SparkNotes: Eliot’s Poetry: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” → The Waste Land Section I: “The Burial of the Dead” Summary This poem, the earliest of Eliot’s major works, was completed in 1910 or 1911 but not published until 1915. It is an examination of the tortured psyche of the prototypical modern man—overeducated, eloquent, neurotic, and emotionally stilted. Prufrock, the poem’s speaker, seems to be addressing a potential lover, with whom he would like to “force the moment to its crisis” by somehow consummating their relationship. But Prufrock knows too much of life to “dare” an approach to the woman: In his mind he hears the comments others make about his inadequacies, and he chides himself for “presuming” emotional interaction could be possible at all.

The poem moves from a series of fairly concrete (for Eliot) physical settings—a cityscape (the famous “patient etherised upon a table”) and several interiors (women’s arms in the lamplight, coffee spoons, fireplaces)—to a series of vague ocean images conveying Prufrock’s emotional distance from the world as he comes to recognize his second-rate status (“I am not Prince Hamlet’). “Prufrock” is powerful for its range of intellectual reference and also for the vividness of character achieved. Form “Prufrock” is a variation on the dramatic monologue, a type of poem popular with Eliot’s predecessors. Dramatic monologues are similar to soliloquies in plays. Three things characterize the dramatic monologue, according to M.H. Abrams. First, they are the utterances of a specific individual (not the poet) at a specific moment in time. Secondly, the monologue is specifically directed at a listener or listeners whose presence is not directly referenced but is merely suggested in the speaker’s words. Third, the primary focus is the development and revelation of the speaker’s character.

Eliot modernizes the form by removing the implied listeners and focusing on Prufrock’s interiority and isolation. The epigraph to this poem, from Dante’s Inferno, describes Prufrock’s ideal listener: one who is as lost as the speaker and will never betray to the world the content of Prufrock’s present confessions. In the world Prufrock describes, though, no such sympathetic figure exists, and he must, therefore, be content with silent reflection. In its focus on character and its dramatic sensibility, “Prufrock” anticipates Eliot’s later, dramatic works. The rhyme scheme of this poem is irregular but not random. While sections of the poem may resemble free verse, in reality, “Prufrock” is a carefully structured amalgamation of poetic forms. The bits and pieces of rhyme become much more apparent when the poem is read aloud. One of the most prominent formal characteristics of this work is the use of refrains.

Prufrock’s continual return to the “women [who] come and go / Talking of Michelangelo” and his recurrent questionings (“how should I presume?”) and pessimistic appraisals (“That is not it, at all.”) both reference an earlier poetic tradition and help Eliot describe the consciousness of a modern, neurotic individual. 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 (the mermaids) would sing to me,” creates a contrast that comments bitterly on the bleakness of modernity. Commentary “Prufrock” displays the two most important characteristics of Eliot’s early poetry. First, it is strongly influenced by the French Symbolists, like Mallarmé, Rimbaud, and Baudelaire, whom Eliot had been reading almost constantly while writing the poem.

From the Symbolists, Eliot takes his sensuous language and eye for unnerving or anti-aesthetic detail that nevertheless contributes to the overall beauty of the poem (the yellow smoke and the hair-covered arms of the women are two good examples of this). The Symbolists, too, privileged the same kind of individual Eliot creates with Prufrock: the moody, urban, isolated-yet-sensitive thinker. However, whereas the Symbolists would have been more likely to make their speaker himself a poet or artist, Eliot chooses to make Prufrock an unacknowledged poet, a sort of artist for the common man. The second defining characteristic of this poem is its use of fragmentation and juxtaposition. Eliot sustained his interest in fragmentation and its applications throughout his career, and his use of the technique changes in important ways across his body of work: Here, the subjects undergoing fragmentation (and reassembly) are mental focus and certain sets of imagery; in The Waste Land, it is modern culture that splinters; in the Four Quartets we find the fragments of attempted philosophical systems.

Eliot’s use of bits and pieces of formal structure suggests that fragmentation, although anxiety-provoking, is nevertheless productive; had he chosen to write in free verse, the poem would have seemed much more nihilistic. The kinds of imagery Eliot uses also suggest that something new can be made from the ruins: The series of hypothetical encounters at the poem’s center are iterated and discontinuous but nevertheless lead to a sort of epiphany (albeit a dark one) rather than just leading nowhere. Eliot also introduces an image that will recur in his later poetry, that of the scavenger. Prufrock thinks that he “should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” Crabs are scavengers, garbage-eaters who live off refuse that makes its way to the sea floor. Eliot’s discussions of his own poetic technique (see especially his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent”) suggest that making something beautiful out of the refuse of modern life, as a crab sustains and nourishes itself on garbage, may, in fact, be the highest form of art.

At the very least, this notion subverts romantic ideals about art; at best, it suggests that fragments may become reintegrated, that art may be in some way therapeutic for a broken modern world. In The Waste Land, crabs become rats, and the optimism disappears, but here Eliot seems to assert only the limitless potential of scavenging. “Prufrock” ends with the hero assigning himself a role in one of Shakespeare’s plays: While he is no Hamlet, he may yet be useful and important as “an attendant lord, one that will do / To swell a progress, start a scene or two...” This implies that there is still a continuity between Shakespeare’s world and ours, that Hamlet is still relevant to us and that we are still part of a world that could produce something like Shakespeare’s plays. Implicit in this, of course, is the suggestion that Eliot, who has created an “attendant lord,” may now go on to create another Hamlet. While “Prufrock” ends with a devaluation of its hero, it exalts its creator. Or does it?

The last line of the poem suggests otherwise—that when the world intrudes, when “human voices wake us,” the dream is shattered: “we drown.” With this single line, Eliot dismantles the romantic notion that poetic genius is all that is needed to triumph over the destructive, impersonal forces of the modern world. In reality, Eliot the poet is little better than his creation: He differs from Prufrock only by retaining a bit of hubris, which shows through from time to time. Eliot’s poetic creation, thus, mirrors Prufrock’s soliloquy: Both are an expression of aesthetic ability and sensitivity that seems to have no place in the modern world. This realistic, anti-romantic outlook sets the stage for Eliot’s later works, including The Waste Land. More Help The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Poems | Academy of American Poets Academy of American Poets The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets.

For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization. browse poems & poets sign up to receive a new poem-a-day in your inbox sign up read poems by this poet Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 26, 1888. He lived in St. Louis during the first eighteen years of his life and attended Harvard University. In 1910, he left the United States for the Sorbonne, having earned both undergraduate and masters degrees and having contributed several poems to the Harvard Advocate. After a year in Paris, he returned to Harvard to pursue a doctorate in philosophy, but returned to Europe and settled in England in 1914. The following year, he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood and began working in London, first as a teacher, and later for Lloyd's Bank.

It was in London that Eliot came under the influence of his contemporary Ezra Pound , who recognized his poetic genius at once, and assisted in the publication of his work in a number of magazines, most notably "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in Poetry in 1915. His first book of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published in 1917, and immediately established him as a leading poet of the avant-garde. With the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, now considered by many to be the single most influential poetic work of the twentieth century, Eliot's reputation began to grow to nearly mythic proportions; by 1930, and for the next thirty years, he was the most dominant figure in poetry and literary criticism in the English-speaking world. As a poet, he transmuted his affinity for the English metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century (most notably John Donne ) and the nineteenth century French symbolist poets (including Baudelaire and Laforgue) into radical innovations in poetic technique and subject matter.

His poems in many respects articulated the disillusionment of a younger post–World War I generation with the values and conventions—both literary and social—of the Victorian era. As a critic also, he had an enormous impact on contemporary literary taste, propounding views that, after his conversion to orthodox Christianity in the late thirties, were increasingly based in social and religious conservatism. His major later poetry collections include Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1943); his books of literary and social criticism include The Sacred Wood (1920), The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), After Strange Gods (1934), and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1940). Eliot was also an important playwright, whose verse dramas include Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party. He became a British citizen in 1927; long associated with the publishing house of Faber & Faber, he published many younger poets, and eventually became director of the firm. After a notoriously unhappy first marriage, Eliot separated from his first wife in 1933, and remarried Valerie Fletcher in 1956.

T. S. Eliot received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. He died in London on Janurary 4, 1965.

Selected Bibliography The Complete Poems and Plays (1952) Four Quartets (1943) Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) Prose Religious Drama: Mediaeval and Modern (1954) The Three Voices of Poetry (1954) Poetry and Drama (1951) Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1949) The Classics and The Man of Letters (1942) The Idea of a Christian Society (1940) Essays Ancient and Modern (1936) Elizabethan Essays (1934) The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933) After Strange Gods (1933) Tradition and Experimentation in Present-Day Literature (1929) Dante (1929) Murder in the Cathedral (1935) The Rock (1934) 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 etherized 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 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; 1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. T.S. Eliot. 1920. Prufrock and Other Observations T.S. Eliot (18881965). Prufrock and Other Observations. 1920. 1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 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 etherized 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 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. 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? . . . . . . . .

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, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Lines 1-36 Summary and Analysis | GradeSaver Buy Study Guide Lines 1-36 Summary: J. Alfred Prufrock, a presumably middle-aged, intellectual, indecisive man, invites the reader along with him through the modern city. He describes the street scene and notes a social gathering of women discussing Renaissance artist Michelangelo. He describes yellow smoke and fog outside the house of the gathering, and keeps insisting that there will be time to do many things in the social world.

Analysis: The title of the poem is Eliot's first hint that this is not a traditional love poem at all. "J. Alfred Prufrock" is a farcical name, and Eliot wanted the subliminal connotation of a "prude" in a "frock." (The original title was "Prufrock Among the Women.") This emasculation contributes to a number of themes Eliot will explore revolving around paralysis and heroism, but the name also has personal meaning for Eliot. He wrote the poem in 1909 while a graduate student at Harvard (though he revised it over the next few years, eventually publishing it in 1915 and in book form in 1917), and at the time he signed his name as "T. Stearns Eliot." While it would appear, then, that T. Stearns Eliot was using J. Alfred Prufrock as an alter ego to explore his own emotions, this is not the case. Superficial differences aside - Eliot was a young man in 1909, while Prufrock is balding and probably middle-aged - Eliot disdained poetry that focused on the poet himself.

He wrote in his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" that the "progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality." He crystallized his ideas about how to achieve this extinction of personality in another essay, "Hamlet and His Problems": "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events, which shall be the formula of that particular emotion." Simply put, the objective correlative - a tangible, concrete thing - assumes the emotional significance in a work of art; Eliot largely does away with abstract emotional ruminations. The examples and ramifications of the objective correlative in "Prufrock" will be discussed later. Eliot first achieves the extinction of his personality by setting "Prufrock" in the poetic form of a dramatic monologue. In this form, the speaker addresses another person and the reader plays the part of the silent listener; often the dramatic monologue is freighted with irony, as the speaker is partially unaware of what he reveals.

Robert Browning, the undisputed master of the dramatic monologue, exploited this possibility in his most famous dramatic monologue, "My Last Duchess"; the reader learns much about the Duke that he has not intended to expose. The dramatic monologue fell out of fashion in 20th-century Modernism after its 19th-century Victorian invention. Eliot was a great believer in the historical value of art; in "Tradition and the Individual Talent," he argued that "the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past," especially the literary past. The epigraph is a quotation from Dante's Inferno (27.61-66), and translates: "If I thought that my reply would be to one who would ever return to the world, this flame would stay without further movement; but since none has ever returned alive from this depth, if what I hear is true, I answer you without fear of infamy." The speaker, Guido da Montefeltro, imprisoned in a flame in Hell, relates his shameful, evil life to Dante only because he thinks Dante will never go back to earth and repeat it.

Before we analyze the Dante quote, it is important to note that Eliot's brand of Modernist poetry sought to revive the literary past, as he argued for in "Tradition and the Individual Talent." His poetry, including "Prufrock," is peppered with allusions to the Greeks, Shakespeare, the Metaphysicals, and more. Eliot does not neglect the modern, however; it is often front and center, usually with unfavorable comparisons to the past. The unpleasant modern world is where "Prufrock" begins. Prufrock, much like da Montefeltro in The Inferno, is confined to Hell; Prufrock's, however, is on earth, in a lonely, alienating city. The images of the city are sterile and deathly; the night sky looks "Like a patient etherized upon a table" (3), while down below barren "half-deserted streets" (4) reveal "one-night cheap hotels / And sawdust restaurants" (6-7). The use of enjambment, the running over of lines, further conveys the labyrinthine spatiality of the city.

Although Eliot does not explore the sterility of the modern world as deeply here as he does in "The Wasteland" (1922), the images are undeniably bleak and empty. Often overlooked in the opening salvo is that Prufrock's imagery progresses from the general to the specific and, tellingly, from the elevated to the low. We go from a general look at the skyline to the streets to a hotel room to sawdust-covered floors in restaurants. This debasement continues throughout the poem, both literally in the verticality of the images and figuratively in their emotional associations for Prufrock. Indeed, emotional associations are key, since Eliot deploys the objective correlative technique throughout the poem rather than dwell abstractly on Prufrock's feelings. The above images all speak to some part of Prufrock's personality. The etherized patient, for instance, reflects his paralysis (his inability to act) while the images of the city depict a certain lost loneliness. The objective correlative switches to the "yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes" (14) in the second stanza. Although Eliot said the fog was suggestive of the factory smoke from his hometown St.

Louis, the associations with a cat are obvious. Though Eliot was arguably the greatest lover of cats ever to write poetry (he wrote a number of poems on them, and the musical "Cats" is based on Eliot's work), here the feline correlation seems undesirable. The fog/cat seems to be looking in on the roomful of fashionable women "talking of Michelangelo" (13). Unable to enter, it lingers pathetically on the outside of the house, and we can imagine Prufrock avoiding, yet desiring, physical contact in much the same way (albeit with far less agility). Eliot again uses an image of physical debasement to explore Prufrock's self-pitying state; the cat goes down from the high windowpanes to the "corners of the evening" (17) to the "pools that stand in drains" (18), lets soot from the high chimneys fall on its back (since it is lower down than the chimneys), then leaps from the terrace to the ground. While Eliot appreciated the dignity of cats, this particular soot-blackened cat does not seem so dignified.

Rather, the cat appears weak, non-confrontational, and afraid to enter the house. Moreover, Prufrock's prude-in-a-frock effeminacy emerges through the cat, as felines generally have feminine associations. Regardless of what one takes from these images, the bewildering collage points to another technique Eliot and the Modernists pioneered: fragmentation. The Modernists felt their writing should mirror their fractured and chaotic world. Fragmentation seems to imply a disordered lack of meaning, but the Modernists resisted this instinct and suggested that meaning could be excavated from the ruins. Just as we can make sense of the seemingly chaotic combination of a 14th-century Dante allusion and a 20th-century dramatic monologue, we can draw meaning from the rapid-fire metropolitan montage Prufrock paints. Images and allusions are not the only fragmented features of "Prufrock." The rhythm of the lines is deliberately irregular. At times in unrhymed free verse, Eliot occasionally rhymes for long stretches (lines 4-12) and then not at all; his rhyme scheme itself seems like the confusing "Streets that follow like a tedious argument" (8).

He also twice uses the refrain of "In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo" (13-14, 35-36), and often begins lines with the word "And" (7, 23, 29 32, 33). As the word found in three of these lines implies - "time" (23, 29, 32) - the repetitions have something to do with Prufrock's relationship with time. Prufrock indecisively cycles around even the smallest of concerns: "And time yet for a hundred indecisions, / And for a hundred visions and revisions, / Before the taking of a toast and tea" (32-34). He seems rooted in the present tense and this, according to Eliot and most Modernists, is an unhealthy approach to time. The opening image of the evening "spread out" (2) against the sky is an allusion to a metaphor frequently used in turn-of-the-century French philosopher Henri Bergson's work Time and Free Will (1889).

Bergson was a great influence on Eliot; the latter attended the philosopher's lectures in Paris in 1910 and was influenced by his theories on consciousness. In Time and Free Will, Bergson argues that time is a single, continuous, and flowing "durée," or duration, rather than a succession of discrete steps with distinct tenses. The only way to achieve this mental sense of duration, Bergson maintains, is through direct intuition rather than indirect analysis. While much New Age philosophy and theory has hijacked this idea - that one should feel rather than think is an appealing concept - the damaging effects to Prufrock are evident. He is clearly a thinker, not a feeler, and his indecisive thoughts contribute directly to his paralysis, perhaps the most important theme in the poem. As the image of the cat unable to penetrate the house suggests, Prufrock cannot make a decision and act on it. Instead of a flowing duration that integrates all of time, he is imprisoned in the present. Prufrock's anxiety is rooted in the social world.

Not only is he afraid to confront the woman talking of Michelangelo (whose most famous sculpture, David, is the epitome of masculine beauty, a daunting prospect for the flaccid Prufrock), he seems intimidated by the social posturing he must engage in: 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; (26-29) The "works and days of hands" is a reference to 8th-century B.C. Greek poet Hesiod's poem about the farming year, "Works and Days." Prufrock seems to resent the divergence between the blistered hands of hard-working farmers and the smooth ones of social players, just as he dislikes the masks people wear in the social arena ("To prepare a face"). His social anxiety assumes more importance in the middle part of the poem. The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock Poem by T. S. Eliot - Poem Hunter The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock Poem by T. S.

Eliot - Poem Hunter The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock - Poem by T. S. Eliot The text of this poem could not be published because of Copyright laws. Ryan Walker (10/11/2011 9:10:00 PM) How is this poem not ranked higher? This piece is considered a masterpiece of the Modernist movement. (Report) Reply Mohammad Akmal Nazir (7/6/2011 2:04:00 PM) The poem offers a fine example of the use of human psychology. The behaviour of Mr Prufrock shows his mental agony, inferiority complex and suppressed desire. Mr Prufrock has beenpresented by Eliot as a tragic figure with the classical flaw and timidity. This timidity of his forces himnot to take any action. He is intensely self-conscious and always thinks what the lady might say when he would present himself before the lady. He thinks she will comment 'How his hair is growing thin? ' And again 'Buthow his arms and legs are thin?

' Prufrock is quite aware of his tragic flaw hence to attain required courage and strength he takes shelter of fasting and praying and tries to comparehimself to John the Baptist but all ends in smoke as he suffers bitterly from this tragic flaw. I liked the poem for its strong structure and vivid imagery. (Report) Reply Deborah Schuff (3/28/2009 3:39:00 AM) The older I grow, the more I appreciate this poem. Wonderful imagery! Such poignancy for a life lived and soon to be over! (Report) Reply Márcio Reis (10/9/2008 8:38:00 PM) I think this poem is one of the best poems I've read at the University. Another awesome poem is 'Ode Triunfal' from Fernando Pessoa. (Report) Reply Robert Quilter (9/29/2008 9:18:00 AM) I had not read this, for such a long time. It reminds me of the grandfather of a long lost childhood friend.

On days we 'vacationed' from school, we would go around to grandfather' Chalk's house, eat sweets(candies) and watch never ending horse racing on tv.Grandfather Chalk would, when encouraged with drink, carry on with us a mostly one sided conversation about life, hell, philosophers, past loves and when stretched completly random mutterings, very loosely attached to each other.This was constantly interrupted by the ends of the horse races, in a fit of cursing when his chosen horse came fourth, last or fell. I enjoyed the visits, enjoyed the hard to follow conversation, learnt a few thingsand cameto appreciate a fe finer things in life. Yes, i liked this poem. (Report) Reply Zoe Lawson (8/14/2008 1:42:00 PM) just enjoy the poem. any poem is about u loving it or not. dont try so hard to prove u undersatnd the poet because chances are - you don't. Not many ever will. just enjoy it!

(Report) Reply Kaye Cee (7/27/2008 8:58:00 PM) I do not know what's the issue between Gerome and Shane, but I'd like to tell Shane you keep using 'your' when you should use 'you're.' (Report) Reply Gerome Ferreira (12/12/2007 3:48:00 PM) I read this poem more than 50 times and everything I find something that I love more than the last time I read it. I put this poem is one of my top 10 of all time. One of the most beautiful lines I have ever read and the last stanza is phenonmenal 'I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.I do not think that they will sing to me.' 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. (Report) Reply Shane Johnson (10/20/2007 11:40:00 AM) I think your premature at analyzing poetry if you find such a great work to be elementary.

Its hard for me to listen to you compare Eliot's work to Sylvester the cat, and not think your utterly ridiculous. I don't think winning a Nobel prize makes Eliot a great poet, I think his work speaks for itself without mass human recognition. You should really give this poem a couple more reads before you make such superficial comments. (Report) Reply Moz B (9/25/2007 6:26:00 PM) That's the point, isn't it, Nick? Prufrock moves between ridiculous and poignant, changing tack every few verses, as if he's laughing at himself every time he gets too serious. (Report) Reply Nick Capozzoli (8/1/2007 1:00:00 AM) When I first read this poem at age 16 I was overwhelmed and believed it to be the height of poetry, indeed the best short poem in English. Of course my reading at that time was limited to Wordsworth, Poe, and the 'quaint' Dickenson stuff (I like to see it lap the miles') etc. that we read in High School Lit.

That is to say, Prufrock resonated with my adolescent psyche that was relatively uninformed by either adult experience or really great poetry. It's hard for me not to read Prufrock with hearing the lines read with the sputtering voice of Sylvester the Cat...'Let us go thennh, you and eyeee...when the eveing is spreaddh outt againsst the skyyee' etc. I suppose you could say that this poem is ironic. If so, it's heavy handed. The sentiment is self-indulgent and puerile, and the imagery is mawkish and painfully embarassing and laughable. Hey, but that's just my opinion. TSE did win the Nobel Prize, so he must be a great poet.

(Report) Reply John Fargo (4/17/2007 9:09:00 PM) The epigraph is from Dante's Inferno, where Guido da Montefeltro tells Dante, 'If I thought that my reply would be to one who would ever return to the world, this flame would stay without further movement; but since none has ever returned alive from this depth, if what I hear is true, I answer you without fear of infamy.' Guido told Dante his story but only because he thought Dante wouldn't return from hell. This means that Prufrock wouldn't want anyone to know this that could make it public. Personally, I think that the following lines are among the most powerful I have ever read: 'I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.' Very well done poem... one of the best. (Report) Reply Joseph Daly (11/12/2005 3:54:00 AM) Some of you may like to visit the site salon.com where you can listen to Elliot's reading of this (streamed) . Along with other great poets and writers.

(Report) Reply Max Reif (11/11/2005 10:38:00 AM) It's a great poem, it's a great experience to read it aloud. Every line is so sonorous, and it's all images (which is one of the reasons there may not be a 'definitive' interpretation. Thank you for your comments, Denis, Martha, Uriah. (Report) Reply Martha Lewis (10/13/2005 5:58:00 AM) Anyone interested in TSE? I recommend that you watch the film 'Tom and Viv.' It is not the most flattering portrayal of Eliot; however, as the previous reviewer notes, he crafted his poetry during a time of immense historical upheaval and I felt that the film did a terrific job of conveying that to its audience. A gem with some great performances. Also notable is the film 'Til Human Voices Wake Us, ' the title actually being a line from the poem. It stars Guy Pearce/Helena Bonham Carter. Great flick, but just references the poem.

(Report) Reply Joseph Daly (9/23/2005 9:34:00 AM) I have read this poem so many times I now feel that I know it as if I had grown up with it. I first read it when I was about 20 years old (I am now nearing 50) . A lot of interpretations of Prufrock seem to concentrate on the literal; what is Elliot saying to us? I am not sure that that is the correct approach. Engaging in all art forms requires us to think for ourselves and not sucumb to the dictates of the artist. As with Wagner, for example, one need not adhere to the reactionary views of the artist to appreciate their greatness. With this in mind I feel that this poem (to me; one of the greatest and most beautiful pieces of writing in the English language) seems to concern itself with doubt. Whether Prufrock does not leave his room (as some commentators have suggested) , and imagines the streets in which he requests our company, is neither here nor there. Prufrock doubts, not just his own ability to be a social animal, but seems to doubt any form of society.

At the time of writing The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, the world was embroiled in a savage war. Revolutionary uprisings throughout Europe threw into question the validity of a society that could engage in such slaughter. For Elliot's generation the First World War must have turned everything on its head. Although Elliot is 'out of fashion' these days, I feel that The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock has more resonance to the world of today than it has had since its conception. Today we live in a world of mistrust, not simply of other nations or races, but even our families, our friends, our neighbors. In a world were we are meant to suspect all, then doubt reigns supreme. Elliot's poem does not provide any answers (it is debateable whether this is the job of the artist) what it does seem to say to us today is that we - humanity- have been here before. In that lies its greatness. (Report) Reply “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Turns 100 by The Editors | Poetry Foundation “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Turns 100 by The Editors “The Love Song of J.

Alfred Prufrock” Turns 100 The famous poem was nearly not published. By The Editors This month marks the 100th anniversary of T.S. Eliot ’s “ The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock ,” published when Eliot was just 26 years old. Had it not been for the intervention of Ezra Pound and Harriet Monroe , the seminal poem that helped usher in American Modernism might not have been published at all. Eliot originally wrote parts of the monologue of a troubled, middle-aged man in 1910 and soon combined these pieces to form the long, complicated poem readers know now. Then he put it in a drawer for four years and focused on his graduate study in philosophy. In the spring of 1914, Conrad Aiken , Eliot’s college friend, passed “Prufrock” along to Harold Monro , editor of Poetry and Drama. He reportedly remarked that the poem is “absolutely insane” and turned it down. In September 1914, Eliot first met Pound in London, who was then the acting foreign correspondent of Poetry . Eliot showed him “The Love Song of J.

Alfred Prufrock,” and Pound was elated. “Prufrock,” wrote Pound to Poetry editor Harriet Monroe, is “the best poem I have yet had or seen from an American,” adding exuberantly in all caps, “PRAY GOD IT BE NOT BE A SINGLE AND UNIQUE SUCCESS.” The following slideshow features three of Pound’s letters to Monroe, proclaiming Eliot’s talent and urging her to publish “Prufrock.” (“I hope you’ll get it in soon,” he wrote.) She found room in the June 1915 issue. Though Monroe’s responses to Pound are not available, his letters hint at her apprehension. “In being the first American magazine to print Eliot you have scored again, though you may not yet think so,” Pound wrote shortly after “Prufrock” appeared in print, still compelled to convince her of its value. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Essay UK Free Essay Database The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Abstract The Love Song of J.

Alfred Prufrock is a psychological profile of a white, middle-aged, middle-class, late Victorian man suffering from an acute spiritual malaise as a result of his boring, unimaginative, routine, repressed bourgeois existence. The poem, T. S. Eliot’s first major publication, immediately established his reputation as an important poet. It also announced one of the themes that Eliot explored throughout his career: the emptiness of modern life, made tedious by habit, sterilized by convention, in which self-awareness does not lead to self-knowledge but only to existential paralysis. Prufrock epitomizes a frustrated man hopelessly alienated from his imagination and yet desperate for imaginative salvation. His life is filled with meaningless gestures and predictable encounters; his seamy world is agonizingly uninspiring. Prufrock is an effigy representing the cultural decadence and moral degeneration that Eliot equates with the society of his time. He is the product of a world suffering from a break with its past cultural heritage, a loss of tradition, a failure of institutional authority, and an unhealthy emphasis on individualism.

Eliot incorporates hallucinatory imagery to create a lethargic world where ‘the evening is spread out against the sky, Like a patient etherised upon a table.’ The women who ‘come and go Talking of Michelangelo’ suggest the transience and shallowness of contemporary relationships while ironically reducing the work of an Italian Renaissance master. Prufrock is afraid to ‘force the moment to its crisis.’ The people in his world mask their emotions and ‘prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.’ The streets are ‘insidious’ and ‘half-deserted’; people spend ‘restless nights in one-night cheap hotels.’ Deadened by routine, he complains that he has ‘measured out my life in coffee spoons.’ The portrait of Prufrock is particularly unflattering, but more pathetic because he realizes the nature of his dilemma but is still incapable of rectifying it. His vision at the end of the poem is one of possible redemption, of ‘mermaids singing,’ but his resignation is complete; he does not think that they will sing to him.

Eliot, perhaps the most significant of the new wave of Symbolists of the 1920’s, startled the world of poetry and spoke for a lost generation in The Waste Land, engaged literary critics with his landmark book of criticism, The Sacred Wood, and wrote the most successful verse play of the twentieth century, The Cocktail Party. Although Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in and lived his early life in St. Louis, his family was so New England in its outlook that it can hardly be identified as Midwestern. Eliot’s grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, was a Unitarian clergyman whose religious zeal brought him to St. Louis in 1834, shortly after graduation from Harvard’s Divinity School. He founded a Unitarian church in St. Louis and then went on to establish three schools, a poor fund, and a sanitary commission in the city. His crowning triumph, however, was in founding Washington University in 1872. At thirty, Eliot had two books in print: Prufrock and Other Observations and Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry (1917).

By his fortieth birthday, he had twenty-three more books in print, including collections of his poetry, several books of criticism that dislocated many entrenched ideas about literature, and three dramatic works, Sweeney Agonistes (1932; verse play), The Rock (1934), and Murder in the Cathedral (1935). Eliot received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, the same year in which he received the Order of Merit from King George VI. By that time, Eliot was generally considered the most important poet writing in English. He heard of his selection for the Nobel Prize while he was in Princeton as a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies. There, he worked on The Cocktail Party (1949), which he had begun before he left England. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was T.S. Eliot’s first important publication and it has often been called the first masterpiece of modernism in English. It represented a break with the immediate past as radical as that of the English romantic poets. The title of the poem is a clear ironic contrast between the romantic suggestions of ‘love song’ and the rather prosaic name ‘J.

Alfred Prufrock’. The name comes from Prufrock-Littau, a furniture company which advertised in St. Louis, Missouri, where T.S. Eliot was born. The poet combined this name with a fatuous ‘J. Alfred ,’ which somehow suggests the qualities this person later shows. There is also irony in the title because it says the poem is a ‘love song,’ but then we read something completely different. It is true that there are some elements often used in ballads and songs, such as rhyme, refrain, anaphora, parallelism and incantatory tone; but the poem is not a ‘love song’. Prufrock never gives utterance to tender or loving feelings in his song. He is unable to love. In the first line the poet introduces two persons, ‘you and I’. The reader immediately wonders who these people are and where they are going. It is obvious that the ‘I’ is the speaker, and according to the title his name is Prufrock; and ‘you’ could be a lady. It can also be the reader and Prufrock. We do not know yet.

We only know that it is evening and that they are walking through streets of a sordid section of a certain city. We do not know its name but it seems representative of other great cities of modern western civilization. Then the speaker mentions a question, an overwhelming question, but he does not want to talk about it. And since the question is never asked in the poem, the answer is never given. We also learn that they are going to pay a visit to a place in which women talk of Michelangelo. After thinking of the women to be visited, the speaker returns to a vision of the streets, the fog, beautifully described as a cat that falls asleep. It seems that Prufrock is putting to sleep the vision he had of the city and also he is gaining time from the society that is waiting for him in the room where women are talking of Michelangelo. The somnolent image suggests Prufrock’s mental state, his desire for inactivity, his indecision, his passivity and his reluctance to ask the overwhelming question. Prufrock tries to put off the decision and says that “there will be time” (line 23), though we do not really know for what there will be time.

The next section increases the tension by raising the question “Do I dar”?” (line 38). This also shows Prufrock’s fear of his society and the people In It. Eventually he enters the room and remembers In three rhyming stanzas the times he has heard the same voices, seen the same people. He knows that society very well and he does not like it. He finds it trivial and boring; he says: “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” (line51). Then he starts to rehearse what he dares not to say, and he does not say it. He fails. He never asks the question, his only excuse being that he is no prophet, that he does not have the strength of John the Baptist. After that mock-heroic tone and after that self-justification, Prufrock looks back upon the event and thinks about his failure. He asks: “Would it have been worth it, after all” (Line 87). But his fear of being misunderstood makes him accept his failure.

In the last part of the poem there is a great change: from a tone of self-mockery showing Prufrock as the Fool in an Elizabethan play to the language of romantic longing. Prufrock at the end tries to escape from the real world where he was defeated and he dreams of mermaids. Yet he cannot avoid the realty and he drowns. The poem is a song of desire and failure. It seems to be the story of what is taking place inside a man called Prufrock. Therefore we can say that the poem Is a dramatic monologue, a dialogue between “you” and “I,” both being the same person. Prufrock talks to himself. The “you” is the passionate self who insists on going to make the visit. The “I” is the one who consents and says “Let US go then…” (line 1); he is the timid self who does not dare, who does not ask the overwhelming question.

If in the epigraph we had Guido’s answer to Dante, somebody who, he believed, would never return to the world to report Guido’s words, now in the poem we have the words of the condemned “I” who, like Guido, speaks freely only because he is sure that the “you” will not tell anybody about him. Now that we have thrown light on the mystery of the identity of the different people addressed in the poem, we still have to tackle the enigma of the “overwhelming question,” which is never formulated in the poem. Is Prufrock trying to issue a marriage proposal? Is he trying to ask the lady called “one” in the poem to marry him or is he just asking about the meaning of this life? The answer may be different for different readers. But it seems to be irrelevant. We simply do not need to know what the question, “the overwhelming question,” is. It is enough to know that Prufrock never asks the question; that he is unable to ask it. We should not look for a concealed narrative in the poem. T.S. Eliot is not presenting a story, but a personality. The poem is built around the timid person called Prufrock.

This character needs to be analysed. After reading the poem we think of Prufrock as an unattractive middle-aged man who grows old and talks about his bald spot in his hair. He is aware of his weakness and disabilities: “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker.” (lines 84-85) Prufrock is conscious of being inferior. He knows he is not Prince Hamlet and he does not think the mermaids will sing to him. He knows that he cannot make a decision. Therefore he takes refuge in self mockery. He is resigned to his failure. However, he is sensitive to criticism. He knows that people around him remark that his arms and legs are growing thin (line 44) and have him sprawling on a pin (line 57). J. Alfred Prufrock is an unhappy frustrated man. He is involved in a routine of social life and he does not feel comfortable in the society in which he is condemned to live. He sees boredom and monotony. Though he is conditioned by that fashionable society, he seems to be tired of the superficial and miserable existance he is leading.

Besides, he is isolated in that alien world. He has a range of more or less obscure feelings that he cannot communicate due to his inhibitions and timidity. He then talks to himself and he suffers. Prufrock is a mask, a person through whom the tribulations of the modern city life are spoken. One of the themes this poem develops is the tedium and dryness of modern life. It is an expression of the futility of life. The reader gets an intense personal view of the society, the city and the world in which Prufrock lives. The poem also conveys a sense of frustration which leads us into the main issue: the problem of communication. This theme, present throughout much of Eliot’s work, is incorporated in the poem by means of the question which is never asked. The speaker cannot get his message across. It does not matter whether the recipient of that message is a lady or not. The fact is that communication fails. And the failure of communication is related to the theme of the individuals isolation, loneliness, and estrangement from other people. Prufrock is alienated from this world, like Guido and like the “patient etherized upon a table” (line 3).

He should have been a crab “scuttling across the floors of silent seas” (line 74). The theme of lack of communication and understanding that Prufrock voices in his monologue has a close relationship with the way the poem is written, its style and structure. According to Leonard Unger ‘, there is a statement in the poem which suggests this connection between the problem of articulation Prufrock suffers and the mode of composition T.S. Eliot chose for his poem: “It is impossible to say just what I mean But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen” (lines 104-105). T.S. Eliot, like Prufrock, does not clearly say what he means; instead, like the magic lantern, the poem throws different pictures of Prufrock’s mind on a screen. In order to express his feelings, the poet shows different corners of Prufrock’s psyche in no particular order (the streets, the room, the fog, the room again, etc.). And all these images put together give the meaning of the poem. Therefore we cannot see a logical structure in the poem, despite the fact that it is divided into several sections.

There is only the structure of the flow of thoughts in Prufrock’s mind. The poem is based on the free association of ideas and images without connective and transitional passages. It renders the flow of impressions visual, auditory, physical, and subliminal’that impinges on the consciousness of Prufrock, a technique similar to the stream of consciousness used by James Joyce a few years later. Eliot’s technique In this poem Is like that of a collage, composed of juxtaposed Images. “Prufrock” is made out of different elements: Images, literary references, remarks, the squalor, the beautiful, lyricism, brutality, etc. The whole sum of the elements builds up the meaning of the poem while the reader is delighted in trying to rationalize the association of elements. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is certainly modern in tone and diction. T.S. Eliot wrote a new kind of poetry, with irregular rhyming verse paragraphs, free verse, new themes, and attitudes. Source: Essay UK -

Question: Complete the title of the poem by T.S. Eliot, 'The Love Song Of J. Alfred........'?
Answer: 'PRUFROCK'