a poetic 6th sense which Eliot would have given an arm for having]), for Eliot wanted to sound modern, casual, etc.
If you like The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot and/or poetry enough, you should know whom this poem comes from: Jules Laforgue.
Eliot was close to not overcome the anxiety of his influence, stating that I was hypnotized by the music of his verse.
Prufrock, published in 1917, was immediately hailed as a new manner in English literature and belittled as an echo of Laforgue and the French symbolists to whom Eliot was highly and clearly indebted.
T. S. Eliot said that he traced his beginnings as a poet to two influences, the later Elizabethans and the poems of Laforgue. He said that Laforgue spoke to his generation more intimately than Baudelaire seemed to do, and he ranked Laforgue with Donne and Baudelaire as the inventor of an attitude, a system of feeling or of morals. Some of Eliot’s early poems, notably Portrait of a Lady and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, are modeled on Laforgue’s “complaints.” -
And indeed there will be time
[…]
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
[…]
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
[…]
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’
*
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table; -
So when I first started reading it, I hated it. "When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;"? But then, the beauty of it struck me. Each word gathering more meaning and events and feelings I could relate to. [I am] "Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse" Yes! so me! A fantastic rendition of mundane thoughts us humans have about life altering changes in our lives. I read it over and over and was fascinated by the simplicity of the words coming forth off the page that had such an impact on me. "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." As have I. This was my first T.S. Eliot, and will unequivocally not be my last. -
The first time I heard this poem out loud, all I could say was "Wow." I haven't read much of Eliot's work, and to be honest, most of it goes over my head. However, "Prufrock" connected with me so strongly—the indecision, fear of the future, fear of doing something incredible, falling in love, the meaninglessness of life, the fear of not being worthy of affection, doom in death.... Written so eloquently, with great sadness & emptiness, this gorgeous poem voices the fears of every person doesn't know how to voice. I recommend reading the poem out loud to fully appreciate the sound and rhythm. It's breathtaking.
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Prufrock is one of my all-time favorite poems and it is included here with other works by Eliot. This is a great and relatively short way to capture the beauty of Eliot's verse.
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Oh Eliot, how u push me to fall into the chasm of nihilism.... 😞
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Ճանաչել եմ առավոտներ, երեկոներ, կեսօրներ ունայն,
Իմ կյանքը սուրճի գդալներով եմ չափել միայն ❤ -
In T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Eliot invents a paralyzingly timid, consistently fearful, and chronically indecisive man named J. Alfred Prufrock who portrays facets of the human condition and also comes to be a way for Eliot to look inward and know himself. The entire poem is structured around a rambling, internal, dramatic monologue that Prufrock has with himself, which only intensifies the poem’s insular feel, and destructively, yet effectively for the sake of the intentions of the poem, feeds Prufrock’s inadequacies.
The stanzas each appropriately resemble the chaotic, all at once-ness of thoughts and introduce us to the wavering persona of Prufrock and establish the context for the ways in which we can view and familiarize ourselves with his cripplingly self-conscious psyche and internal life. Prufrock is hopelessly preoccupied with analyzing himself and obsessing over how he looks, acts, and is viewed by others, which is his ultimate crisis.
He even goes so far as to also proclaim in the eighth stanza, “Do I dare / Disturb the universe”? This stanza is an example of an irregularity in meter that brings out Prufrock’s self-doubts even further. When the meter strays from regularity, Prufrock is at the height of his insecurities and self-deprecation. The nature of Prufrock’s questioning is also contradictory, however, because it reflects a more egotistical side, albeit unwittingly, of Prufrock in that he views himself as being significant enough to affect the enormity of the universe. When, more realistically, his world and problems are comparatively smaller in some of their pettiness. This couplet can also be interpreted as the climax of Prufrock’s fearfulness in that he is perceiving even the smallest of his actions as a precursor to his fate as a human being.
Prufrock’s fundamental desire is be able to never have to decide. He wants to take an internal break from life’s questions and repressive formula. These characteristics shape the poem and its focus on Prufrock who in all of his hyperbolic skittishness represents the inherent tendencies of humankind to think intently about the future to the point of it being debilitating which, in turn, paralyzes present action.
He takes everything to an extreme, though, which is emphasized through Eliot’s use of hyperbole to highlight Prufrock’s lack of self-confidence and inability to see past himself and his shortcomings and into the larger picture of the world and the people in it: that they’re imperfect, too, and more accepting than he may think. He puts everything and everyone on a pedestal and ends up a fallen anti-hero and I think this poem powerfully points to that, but I think it was the type of poem I could come to appreciate the more I read through it. On the first read, it felt harder to parse apart and connect with, but I unfortunately (fortunately for the poem's sake?) through it all can understand the depths of Prufrock's neurosis and how it debilitates him. -
I am not a fan of poetry, no matter how many poems I have to read for my literature course. But this... This was incredibly well written. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is definitely on my top 3 of the greatest poems I have ever read
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had the best orange of my life yesterday amidst a life that was falling apart and I thought to myself what was that poem by Elliot that was about eating an orange and disturbing the universe and I came to find it and to my despair it was about eating a peach. And I read it all the way through and though wonderful- nothing compared to my little orange. This is an ode to that orange. Elliot's peach is only one heartbreaking attempt at being an orange.
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This poem is, I think, Eliot’s ‘fanfare for the common man’. Prufrock is the ordinary bloke in the street, and his name itself seems deliberately humdrum to set him apart from the great figures of literature: ‘No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be,’ he exclaims self-deprecatingly after a rather long passage of philosophising. But although he is no hero, Prufrock is as capable of appreciating beauty and having deep insights into the human condition as any of the exalted ones. He is rather like Leopold Bloom in Ulysses in this respect. Prufrock and the greats are connected by their shared humanity.
The poem, as is usual with Eliot, is saturated with literary allusion, from Donne, Dante, Shakespeare and Marvel to Chaucer, Hesiod and the Bible. A reader has to take these allusions on board to get the most out of his poems, though on the surface they are fairly accessible. You can enjoy Dante’s Divine Comedy without knowing all the ins-and-outs of Florentine power politics, but if you do pick them up you’ll enjoy it even more and catch nuances of meaning that flesh it out. In Prufrock, you can appreciate the line, ‘I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas’, without knowing that it is an allusion to Hamlet (‘for you yourself, sir, should be as old as I am, if like a crab you could go backwards’, where Hamlet is simulating madness to the old courtier Polonius). The allusions bring in other flavours and shades of meaning from the works of other writers. Another case in point is:
‘And I have known the arms already, known them all –
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)…’
To know that this is a reference to the line, ‘a bracelet of bright hair about the bone’, in ‘The Relique’ by John Donne, is to heighten one’s appreciation beyond the immediate one and bring out a much fuller awareness, tying it in with other references to death and the passing of time. The epigraph in Italian at the beginning is from Dante’s Inferno xxvii 61-6, and the lines are spoken by Count Guido da Montefeltra, where he tells Dante that he will speak openly about what he has seen in Hell because he assumes that he, Dante, cannot return to earth to report what he says. This in turn connects with line 94 of Prufrock: ‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead, come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all…’. In Luke, Lazarus goes to heaven and asks Abraham if the rich man Dives can be sent back from Hell to tell Lazarus’s five brothers what it is like, as a warning to them (Abraham refuses). So there are many crosscurrents and connections in Eliot’s poems that bring out a deeper and fuller appreciation of them, though this can be irritating at times.
Eliot himself was fully aware that he was seen in some quarters as being unnecessarily obscure and indeed pretentious, but he did not apologise for it. He defended his own perceived obscurity by reference to Dante’s Divine Comedy: ‘If you get nothing out of it at first, you probably never will; but if from your first deciphering of it there comes now and then some direct shock of poetic intensity, nothing but laziness can deaden the desire for fuller and fuller knowledge’. And again: ‘The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning’. -
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
This is undoubtedly the best poem ever written, I feel so lucky I got the chance to study it, or else I am pretty sure I wouldn't have stumbled across it. Or if I had had, I wouldn't have picked it up for fear I might not be able to grasp the meaning behind it. But, amazingly, I did, I felt it in my bones which made it all the more shocking. I've been crying my eyes out for an hour or so, no poem has ever had such an impact on me before.
Just like Alfred, I lie to myself on a daily basis, I keep telling myself "there will be time, there will be time", when in fact, I know the opposite is rather the case. Time is unforgiving, and I am a procrastinator, there is so much I'd like to experience, but my crippling fear of life tells me I've had enough, I've seen it all. I shudder at the thought of death, at its unpredictability, at how one day it might creep on me, snickering, and in short, I am afraid. -
My most favorite parts: Motif of cat as night & Image of patient on thhe surgery table & the spider on the wall. This poem makes me go "yew....." and "exactly".
The motif of the cat thrills me because it is so perfect. This cat idea has occurred to others, yet it took all these centuries, millenia, for a writer to get the imge so perfect. -
This is one of my most favourite books. I love T. S. Eliot. His writing, his poem...his rhythm is without equal. I will never again walk around a beach without remembering:
'Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.'
It's magical and yet so real. Read it. Again. And again. You will learn something very unique about yourself.
T.S. Eliot rules. 5 stars. -
Do I dare
I would eat this poem. I would stuff it in my mouth and swallow it whole. Lock it in the attic for no one but me. Fuck it. Marry it. Kill it. Dig it up and push it inside me, like an organ. I should have been a pair of ragged claws. You know how it is. It's just one of those.
disturb the universe? -
Eliot's own reading
Anthony Hopkins
Christopher Plummer (?) -
"Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
What is there not to love about this dramatic monologue? The imagery it's breathtaking. -
I can't think of one person who read this poem and did not immediately call it a favorite.
