10/6/13
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Elliot is quite an interesting poem. I would like to start off by addressing the name of the speaker. J. Alfred Prufrock is such an interesting name for the name of a man who has his own love song. When I picture J. Alfred Prufrock, I see an older man who is quiet and unattractive. It is an odd name for a poem supposedly about a love song.
The poem itself took a different turn than what I was expecting when I read the title. The poem deals with society's pressure on the individual, inner conflict, sleep and dreams, fragmentation, etc. I thought the poem would be about a man falling in love. The poem was not only different than I expected, but a few aspects present in the poem are also present in the novel Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. The element of fragmentation is present in both works. The different stanzas of the poem seem to have a different image. The first stanza sets an image of the streets and life at night. The last stanza sets an image of drowning and dying. Then there are the stanzas in between, that talk about mermaids, and windows, and crying, and eyes. SO MUCH IMAGERY. While the poem is fragmented with imagery, Winesburg, Ohio is fragmented with different stories. That is one of the reasons why critics argue over whether the novel is a collection of short stories or one novel. Each chapter discusses a different story concerning a different grotesque. The story "Hands" discusses the life of Wing Biddlebaum and the truth that brought him into Winesburg. The story "Respectability" discusses the story of Wash Williams and his truth. The only element of the novel that connects the stories is the character George Willard. Similar to George, Prufrock is the only element of the poem that connects all of the imagery and fragmentation. All of the images describe what he is feeling, and what he is thinking about in regards to his life and the decisions he made.
Fragmentation is not the only connection between the novel and the poem. Dismemberment plays a significant role in both works. Certain parts of the body are focused on in both works. The body is not looked at as a whole. Prufrock states, "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," (Elliot 27-29). Faces and hands are parts of a whole. Elliot uses synecdoches often in the poem. Prufrock seems to look at people in parts. He does not look at people as a whole. These parts are what define people. Similar to Wing Biddlebaum in Winesburg. Wing's hands are what cause him to become a grotesque. His hands are the part of him that he is defined by. He is constantly trying to hide his hands from getting too excited and emoting any feelings he has. People in the town know him for his hands, not him as a whole.
Fragmentation and dismemberment are not the only connections between"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and Winesburg, Ohio. I could go on for days talking about all of the themes that we discussed about in class. Fragmentation and dismemberment were the two elements that I found to be interesting. I enjoyed reading both the poem and the novel. Analyzing the poem with the novel in mind helped me find deeper meaning in the poem. It really is possible to find connections between any two pieces of literature!
I concur that the song has these two strong themes of Dismemberment and Fragmentation, I find it interesting that they both inter correlate. Yet I believe that these two seemingly morbid psyches focus on the comment of the tortured and pained persona of the modern man. The prototype of this man is, in its purity, wonderful... the perfect capture, the wondrous seize that women in general should compete for.
ReplyDeleteYet these qualities form a deep, dark sore on men. Prufrock is overeducated, eloquent, neurotic, and emotionally stilted. The perfect combination of intelligence, kink, and passive mood... forming a situation where the Goddess is the commander of the heavens, not the god. Uppercase Goddess, lowercase god.
The songs elucidation is purely psychological, there is no logic, the narrators musings are fairly subliminal and abstruse so it is difficult to understand what exactly the symbols are. But as you stated, Fragmentation and dismemberment are two key features which stand for two very different yet conjoined themes.
We ask who Prufrock refers to when he says "You and I', many theories regarding this are present but there are two particularly that I believe are tenable. His monologue must either be internal, as dismemberment would point to, or he must be referring to the relationship between the dilemmas of the character and the author.
The poem itself comments on many things, one of which is an obsession with women. Prufrock’s obsessiveness is aesthetic, but it is also a sign of compulsiveness and isolation. Another important formal feature is the use of fragments of sonnet form, particularly at the poem’s conclusion. The three three-line stanzas are rhymed as the conclusion of a Petrarchan sonnet would be, but their pessimistic, anti-romantic content, coupled with the despairing interjection, “I do not think they would sing to me,” creates a contrast that comments bitterly on the bleakness of modernity.
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting aspect is setting, does he live in his mind, or in the physical realm?
As I believe it.
He is in both. I believe he is going out for an afternoon tea, the senses and imagery he describes is physical and is real, but in his head.
In the first half of the poem, Prufrock uses various outdoor images (the sky, streets, cheap restaurants and hotels, fog), and talks about how there will be time for various things before "the taking of a toast and tea", and "time to turn back and descend the stair." The is where fragmentation would play a key role. Each fragment of a body part could correlate to a certain thought or emotion, the eyes would symbolize lust, the mind, logic, and the body parts actions or speech.
Prufrock is trying to say something at this tea party, but he cant seem too, and he never ends up doing such. I believe it is his fear he is trying to speak about, the fear of growing old.
Prufrock is so scared of growing old.
For instance "When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table" both symbols of ageing or decay.
Other interesting notes.
In "Time for all the works and days of hands" (29) the phrase 'works and days' is the title of a long poem – a description of agricultural life and a call to toil – by the early Greek poet Hesiod.
"I know the voices dying with a dying fall" (52) echoes Orsino's first lines in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.
The prophet of "Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter / I am no prophet – and here's no great matter" (81–2) is John the Baptist, whose head was delivered to Salome by Herod as a reward for her dancing (Matthew 14:1–11, and Oscar Wilde's play Salome).
"To have squeezed the universe into a ball" (92) and "indeed there will be time" (23) echo the closing lines of Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress'. Other phrases such as, "there will be time" and "there is time" are reminiscent of the opening line of that poem: "Had we but world enough and time". Marvell's words in turn echo the General Prologue of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, "whil I have tyme and space".
"'I am Lazarus, come from the dead'" (94) may be either the beggar Lazarus (of Luke 16) returning for the rich man who was not permitted to return from the dead to warn the brothers of a rich manabout Hell, or the Lazarus (of John 11) whom Christ raised from the dead, or both.
Full of high sentence" (117) echoes Chaucer's description of the Clerk of Oxford in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales.[30]
"There will be time to murder and create" is a biblical allusion to Ecclesiastes 3.