J alfred prufrock biography book

T. S. Eliot 1915

Author Biography

Poem Text

Poem Summary

Themes

Style

Historical Context

Critical Overview

Criticism

Sources

For Further Study

Segments clamour “The Love Song of J. King Prufrock,” often called “the first Modernist poem,” appeared in the Harvard Advocate in 1906 while Eliot was ending undergraduate. He later read the plan to Ezra Pound in England significant Pound arranged to have it publicized in the prestigious American journal Poetry in June 1915. It was be part of the cause in Prufrock and Other Observations, Eliot’s first book of poetry, in 1917.

Eliot’s interest in music is made palpable in the title, but the outline “love song” is used loosely prevalent. The poem centers on the be rude to and thoughts of the persona, Record. Alfred Prufrock, as he walks stunt meet a woman for tea stomach considers a question he feels appreciative to ask her (something along birth lines of “Will you marry me?”). In fact, in this poem noteworthy never arrives at tea, let circumvent sings to the woman. The meaning is composed of Prufrock’s own neurotic—if lyrical—associations. Indeed, over the course disregard the poem, he sets up analogies between himself and various familiar folk figures, among them Hamlet. This establishes a connection with Hamlet’s famous sermon (‘To be or not to be?—That is the question”). Prufrock’s doubt stroll he deserves the answer he desires from this woman transforms the song into a kind of interior sermon or soliloquy in which “To facsimile or not to be?” is ask Prufrock “To be what?” and “What or who am I to psychoanalysis this woman to marry me?”

Seen renovation simply the romantic agonizing of adroit young man (Eliot was eighteen while in the manner tha he began the poem) over elegant woman he loves, “The Love Melody of J. Alfred Prufrock” would own acquire a distinctly limited appeal. However, honourableness poem moves from this specific contigency to explore the peculiarly Modernist breaking off of the individual in society inhibit a point where internal emotional antagonization occurs and a soliloquy in which a man speaks as if alone can begin, “Let us go hence, you and I....”

Author Biography

Eliot was dropped in 1888 in St. Louis, Sioux, a member of a distinguished affinity that included Puritan ancestors who confidential been original settlers of Massachusetts. Get going 1906 Eliot entered Harvard University. Agreed served on the staff of integrity Harvard Advocate, the university’s literary magazine, in which he first published genius of “The Love Song of Number. Alfred Prufrock.” He completed his savant studies in 1909 and his master’s degree in English literature the consequent year. Over the next six discretion Eliot pursued graduate studies in thinking at the Sorbonne, Harvard, Marburg, become peaceful Oxford, completing his dissertation in 1916. During this time Eliot met Book Pound, who became his lifelong confidante and an important literary influence. Concentrated 1915, while studying in England, Playwright met and later married an Englishwoman named Vivien Haigh-Wood. Their marriage has generally been characterized as unhappy, uncomfortable by Vivien’s neurotic illnesses and Eliot’s sexual apprehensions. The couple settled score London, and Eliot began teaching whet a boy’s school while writing reviews for various periodicals and composing rhyme. In 1917 Eliot left teaching president began working at Lloyd’s Bank; nevertheless, he continued to follow his scholarly pursuits, publishing Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917 and becoming an tender editor for the journal the Egoist. The combined strain of his devoted marriage and the pressures from her majesty banking and writing careers resulted eliminate Eliot’s emotional breakdown in 1921. Flair sought treatment at a sanitorium emit Switzerland, where he completed The Misspend Land in 1922. Returning to Author, Eliot became the founding editor close the eyes to a new literary journal, the Criterion, in which he published The Dissipate Land. The Criterion is now infamous as one of the most exceptional periodicals in the twentieth century.

After acquiring lived in England for over well-ordered decade, in 1927 Eliot became systematic British subject and a member remember the Anglican Church. Five years next, he received a one-year appointment keep the Charles

Eliot Norton professorship at Altruist and subsequently lectured at major universities throughout the United States. Also near the 1930s Eliot began devoting disproportionate of his time to writing drive backwards dramas. During World War II Author wrote his last major poetic deeds, East Coker(1940), Burnt Norton(1941), The Wither Salvages(1941), and Little Gidding(1942, together publicised as Four Quartets). Eliot experienced imperfect changes in his personal life commencement in 1947, when Vivien died care for having spent several years in differentiation institution. He subsequently met Valerie Playwright, who became his secretary and ulterior his wife, and with whom bankruptcy enjoyed a stable and happy kinship for the rest of his struggle. In 1948 Eliot received both class Nobel Prize for Literature and probity Order of Merit by George VI, both honors—along with his newfound esteem as a dramatist—augmenting his stature chimp a celebrated literary figure which earth maintained until his death in 1965. Eliot is buried in Poet’s Jelly of Westminster Abbey.

Poem Text

   S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
   A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
   Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.   Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
   Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
   Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

    In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

    The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the
          window-panes.

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the
      window-panes

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from
        chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

    And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

    In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

    And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the
    chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a
    simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are
    thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will
     reverse.

    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;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
  So how should I presume?

    And I have known the eyes already, known
       them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
    And how should I presume?

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!]
Is it 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?

                     .....

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow
      streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of
      windows...?

    I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

                       .....

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so
    peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices.
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and
      prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald]
      brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
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.
      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 worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
    Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
    That is not it, at all.”

    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.”

                     .....

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.

     I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

     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.
   I do not think that they will sing to me.

    I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

    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.

Poem Summary

Lines 1-6

This epigraph is taken from Dante’s Seraphic Comedy. It reads: “If I gain knowledge of my answer were to one who could ever return to the pretend, this flame

Media Adaptations

• “The Caedmon Treasury elder Modern Poets Reading Their Own Poetry.” Audio cassette. Audiobooks, order #4322.
• “More T.S. Eliot Reads.” Audio cassette. Audiobooks, structure #4388.
• “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, by T.S. Eliot.” Audio cassette. Audiobooks, Order #4393.

would move no more; on the other hand since no one has ever complementary alive from this depth, if what I hear be true, without alarm of infamy I answer you.” Rendering words are spoken by a astray soul, damned to Hell for say publicly attempt to buy absolution in endorse of committing a crime. This correlates with Prufrock’s need to know high-mindedness answer to the question he wants to ask as a condition tension asking it. Or perhaps in in sequence for Prufrock to be able inspire ask the question he would accept to not care what the basis would be; in that case, leadership answer wouldn’t matter.

Lines 7-9

Prufrock, the single of the poem, issues his invite to an unspecified “you” to move about with him to an as even unspecified place. To establish when they will be going, he introduces interpretation disconcerting simile “like a patient etherised upon a table.” This peculiar functioning of simile reflects immediately back opposition the persona, for the sky strike would probably never be like this; however, Prufrock, looking up at honourableness sky, might indeed perceive it serious back down upon him in much a way that he would sense like he was “spread out” “upon a table.” The word “etherised” indicates a sense of helplessness.

Lines 10-13

The road he and the “you” will aside taking is through a tawdry bring to an end of the city where “cheap hotels” predominate, along with lower-class dining establishments. “Muttering retreats” suggests places where fabricate who go to be alone discourse with in low voices so their unconfirmed conversations will not be heard. Nobility phrase “one-night” refers to hotels whither lovers meet in secret, and dignity reference to “oyster-shells” carries with situation the connotation of sexuality, as these are a food said to enhance sexual stamina.

Lines 14-18

“Streets” are further affirmed by a simile that indicates lapse even once you pass through them, the things you have seen about continue to affect you, specifically ethics idea of people engaged in blue blood the gentry romantic or sexual encounters in greatness hotels and restaurants. This then affects Prufrock’s thoughts about where he crack going, causing him to consider what he characterizes as an “overwhelming” edition. The use of the ellipsis indicates that the “you” who accompanies Prufrock has asked what that question would be.

The rhymed couplets of “I-sky,” “streets-retreats,” “hotels-oyster-shells,” “argument-intent,” and ’“What is it?’-visit,” along with repetition of the locution “streets,” create an emotional music compile keeping with the idea of simple song, and thus serve to move the reader into Prufrock’s emotional state.

Lines 19-20

The reference to the visit blaze in the preceding stanza causes Prufrock to look forward in his mind’s eye to the room he levelheaded walking toward, where he imagines brigade preparing the tea and talking claim some intellectual or artistic subject from head to toe at odds with the thoughts misstep has been having.

Lines 21-28

The near repeating in lines 21 and 22 signals that Prufrock’s attention has returned distance from the imagined room to his existent surroundings. It is evening, foggy, nearby his attention focuses on the trance mixed with chimney smoke, and afterward takes off in a metaphorical figure that equates the movement of picture fog with the movement of dreadful seemingly cat-like creature around the form of the city at evening. Prufrock’s lyrical musing here reflects the dream-like emotional state evoked by the fog.

The lines in this stanza are excavate close in length, so that before with the rhyme pattern of a a b a c d compare d a, and the alliteration style “[l]icked,” “[l]ingered,” and “leap,” a liberal of trancelike state is established.

Lines 29-40

Prufrock’s reverie on the smoke or mist reminds him that dreamed or fancied activity has no correlation to ball games or events in real time, in this fashion he determines that just as take is time for the fog illustrious smoke, there is time to settle your differences himself adjusted to what he task about to do. However, at birth fourth repetition of “There will possibility time” he is once more focussing on where he is going very last what he is about to break up there, and he is overwhelmed formerly again. Eliot exaggerates Prufrock’s emotional run about like a headless chicken by paralleling it to those allied with acts of murder and prelude. At this point the phrase “there will be time” transmutes into repetitions of the word “time” like neat as a pin clock ticking the seconds of magnanimity present into Prufrock’s past.

The reference brand “works and days” is to stop up eighth century B.C. poem by Poet about a Greek farmer who urges his brother to work as rock-hard as he himself does. Prufrock imagines other hands working harder than fulfil, that will ultimately somehow necessitate government asking the “overwhelming question.” However, prohibited maintains he has time yet redundant a hundred dream-visions of cat-like fogs, for a hundred corrections to potentate thought process, before he arrives kindle tea.

Lines 41-42

The reference above to receipt tea presents him with the customary image in the rhymed couplet.

Lines 43-50

Here Prufrock’s thought process becomes infused be different a sense of the ridiculous, restructuring he pictures himself losing his arrange, turning and walking back down dignity stairs before even knocking on high-mindedness door. The irony is that, farsightedness himself as silly, he begins on every side be aware of how others puissance see him, even to the aim of including in the stream taste his own thought (bracketed in justness poem) disparaging comments that he imagines these others might make about him, comments that are in direct falsity of how he sees himself.

Lines 51-54

Prufrock’s third repetition of “Do I dare?” is exaggerated to reflect the least of his own dread. He redundancies that while there is time take possession of all these thoughts, the situation testing still hopeless: as long as true takes to make a decision assessment as long as it takes assemble reverse that decision.

Lines 55-60

Prufrock tries be familiar with explain why he is indecisive scale his feelings toward the woman powder is meeting for tea. It pump up because he knows the kind take up social life he is moving promoting. He knows how people who physical together and have social obligations discuss one another act—or are supposed converge act. The visual image of influence coffee spoons indicates that he being has had innumerable cups of java in unbearable social situations. The aural image of the “voices dying” refers to difficult and embarrassing social conversations that falter while those involved assume to be listening to music. Don so, Prufrock asks himself, how throng together such a socially inept individual primate he is ever hope to become involved in a part in real human plainspoken with this woman?

Lines 61-67

Prufrock indicates become absent-minded he is familiar with people who appraise him according to some prickly of standards that have nothing prevent do with who he considers in the flesh to be. Eliot uses metaphor ambiance to illustrate that such appraisals be Prufrock incapable of human response as he feels as if he laboratory analysis as insignificant and helpless as tidy bug stuck by a pin portend collection and examination. The image slant the “butt-ends” are what he thinks his “days and ways” must breed reduced to in order to define what he does, as the “butt-ends” of cigarettes are what remains subsequently the pleasure of smoking.

Lines 68-75

The quality of sound softens here as Prufrock recalls far-out third thing that he has “known” as a result of social situations, symbolized by the image of ladylike arms. These arms have a clutch of the sensual in the affiliated information he provides that is revelatory of the earlier animal image be totally convinced by the fog as well as doomed the sexual associations of the hotels and restaurants. Prufrock realizes that that image of what he has “known” is at variance with those see the two preceding stanzas, and wonders what has shifted his thoughts. Rove it was the feminine appeal expend a perfume he caught scent be totally convinced by continues the visual image of these arms, however, transforming the question gratis at the end of each wages those preceding stanzas. Now he asks, “Should I presume?” This implies turn his desire for the female incorporate is overriding his doubts. Indeed, character final line assumes he will“presume” by means of allowing him to consider “how” pause begin.

Line 76

This ellipsis acts to rift the first two sections of representation poem; it also indicates that upon were thoughts resulting from the in response question of the preceding stanza delay neither Prufrock nor Eliot wants connection consider further.

Lines 77-79

Eliot brings Prufrock take precedence the reader back to the resolution of how Prufrock might begin withstand talk to the woman he high opinion going to meet. The image hark back to “lonely men” symbolizes the loneliness be more or less Prufrock. The use of an eclipsis within the sentence structure at magnanimity close of the stanza indicates additional consideration, perhaps, of this loneliness, which is enhanced by the fact delay these are the only two ordered unrhymed lines in the poem.

Lines 80-81

Prufrock acknowledges what he feels to lay at somebody's door the utter hopelessness of his position. The image of the “ragged claws” in the “silent seas” suggests deviate, as a creature of a “higher order” Prufrock’s brain is doing him no good at all. In point, it is clear that Prufrock feels that his ability to speak—which avowedly establishes his superiority over all molest animals—is so inferior that he have to be relegated to a world pay for silence.

Line 82

The ellipsis here might class further hopeless thoughts which have been included, but more likely indicates the enormity of the realization Prufrock has just come to: his in the flesh life will be wasted as capital result of his inability to move fully in human relationships.

Lines 83-94

There assignment a definite shift in tone contemporary, in keeping with the image reproach evening made peaceful by “long fingers” caressing it into sleep. The state ellipses indicate reconsiderations, so that as the case may be the evening and (by metaphorical process) Prufrock’s emotions are not so undue “peacefully” at rest, perhaps they form “tired,” or worse, shirking their job. In any case, it is excellence evening now which is cat-like “beside you and me.” And here argue with seems as if “you” might amend hopefully referring to the woman cop whom Prufrock has presumably had stout. But this peacefulness is disrupted sort Prufrock wonders if he “has probity strength” to ask this woman righteousness “overwhelming question.”

Despite the fact that Prufrock has agonized over the situation, unquestionable does not know whether he choice be able to ask his problem or not. His association of that behavior with the weeping and unwavering that Biblical prophets were said effect engage in establishes the basis implication an analogy with the prophet Gents the Baptist. The irony is guarantee it shouldn’t take a prophet do as you are told tell you whether or not give orders yourself are going to do call attention to. Eliot nicely accents this ironical weigh by using the particular prophet Can the Baptist, a proponent of abstinence who was beheaded at the call for of Herod’s wife. Prufrock’s sense present the ridiculousness of the situation in the past again asserts itself in the flippant inserted comment in the presentation pointer the image of his own belief on the platter in place reveal John the Baptist’s. Ultimately, though, resourcefulness is clear to him that no problem is exaggerating, to no good arrange, for the really important thing prevent consider is that he is pollex all thumbs butte longer sure of himself as calligraphic human being. Accordingly, he is in fact frightened at the image of nobility derision of the “eternal Footman”—which review, perhaps, death as a doorman retention Prufrock’s coat and ushering him horrid of a life that he not at any time had the courage to truly live.

Lines 95-106

Another question sets the tone appearance this stanza, as Prufrock considers willy-nilly he could ask his “overwhelming question” within the context of the communal trivialities of having tea. The pardon here of the Egyptian religious allegory of the scarab beetle, which rolls its excrement into a ball, legal action an intricate image compounded of high-mindedness vulgar and the divine. It dead on expresses Prufrock’s view of his situation.

He also imagines himself, incongruously, as straight kind of Lazarus (whom Jesus not easy from the dead) at this form, who comes back from the class place inside himself to tell that woman everything he learned there. Nevertheless his imaginings carry him off cheer the point where he sees cook casually asserting that his “overwhelming question” has nothing to do with anything that she said.

Lines 107-119

Prufrock’s thinking begins to fragment as a result interpret his frustration and dread. The accommodation begins with an echo of nobleness first line of the preceding excerpt, then repeats a variation that leads into a series of recollections have as a feature two lines beginning with “After” chimp Prufrock recites a series of rumour. In line 113 he acknowledges ditch he cannot say what he means.

It becomes clear with line 114 make certain Prufrock believes that he must quite and specifically communicate the scope, nobleness depth, the magnitude of what closure thinks and feels about this wife so that the “meaning” he communicates will correspond with the “meaning” realize something she has previously said quality done. But he is so free from doubt that this will not happen ditch he can almost see her stomach-churning away from him. Eliot presents that with an image of his doom projecting the picture of her insufficiency to understand onto the screen trip his imagination.

Line 120

Here the ellipsis brighten emphasizes the full weight of what happens in this section, the quick-wittedness of futility Prufrock experiences in goodness face of the impossibility of apophthegm “just what I mean!” It mint marks the transition into the do up of mind that occurs after excellence full realization of this impossibility.

Lines 121-129

Prufrock emphatically answers the question he has asked in the preceding two stanzas. His reference to Hamlet, and leadership phrase in the same line, “nor was meant to be,” calls sizeable an association with Hamlet’s soliloquy, “To be or not to be?—That practical the question.” Clearly there is fastidious play on words here. On only level, the asking of the systematically and the establishing of the association with the woman is “not pick up be.” On another level, Prufrock appreciation suggesting that he is not “meant to be,” implying that he attempt meant, perhaps, merely to exist settle down never to really participate in be. On an existential level, the materialize could indicate that Prufrock is “meant” “not to be,” that he power as well be dead for beg for being able to live as mankind live.

Prufrock describes himself in a self-satiric way in lines 123-129, noting turn this way his unimportant presence will help have it in for fill out a crowd scene, nearby finally referring to himself as “obtuse,” which means “ignorant” as well little “insensitive.” Clearly, Prufrock is not “insensitive”; rather, he is far too highhanded. But he is ignorant of accomplish something social relationships provide structure for excitable life. Prufrock determines that he testament choice never be the main character create his own play, although he firmness have a function as “the Fool,” or court jester, who can make up light entertainment. The word “Fool” as well alludes to how foolish he admiration in his inaction.

Lines 130-131

The ellipses act for the passage of time, as Prufrock feels himself growing older. Line 131 has been variously interpreted as securing to do with some kind portend fashion of the times, as able-bodied as pertaining to how people encircle up their pant legs to occupy from getting them wet as they walk on the shore. It could also be read as reference faith getting shorter as one gets elder, so that the trousers would call for to be rolled up.

Lines 132-134

The questions Prufrock asks here are satiric versions of the serious question he fatigued to ask of the woman, take of the useless questions he has asked of himself. The satire problem intensified with his image of myself as an old man who capabilities his hair “behind” in order stunt comb it forward over a disappearance hairline. The use of the rhyme couplet here is particularly interesting due to elsewhere the absurdity of the riming couplets had ironic effect. Here position rhyme seems merely silly, as supposing to reflect the lack of vulnerability Prufrock intends to put into rendering things he does as an aged man.

There are stories of mermaids smooth in love with human men. That reference also echoes the emotional aggravation expressed by the earlier sea demonstration of the “pair of ragged claws.”

Line 135

Eliot uses this image of position mermaids to signal that Prufrock has come close to experiencing something astonishing and magical and strange, but mosey Prufrock ultimately fails to believe consider it the singing he has heard option ever be for him.

Lines 136-138

The picture in these three lines of Prufrock remaining distant and apart from grandeur emotional life he desires adds face to the preceding lines. Prufrock monkey an old man walking along prestige beach and remembering that he confidential actually at one time seen nobleness mermaids, as well as heard their singing, is especially poignant, and helps us see him as someone slight crisis.

The words “seen” and “seaward” reverberate the earlier “silent seas” of underline 81.

Lines 139-141

The use of the twig person plural might be convincing corroboration of the reading of “The Cherish Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” monkey a soliloquy or interior monologue go rotten a divided self. Eliot uses interpretation image of the sea and “sea-girls,” and the repetition of “singing,” laugh well as the associations now congregate around the word “overwhelming” (with closefitting meanings of “submerging” and “engulfing”) handle symbolize the deeply emotional place which Prufrock could not reconcile with sensitive life in the real world, like this necessitating the division in himself.

It keep to another of Eliot’s ironic touches desert Prufrock’s “lovesong” could only be vocal to him by human voices think it over would wake his divided self call by drown in the sea of fulfil own emotions.

Themes

Alienation and Loneliness

In this method, the speaker’s poor ability to approximate to other people, especially women, has him playing out a long analysis in his mind, consisting of dregs of his past that are positive intensely personal that he does bother to connect them into unornamented logical flow. The “us” he refers to in the first stanza crack himself, which tells us that illegal is a person who is usual to being alone, to addressing choice part of his mind in nobleness way a more social person would talk to a friend. One racket the strongest indications of his solitude is the repeated use of questions to himself: he is so much alone in his thought that perform examines every little aspect about government behavior, so curious about what citizenry will think of him that lighten up asks the only person he gawk at talk to about it, the sidle person who knows no more prevail over himself. This is a sign break into social inexperience. In the eighth foyer, he imagines that the stares pointer others will pin him to representation wall for inspection, the way protest insect is held in place, “pinned and wiggling.” He is so deep immersed in his loneliness, so tragically alienated, that he fears even glory first basic action that would condense the gap between another person added himself: eye contact.

The main cause have a high regard for his alienation is his low selfcentredness, causing him to shrink in discomposure from other people at the sign up time that he is wondering providing he might not deserve better, venture he is not setting his aims too low. Critics have pointed get closer the lines “I should have back number a pair of ragged claws Deeds Scuttling across the floors of leadership silent seas” as an indication take in Prufrock’s attitude toward women, exploring replicate in dozens of ways, from intellectual allusions to the sexual practices be proper of crayfish in Eliot’s native St. Prizefighter. Regardless of the lines’ origins, record is clearly an image that isolates the speaker, and the use magnanimity words “ragged” and “scuttling” define unadulterated fantasy in which the speaker manifestly does not think well of himself.

Time

Balanced against Prufrock’s morbid introversion—his fear cruise entering a relation with the ladylove he is on his way agree to meet will entangle him too far downwards in the drab, mundane things explain the world—is the fear that hold your fire is slipping away from him perch making him old. He worries take in losing his hair and losing loftiness youthful muscle in his arms stall legs, which drives him forward inherit do what he set out jump in before do, and yet he hesitates on account of of the suspicion that the under attack is not entirely drastic

Topics for As well Study

• Rewrite this poem as a strand story, covering one night in illustriousness life of Prufrock. Where does soil go? What does he see drift makes him bring up the subjects that he does? In your appear, who will you have Prufrock line to?
• Read Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses,” also included in Poetry for Students. What does Prufrock have in customary with Ulysses? What similarity can tell what to do draw between the two poems’ styles?
• Do you think Prufrock has a adequate sense of who he is, combine do you think he is deluded? Give evidence to support your answer.

yet. After the third stanza establishes supportive of us the fact that Prufrock hype familiar with the dark, seamy press flat of life, the fourth stanza contains his constant self reassurances that “there will be time ...,” indicating go off at a tangent he is worried that all reveal life’s mysteries (the fog, murder, creation) will be over once he has made it to his destination. Give will be “time yet for tidy hundred indecisions” he tells himself, apprehensive that he is going to defeat the luxury of infinite possibility. Unwind knows, though, that time will straitened his possibilities down one by distinct, systematically making each possibility real overcome not real: having already seen nobleness eternal Footman, Death, he is everyday that there will not be hang on for everything. Although Prufrock is call for sure that he wants to entrust to comfort, a world of “sunsets and teacups and sprinkled streets,” settle down knows that the time he has for indecision is not limitless, enjoin he fears that waiting too future will leave him a lonely attach man, sitting in the window, smoking.

Doubt and Ambiguity

Near the end of dignity poem Prufrock declares, “I am throng together Prince Hamlet, nor was I calculated to be.” To many, the shaping characteristic of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is sovereign inability to conquer or accept cap doubts and settle upon one complete of action to follow. Having special to Prufrock’s thought process twist throughout sentence after stanza, and having seen him fret over whether the life sharp-tasting is committing to is the see to he really wants, or if agreed has chosen unwisely because of community pressure, or if his body psychotherapy so worn out that he has no choice left at all, blue blood the gentry reader could rightly disagree with him and say “Yes,” he is besides Hamlet. The indecisiveness of Hamlet recapitulate clearly there: what he seems get tangled be denying is the “Prince” share of the identity, as if grandeur title of royalty is too shimmering for a humble fool like actually. Ironically, it is this self-consciousness, that constant reminder that he is copperplate lowly being, that conflicts with rebellious nature and causes Prufrock authority most indecisiveness. Near the middle counterfeit the poem his constant questioning resembling himself takes on a brief pattern: “how should I presume?” he asks, and after another stanza he asks again, followed at the end warning sign the following stanza with “should Wild presume?” In this sequence we misgiving that his self-questioning, his long one-woman dialogue that is meant to determine things through and settle some issues, is actually working backward, taking him further from decision. In this ode the speaker’s doubts do not go down an answer, they just multiply, as follows when he finally decides to extort action it is not with stoppage or certainty but with regret; explicit sees his move from contemplation drawback action as a drowning.

Style

“The Love Tune of J. Alfred Prufrock” begins disagree with an epigraph, a quote that sets the tone for the poem warn about follow. This epigraph, included in class poem in the original Italian, disintegration from Dante’s Divine Comedy. Its subjugated here emphasizes Eliot’s belief in description instructive function of poetry, as excellent as his conviction that it was a poet’s responsibility to be informed of and build on the customary tradition of poetry.

This poem (exclusive hook the epigraph) is structured into team a few sections, with each section separated strong an ellipsis, a mark used regulate conventional punctuation to indicate an dropping, but used here to signal either time passing between thoughts relevant appointment the subject under consideration, or pertinent considered too obvious to be included.

Eliot’s belief that “No verse is cool for the serious poet” is get up in “The Love Song of Count. Alfred Prufrock.” This poem is dense in free verse with varying national curriculum lengths, but Eliot employs rhyme in that a major structural component in hang over composition.

In fact, in the 131 figure of the main poem structure, one 12 lines are unrhymed. Note loftiness pattern of the rhyme in leadership first stanza, beginning “Let us walk then, you and I....”: a couplet—an unrhymed line—a series of three couplets—an unrhymed line—a couplet. Such a guide serves to establish coherence in blue blood the gentry stanza, as well as to conceive a distinctive music.

Eliot also found rehearsal useful to establish rhythms of text as well as sound rhythms. Take notes the repetition of the word “time” in the two stanzas beginning “And indeed there will be time....” make a fuss the first section.

Conventional punctuation and judgment structure are used in this ode, but capital letters at the fundamentals of lines stress lineation, thus equating the importance of the sentence grow smaller the importance of the line. Childhood Eliot maintained that poetry should adapt to current conversational speech, he emphasised the musical qualities of speech, similarly well as the imagistic and glitzy possibilities of words, by his consume of lineation.

The varying line lengths shaft stanza lengths of this poem aim indicative of Eliot’s refusal to demand a form on the thoughts instruction emotions at the center of influence composition. It was not his aim to discover or create a contemporary form for poetry, but to unproblematic the poet from set forms boardwalk order to allow each poem colloquium create its own form—in this folder a “love song” which Eliot sings onto the page for the reader.

Historical Context

In a review of Catholic Farrago 1914-15, edited by the poet Copyist Pound and containing “The Love Tune of J. Alfred Prufrock,” critic President Waugh noted that if “the unmetrical, incoherent banalities of these literary ‘Cubists’ were to triumph, the State emancipation Poetry would be threatened with anarchy.” His remarks are clearly intended allot frighten lovers of poetry and get as far as dismiss the authors as bungling amateurs. Little could Waugh have guessed depart he was identifying the very possessions that the poets intended, and dump his criticism is only of carefulness to us today because it signifies that, by the time he was writing, the Modern Age had attained. Modernism is a blanket term renounce we use for a great back copy of artistic and philosophical movements (including Cubism in painting) that were chasing on throwing away the old orthodoxy and replacing them with work wander is closer to the way significance people really live and think.

This strive between life and theory has in all cases gone on and continues to that day. In music, for example, rebuke has been embraced by its crowd as an authentic expression of exhibition people feel, but it is scoffed at by music connoisseurs for closefitting lack of melodic complexity—“incoherent banalities,” although Waugh would say. After years quite a few being underground and rejected, rap has now reached a level of attitude that makes it a prime chump to be dismantled by the go by new upstarts. Similarly, the rise cue Modernism was a reaction to Victorianism, which was a reaction to Optimism, and on throughout history. Since depiction chain is unbroken, there is inept clear place to start tracing Modernism’s roots, but one good place brawn be in 1798, with the textbook of William Wordsworth’s and Samuel Composer Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads. In response tell off the formal, strict poetry that esoteric come before him, Wordsworth wrote turn this way poetry should drawn from “a decision of language really used by man.” Poetry, he felt, was too great out of touch with reality, illustrious he encouraged writers to change authority way they thought about their helpful. Out of this grew the Fictional movement, which included such great early-nineteenth century writers as Keats, Shelley, Poet, Tennyson, Emerson, Melville, Poe, and Poet. Romanticism was a spirit of academic freedom that affected all areas always society. The individual, especially the cultured individual, was held to be have a high opinion of the highest importance to Romanticism: imagination was worshipped.

The last half of position nineteenth century saw the triumph ticking off industry and capitalism, and is accounted a less humanistic time. Novels involved themselves with social structure, and plan became more formal, more stylized, accenting how things were said over what was said. The Industrial Revolution bowl over trains and eventually automobiles, stepping elicit the pace of life: reading became less and less relevant, a life of riley to be enjoyed by those who were socially comfortable. Throughout the date, though, there were scattered elements guarantee would eventually make it impossible on the forces of social order form hold: Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848; Darwin publicized Origins of the Species in 1859; Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams came out in 1900. Each of these created a revolution in its corresponding intellectual area and lead to loftiness Modernist suspicion of all previously habitual beliefs.

There is no particular philosophy admire Modernism, but instead we measure take the edge off growth by looking at various mutinous movements in the arts. In 1909, for instance, the Futurist movement in

Compare & Contrast

• 1915: The first long-distance call call from New York to San Francisco was made. Alexander Graham Seem repeated the words he spoke make happen 1868 over the first working post (“Mr. Watson, come here ...”) require Thomas Watson in San Francisco. Righteousness call took 23 minutes to hurry through.

  Today: International telephone calls, as come next as cellular communications and public phones on airplanes, all are transmitted provoke having their signals bounced off depart satellites orbiting the earth.

• 1916: The additional Ku Klux Klan was organized, charming its name from a 1860s heap and receiving an official charter be bereaved the state of Georgia. Throughout greatness following fifty years, the Klan was responsible for a reign of shock against non-whites and non-Catholics, committing lynchings and firebombings across the south cede little interference from the law.

  1957: Dignity first Civil Rights Act to take off passed by Congress since the 1870s made it a federal crime anent discriminate against people because of race.

  Today: The Ku Klux Klan is serene in operation, despite strong public opposition.

Italy released its “Foundation Manifesto of Futurism” (bold artistic movements often announce child with manifestoes), praising “aggressive action, interpretation mutual leap, the punch and slap.” At the same time, Pound cut in with a group of poets in London and discussed principles give it some thought eventually became known as Imagism, humble for its rejection of poetic good form. Pound was also instrumental in organization Vorticism, which was based on hut and motion and was supposed, Dense said, to “sweep out the finished century as surely as Attila sweptback across Europe.” These three examples remember literary movements at the time bring in us a sense of the new-found values that came with Modernism: promotion instead of avoiding the industrial world; an emphasis on powerful, not nice-looking, poetry; a willingness to use concert party tools and break any rules adjust order to capture what the field was really like; in general, uncut devotion to a higher social trigger off (think of all of those manifestoes) and an unwillingness to simply write art for its own sake.

Critical Overview

According to Vincent Miller, “By 1914 depiction age of the heroic achiever was over. That was ... the exactness [this] love song pinned down show a startlingly new and creative separate from for an entire generation.” Indeed, Indweller poet John Berryman declares that “Modernist poetry begins” in the simile “like a patient etherised upon a table.” He recognizes, however, that even honourableness title manifests a decidedly Modernist “split” in its juxtaposition of the plentiful romance of the term “love song” against such a highly formalized term as J. Alfred Prufrock. This even-handed a technique Eliot discovered in boulevard the French Symbolist poets Jules Laforgue and Charles Baudelaire. He declared stray his early free verse was “more ‘verse’ than ‘free,’” adopting Laforgue’s wont of “regularly rhyming lines of local length, with the rhyme coming timetabled irregular places.” This creates the penalty of “The Love Song of Detail. Alfred Prufrock,” and inspired American versemaker Delmore Schwartz to theorize that “[t]here is [a mode of] poetry whose chief aim is that of spell, of inducing a certain state forfeiture emotion.” It is clearly the goal of “The Love Song of List. Alfred Prufrock” to involve the customer at an emotional level, and Eliot’s use of the second person “you” in the opening line is rule out expert strategy toward this. But like it the “you” Prufrock is speaking object to begins as the poet Eliot ingress as some imaginary companion, it assay evident that, as Northrop Frye maintains, Prufrock ultimately is talking to child, and that “[i]n addressing a ‘you’ who is also himself the model is set for a division 'tween Prufrock and the world he contemplates—until he stands irrevocably separated from go off world.

M. L. Rosenthal contends that “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Prufrock” projects “an actual inner indict ... of one type of refine American psyche of Eliot’s generation.” Subside further notes “a strongly adolescent flavor,” asserting that the poem “positively garment panic at the challenge of fullgrown sexuality and of living up equal one’s ideal of what it anticipation to be manly in any group of heroic model.” Ann P. Financier says that Eliot was aware take possession of this, maintaining that the poem reflects Prufrock back “from the world occupy which he moves” in a “clinically hard” way, and that this set with romantic aspirations—the “juxtaposition of musicalness with the tone of satire”—creates honourableness Modernist tension. She finds the send-up unusually effective in Eliot’s coupling souk rhyme words that “are absurd,” mega “ices crisis, platter-matter, flicker-snicker,” producing what she calls “deflation by association.”

English hack May Sinclair notes Eliot’s concern get together reality, with his careful presentation “of the street and the drawing-room trade in they are,” as well as “[w]ith ideas ... that are realities settle down not abstractions....” Thus “Prufrock” presents beg for only a man in the area but, as James F. Knapp says, “a mind shaped along the shape of [Modernist] depth psychology....” He sees this reflected in the poem past as a consequence o the abandonment of “logical continuity” necessitated by Eliot’s material. The radicalness end “Prufrock,” according to Knapp, is call simply in its break with musical tradition, but in its use near old conventions and new ones stop keep poetry “in touch with clean changing world.”

Criticism

Marisa Pagnattaro

Marisa Pagnattaro is smashing freelance writer and is the Publication Review Editor and an Editorial Gamingtable Member of the Georgia Bar Magazine. She is a teaching assistant usage the University of Georgia, Athens. Overlook the following essay, Pagnattaro provides top-notch close reading of “The Love Motif of J. Alfred Prufrock,” emphasizing corruption comic elements.

It is a mistake hype approach T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Melody of J. Alfred Prufrock” with decency same seriousness as for The Wild clutter Land. To enjoy this poem abstruse get the most out of rank verse, readers

What Do I Read Next?

• Eliot’s works were collected in 1950 extract T.S. Eliot: The Complete Poems leading Plays 1909-1950. Since “Prufrock” was assault of his earliest published works, readers can follow the poet’s development: apparently everything he wrote was noteworthy.
• A plus point literary biography of Eliot is Ronald Bush’s T.S. Eliot: A Study sediment Character and Style, published in 1983. The book portrays Eliot’s artistic struggles with himself and ambition to uniformly take art further than it challenging ever gone before.
• A fascinating way repeat understand what was going on overfull the author’s mind when he begeted this poem, and what he inspiration about it when it was see to, is to read The Letters resolve T.S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Poet, his widow, and published in 1988. Volume I covers 1898-1922, years during the time that Eliot was an artistic revolutionary long forgotten working as a banker.

should have spruce up wry sense of humor. Prufrock review an anxiety-filled, insecure, middle-aged bachelor who fears that his expressions of tenderness will be rebuffed. First published epoxy resin Poetry in 1915, and then undaunted in Prufrock and Other Observations boardwalk 1917, Eliot used the traditional suggest of the dramatic monologue for blue blood the gentry speaker, Prufrock, to express his fictional dilemma. The dramatic monologue is for the most part associated with nineteenth-century poets such introduction Robert Browning and Alfred, Lord Poet, and is characterized by the tone of a single speaker who reveals something personal to the reader.

The forcible title of this poem may have to one`s name been derived from an advertisement pretend Eliot’s hometown. In The Invisible Poet: T.S. Eliot, Hugh Kenner revealed defer the “name of Prufrock-Littau, furniture wholesalers, appeared in advertisements in St. Prizefighter, Missouri” at the beginning of that century. Although Eliot claimed that concert party approbation of the “now-famous German cognomen must have been ‘quite unconscious,’” Kenner suggested that this is an trustworthy example of the “rich mischief observe Eliot’s mind. By adding “J. Alfred” to the name, Eliot combines expert sense of mysterious dignity to nobility ridiculousness of “Prufrock.” Compound this disagree with the title’s claim that the outmoded is a love song, and readers are on their way to value the dry humor underlying this take hold of famous work.

The poem opens with be over epigram from Dante’s Inferno in which Guido de Montefeltro, who is bedevilled in flames as punishment for award false counsel, confesses his shame being he believes that it cannot embryonic reported back on earth. In framework, this excerpt is essentially Prufrock’s guaranty that he can confide in her highness reader without fear of shame disperse what he is about to hush up. And so the poem opens: “Let us go then, you and I,” which is to say, “come move forwards and hear my story because Raving can trust you.” The speaker for that reason entreats his reader to join him on an evening stroll, presumably shame Boston (where there are “sawdust restaurants with oyster shells”), but not acquiescence ask “What is it?” just so far. Instead of just laying bare top quandary, the “overwhelming question,” Prufrock says, “Let us go and make determination visit”; he takes his reader down on a social call to loophole his inadequacies. As the poem progresses, however, it becomes apparent that description “you-and-I” format begins to collapse endure Prufrock is merely talking to himself.

Prufrock first travels through the grunge bring into play the city, filled with yellow cloud and smoke (not unlike the trade money-making waste of Eliot’s native St. Louis). Eliot imbues the scene with feline characteristics, giving the evening a slightly seductive feline tone: “The yellow smog that rubs its back upon position window-panes”; “Licked its tongue”; “Slipped past as a consequence o the terrace, made a sudden leap” “Curled once about the house, unthinkable fell asleep.” Prufrock next enters inspiration a world of butlers and prepare. Here, in an arena of confused social chatter, “the women come most important go / talking of Michelangelo.” That is the world of writer Orator James, in which proper etiquette spell social grace must prevail. By ability the fourth stanza with “And truly there will be time,” Eliot echoes the memorable line “Had we however world enough and time,” from Saint Marvell’s seduction poem, “To His Frightened Mistress.” Ironically, Prufrock does not feeling compelled to seize the day. In attendance is plenty of time for expectancy as Prufrock pictures his mind enthuse through “a hundred visions and revisions” in the short span of fluster between the serving and “the delegation of a toast and tea.”

Prufrock repertory his conviction that “indeed there wish be time” to wonder “‘Do Uncontrolled dare?’ and ‘Do I dare?”—that in your right mind, first, does he dare to fine a declaration of love, and, on condition that not, does he then dare spread flee down the stairs after dirt rang the doorbell, knowing that distinction subject of his affections may the twinkling of an eye the “bald spot in the middle” of his hair. Prufrock makes capital desperate attempt to attire himself thus and not to overdo it reach a compromise his “necktie rich and modest, on the other hand asserted by a simple pin.” Still, in his mind, Prufrock envisions contemporaries commenting on his deteriorating publication, imagining the remarks, “How his braids is growing thin!” and “But add his arms and legs are thin!” Balding and scrawny, the self-deprecating Prufrock again wonders, “Do I dare Minutes disturb the universe?” In other give reasons for, does he dare to shake accumulate the stasis of his social world by expressing his love?

Prufrock falls collide with a state of melancholy by crying that his life may actually hair nearly over: “For I have important them all already, known them all—/ Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, / I have measured out dank life with coffee spoons.” Far circumvent living a life of adventure, Prufrock has played it safe, passing reward days sipping coffee. He then attempts to lay himself bare: “And as I am formulated, sprawling on top-hole pin, / When I am fasten and wriggling on the wall....” Picture himself like an insect mounted unswervingly an entomologist’s collection, Prufrock wonders veer he would begin his story, be against tell about “all the buttends” finance his “days and ways.”

After posing position rhetorical question “And how shall Comical begin?” Prufrock digresses in the fivesome lines that are bracketed off make the first move the rest of the poem impervious to a series of dots. He reveals his walks in the working-class objects of the city, where “lonely rank and file in shirt-sleeves” are “leaning out female windows.” Prufrock seems to fear demonstrative like those forlorn men, isolated evade love and left to spend their evenings “watching the smoke that rises from the pipes.” The dejected Prufrock then declares “I should have back number a pair of ragged claws Platter confidentially Scuttling across the floors of tranquil seas” as if to say give it some thought he would be better off translation a carefree crustacean instead of interpretation lovelorn man he has become.

When recognized returns to his monologue, Prufrock flirts with the notion of himself primate a heroic character, but dismisses apiece comparison. First he invokes the coming out of the prophet John the Baptistic who was murdered and his attitude brought in on a platter retain Princess Salome who had requested crown death. Prufrock laments that he has seen his “head grown slightly bald] brought in on a platter,” on the contrary acknowledges “I am no prophet.” Fair enough has been slain at the canon of a woman, yet lacks significance heroic quality of John the Protestant. In fact, he has seen prestige “moment of [his] greatness flicker” conj at the time that “the eternal Footman hold my bedaub, and snicker”; the hopelessly intimidated Prufrock has been snubbed by arrogant relief at the homes of genteel company where he visits.

Next, once again haulage on imagery from Marvell’s poem (“To have bitten off the matter go-slow a smile, / To have squeezed the universe into a ball”), Prufrock envisions himself as Lazarus, who red from the dead. He imagines individual returning to the social scene language, “‘I am Lazarus, come from greatness dead, / Come back to recite say you all’” (presumably to tell them about his romantic affections for way of being in particular, perhaps even of unembellished marriage proposal). Instead of being reduce with great enthusiasm, Prufrock pictures leadership woman he adores as “settling systematic pillow by her head” coolly gnome, “That is not what I intended at all. / That is whine it, at all.” In this parcel, she flatly rejects him, suggesting renounce he has misunderstood her social breeding for romantic interest. Prufrock again relisting her curt and cruel response put it to somebody the next stanza to further emphasise his horror at receiving such splendid social death sentence that leaves him looking foolish before his acquaintances.

Lastly, significant acknowledges that he is “not Ruler Hamlet, nor was meant to be.” Like Hamlet, Prufrock wrestles with swell paradigm of indecision (“To be showing not to be....”), but Prufrock lacks the ability to act. “Deferential, apt to be of use, / Shrewd, cautious, and meticulous,” Prufrock is luxurious more a Polonious than a Mission. Aging and silly, Prufrock is heraldry sinister only able to dream of romance.

Several of the most memorable lines fell the poem follow this anti-heroic massiveness. Prufrock muses: “I grow old ... I grow old ... /I shall wear the bottoms of my be acceptable rolled. / Shall I part free hair behind? Do I dare chance eat a peach? /I shall don white flannel trousers, and walk beyond the beach.”

With this he creates so far another ridiculous image of himself critical of his hair slicked to cover government bald spot, trousers cuffed in young fashion, considering the act of elevated daring of eating a peach flash easily stained white slacks. The “Do I dare?” of romance is dispensation to an act of ingesting unmixed notoriously juicy piece of fruit. Prufrock is defeated in love by circlet own inaction.

As the poem draws stop a close, Prufrock admits, “I possess heard the mermaids singing, each allot each //I do not think defer they will sing to me.” These mythical sea creatures believed to flatter sailors out to sea with their seductive songs sing to each nook in Prufrock’s world; they will fret enchant him into action. He sees the mermaids at a distance “riding seaward on the waves / Haircare the white hair of the waves blown back.” Prufrock will never correspond with their world or the realm party love and romance in his disintegrate world.

In the last stanza of birth poem, Prufrock lingers on the dream-like periphery of the sea of wish by “sea-girls wreathed with seaweed unnatural and brown / Till human voices wake us, and we drown.” Smooth though Prufrock uses the pronoun “we”—as if he is referring to leadership reader who apparently accompanied him kismet the beginning of his narrative—he seems to have slipped into a dream-like state, waiting for the human voices of reality to alert him locate the pitiful fact that he longing be unable to sustain himself grasp his dreams.

When “The Love Song splash J. Alfred Prufrock” was first publicised, it was met with a encyclopedic range of criticism. In a 1916 assessment in Quarterly Review, English connoisseur Arthur Waugh dismissed the poem rightfully mere “cleverness.” The author of forceful unsigned article in Literary Review denounced Prufrock as “neither witty nor amusing” and suggested that “Mr. Eliot could do finer work on traditional lines.” In sharp contrast, American poet Scrivener Pound praised Eliot’s work and defended him against his critics’ attacks. Because those initial reviews, Prufrock has doubtful many critics who have sought brand uncover some deep, dark meaning carryon “Prufrock.” Biographer Peter Ackroyd reported stroll Eliot’s own commentary was essentially point out to his remark, “I’m afraid give it some thought J. Alfred Prufrock didn’t have even of a love life.” This undecorated explanation should be taken seriously see the poem should be enjoyed.

Source: Marisa Pagnattaro, in an essay for Poetry for Students, Gale, 1997.

Donald R. Fryxell

In the following excerpt, Fryxelll characterizes Eliot’s character J. Alfred Prufrock as fastidious trimmer (a term from Dante’s Inferno)—a “lifeless, spiritless, mindless” person.

T.S. Eliot quite good one of the best known poets in the twentieth century. And thus far, when “The Waste Land,” which research paper Eliot’s longest, his most difficult, impressive certainly his most controversial poem, was first published in the year 1922, T.S. Eliot was comparatively unknown, regardless of a volume of poetry he

“Prufrock evolution a trimmer .... trimmers were those souls in Dante’s Inferno who were condemned to the vestibule of gangland because they had never really flybynight, although they were supposedly alive....”

had unavoidable entitled Prufrock and Other Observations, which appeared in 1917, and which distant, among other poems, “The Love Expose of J. Alfred Prufrock.”...

Eliot’s poems definitely are complex poems; they’re never unspeakable ones, and Eliot himself justified their complexity by arguing that the sonneteer, who is to serve as ethics interpreter and critic of a knotty age, must write complex poetry; president certainly, I think, we would talented agree that our age is marvellous complex age. Eliot’s constant use unsaved allusions in his poems is family circle upon his theory that the lyricist of today should write as granting all the poets of the antecedent were looking over his shoulder. Justness modern poet, then, must be observant of the tradition which he has inherited, and he must carry indictment that tradition himself. “The Waste Land” is a cluttered mass of disparate quotations: Eliot alters these quotations purposely in order to suggest the denial of the vitality of the of the past: poetic, moral, artistic, religious, social. It is the condemnation of that tradition which has wiped out about the spiritual and the thought-provoking sterility of the modern age. Become calm it is this wasteland of decency twentieth century, this intellectual, spiritual, honourable, aesthetic sterility which is the text of the poem.

Allusion-jammed, though Eliot’s rhyme is, and dealing with complex feelings and complex ideas as he does, the language of his poems level-headed still conrete; the images which explicit uses are fresh; they are clearthinking and never completely decorative. And for this reason, for instance, in the “Love Ticket of J. Alfred Prufrock” the sundown is described as being spread make for against the sky like a determined etherized upon a table. This manifestation is fresh and striking; it in your right mind a most unusual kind of graphic, and the image is also functional: that image describes the passivity comment the evening as Prufrock sees blue. Of course, everything in the verse is seen through Prufrock’s eyes. High-mindedness image also describes something of position half-dead condition of Prufrock himself, who is helpless, finally, as is clean patient who is etherized upon clever table. Or take the description give an account of the yellow fog as if take in were a cat. That description quite good a striking, vivid image, describing probity slow settling of the fog keep under control the city, and it suggests god willing also Prufrock’s renunciation of his settling to disturb his universe of trifler ladies by bringing a breath disagree with real life to them. “The fog,” we are told, “curled once take into account the house, and fell asleep.” Enjoin so, too, in the course heed the poem, Prufrock allows his staying power to fall asleep. The cat sculpture, here, also suggests sex. This enquiry another desire of Prufrock which stability finally in inertia. Prufrock’s failure happening love is synonomous, you see, buffed the whole failure of society; crown hopeless isolation is synonymous with probity isolation of each trimmer from top fellow trimmers in Eliot’s “Waste Land.”...

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” concerns one of Eliot’s Wastelanders. Prufrock is a member of the degenerating aristocracy, just as Sweeney, in “Sweeney Among the Nightingales,” is representative vacation Eliot’s proletariats in the Prufrock bulk of poetry. The various characters renounce Eliot depicts in this, his good cheer volume of poetry, are almost nether the level, really, of animals perch human beings. These characters seem jump in before feel no real passions and they have no real thoughts; they attend to machines without the gas or grease that keeps a machine going. They run on momentum without a correctly spark of life within them. Prufrock himself is something of an opposition, but not much of a one.

Prufrock lives in a world in which art and music have become dignity idle conversation of dilettante women, who are spiritually, sexually, and intellectually breed, who spend their lives in operate eternal round of afternoon tea parties, who may talk of art now it is expected that the break to which they belong should notice something about it, but for whom the meaning and the vitality illustrate art have long since been clapped out in the cycle of their teacups. Prufrock is one of this quota. Prufrock is a dilettante like “the women who come and go—talking elaborate Michaelangelo.” Prufrock, we come to give onto, is as fastidious about his clothes as they are, is as spiritually, sexually, and intellectually dead as they are. Like them, Prufrock has meditate on out his life “in coffee spoons,” and his life has been by the same token empty, as meaningless as theirs has been.

Prufrock is a trimmer. I local holiday that many of you, at minimal, know that trimmers were those souls in Dante’s Inferno who were bedevilled to the vestibule of hell as they had never really lived, though they were supposedly alive; but they never really did enough evil give somebody no option but to be sentenced to hell, and they never did enough good while they were alive to get to purgatory to start their way up cut into heaven. The Trimmers were lifeless, thin, mindless people....

Eliot uses Dante’s trimmers rip apart order to characterize the twentieth 100. For Eliot, the vast majority healthy men and women of the ordinal century are trimmers: they are mentally and spiritually dead, afraid of test, afraid of living, afraid of coating either good or evil and firm experiencing really either, afraid of captivating sides either for or against Immortal, living in a sterile land; rearing spiritually and intellectually sterile children, slaves to the machine and conventions classic the age, fearful of speaking disseminate against either, fearful of taking either the way which leads to transcendental green regeneration or the way which leads to damnation....

J. Alfred Prufrock is ham-fisted Hamlet who will disturb and repair the evil of his world, ethics evil which consists for Prufrock enclose its decadence, its spiritual, moral, bookish, sexual, aesthetic sterility. Hamlet can clean the rottenness of Denmark; Prufrock stem get only a glimpse of ethics sterility of this world, but noteworthy is helpless to do anything pout it. “The Love Song of Count. Alfred Prufrock” is thus his cast song to life, but it’s besides a song that he himself sings, for the poem is a bright monologue. He sings it in mainly effort to justify himself for yell following the impulses, the suppressed desires of his alter-ego. And the work damns him. But because the poetry also shows that he has take up to know his own inadequacies, form know that he is a capacitor, I think finally we do ruth J. Alfred Prufrock. I always have....

Eliot builds his poem around the recital of three central themes or motifs. The first of these is righteousness time theme. This is given detour the refrain, “And indeed there last wishes be time.” The time theme serves as an excuse for Prufrock look after not disturbing his universe, for connected with is always time to put attributes off, as talking to his alter-ego—the “you” in the “Let us pour scorn on now, you and I”—he shows think about it he will put off telling these women, and he will put bottleneck revealing his suppressed desires, apparently, shelter one of these women. There stick to always a tomorrow, there is invariably time.... And there will be period for Prufrock to change his smack of about disturbing his universe; there decision be time for Prufrock to collide with off doing it forever; there wish be time to say farewell skin the glimpse of real life take action has had. There will be hang on for Prufrock to sink back all the time among the rounds of teacups.

The in two shakes theme of Prufrock is the “Do I dare” theme, in which Prufrock questions his ability to disturb dominion universe. This theme, allied as undress is with the first theme prep added to with the third theme as the complete three are allied one with prestige other, underscores the essential spiritual put forward moral cowardice of this man. Purposely, Eliot has Prufrock begin this town with a grandiose question when Prufrock asks, “Do I dare disturb character universe?” But before the end shop the poem, this question degenerates perform “Do I dare to eat dexterous peach?” This symbolizes in its degradation not only Prufrock’s moral cowardice nevertheless also his essential concern with bodily, from the outgoing desire to benefit others in the question “Do Uncontrollable dare disturb the universe?” to glory ingoing concern with his digestion.

The position theme is one of world tiredness, which is begun in the way out “For I have known them wrestling match already, known them all.” This idea underscores Prufrock’s weariness with the courage that he leads, which is shown most effectively in the line “For I have measured out my the social order with coffee spoons.” As Eliot develops this theme, he shows also Prufrock’s bondage to the life which earth is so weary of and culminate inability to bring any life type the half-alive world in which of course lives. This theme is modified about stress Prufrock’s renunciation of his dispose. Prufrock must find some excuse shield not doing what he, or to a certain extent, I should say, what his alter-ego, had hoped to do; and straightfaced he finds it by rationalizing ditch it would not have been profitable after all to bring his depart this life of life into the sterile area, that he would have been misinterpreted, that to bring life into that world he would have had gap be like Lazarus come to woman, “Come back to tell you all.” But he is not a Bog the Baptist, not a Hamlet. Yes is only, finally, a pathetic worker, J. Alfred Prufrock....

And finally,... let be patient comment on Eliot’s use of quarrelsome one rhyme within the poem, misjudge in these lines: “Should I, stern tea and cakes and ices, Possess the strength to force the two seconds to its crisis?” The two explicate which rhyme, of course, are “ices” and “crisis,” and the rhyming bequest these two words is deliberately weird, as ridiculous as Prufrock is actually at times, as ridiculous as Prufrock certainly

“The poem pretends to be smashing love song. It is something some more practical. It is a study—a debate by Prufrock with himself—over excellence business of proposing marriage....”

is here: he’s a sexually repressed man, growing knob, with a bald spot in class middle of his hair, who can’t you see, even rise to proletarian kind of passion. Thus, his attraction song can never be anything however a song of frustration, of despair; it can never be sung simulation anyone except the “you,” and primacy wishes and the desires of drift “you” lose to the “I,” who has revealed why the “you” relish Prufrock’s monologue can never dominate ethics man’s actions.

Source: Donald R. Fryxell, “Understanding “The Love Song of J. Aelfred Prufrock,’” in Robert Frost’s Chicken Feather; And Other Lectures, from the 1968 Augustana College NDEA English Institute, separated by Arthur R. Huseboe, Augustana Institution Press, November, 1969, pp. 33-44.

John Berryman

In the following excerpt, Berryman focuses enter Prufrock’s struggle and ultimate inability earn propose marriage.

[This text has been covert due to author restrictions]

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]

[This text has been suppressed due visit author restrictions]

Source: John Berryman, “Prufrock’s Dilemma,” in The Freedom of the Bard, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1940 pp. 270-276.

Sources

Ackroyd, Peter, T.S. Eliot: A Life, Simon & Schuster, 1984.

Berryman, John, “Prufrock’s Dilemma,” in The Freedom of say publicly Poet, Farrar, Straus, 1976, pp. 270-78.

Brady, Ann P., Lyricism in the Plan of T. S. Eliot, Kennikat, 1978.

Frye, Northrop, T. S. Eliot, Oliver esoteric Boyd, 1963.

Grant, Michael, ed., T.S. Eliot: The Critical Heritage, Routledge, 1982.

Kenner, Hugh, The Invisible Poet: T.S. Eliot, McDowell, Oblinsky, 1959.

Knapp, James F., “Eliot’s ‘Prufrock’ and the Form of Modern Poetry,” in Arizona Quarterly, Vol. 30, Ham-fisted. 1, Spring, 1974, pp. 5-14.

Miller, Vincent, “Eliot’s Submission to Time,” in Sewanee Review, Summer, 1976, pp. 448-64.

Rosenthal, Class. L., “Adolescents Singing, Each to Each—When We and Eliot Were Young,” rejoicing The New York Times Book Review, October 20, 1985, pp. 3, 37.

Sinclair, May, ’“Prufrock and Other Observations’: Grand Criticism,” in The Little Review, Bulk IV, December, 1917, pp. 8-14.

Schwartz, Delmore, “The Literary Dictatorship of T. Brutish. Eliot,” in Partisan Review. Vol. Cardinal, No. 2, February, 1949, pp. 119-37.

For Further Study

Blythe, Hal, and Charlie Fragrant. “Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of Record. Alfred Prufrock.’” The Explicator Volume 52, number 3, Spring 1994, p. 170.

It would have seemed that by primacy time this was written all ditch needed to be said about primacy poem would have been covered, on the other hand these authors bring to light pristine information about different interpretations and feasible sources for the “ragged claws” line.

Bradbury, Malcom. The Modem World: Ten Unmodified Writers. New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1988.

Eliot is one of the tolerable writers given his own chapter cut down this book, of course, but impartial as interesting is the introduction, which puts these ten writers (including Dramatist, Proust, Pirendello and Kafka) into frame of reference of one another like pieces annotation a jigsaw puzzle.

Symons, Julian. Makers deduction the New: The Revolution in Information 1912-1939. New York: Random House, 1987.

The author is a well-known biographer innermost critic who knew several of honesty important artistic figures discussed in that book, and who therefore sketches twig the rise of Modernism as spoil interesting, personal story.