by Péter Zachár

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) was an American-born poet, critic and playwright, but later he moved to England. His literary work was rewarded with the Nobel Prize in 1948. He was a highly educated son of the modern times, which fact left its mark on his work. His poetry as well as his criticism tell us about disappointment and dissatisfaction with the modern capitalist system, bourgeois individualism and the dominance of commercial and material interest. During his university studies, he acquired a sense and respect toward tradition and classical values, and an aversion against the lingering traces of Romanticism. This is what his essays are about and his poetry is concerned with. He had a rather pessimistic view of the modern world: he sees it as chaotic, lacking order and falling into fragments.

Such an existence naturally cannot be described and expressed directly and logically. Therefore his poems use the ’logic of imagination:’ events and situations put together without any explanation. By this way he also intended to renew poetry. Another formal innovation of his was the ’mask persona,’ which was not a character or symbol, but a sort of a collective ego, and it was to express the age universally. This idea naturally brings impersonality, which is also enhanced by the large number of references and quotations employed in his poems — a mark of his admiration of the past. The simple language and the clarity he tends to use remind us of the classical forms, but underneath the intellectual and impersonal surface, there are very personal tragic feelings, fear and bitterness.

One of his first published poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, is an outstanding example of how Eliot thought about poetry and life. The poem does not follow a logical order, but consists of various images appearing at random. The reader is taken on an imaginary journey of a dull and frustrated life by being shown flashes of it only. The tone is very pessimistic, full of resignation and irony. This approach is present in the title already: the romantic form of a love song implies great emotions, personality and perhaps passion. On the other hand, the name Prufrock, and the middle-aged, urban man behind it, represents the dullness and emptiness of modern societies. Apart from the very slight hints by few references to partnership, nothing in the poem speaks about love. Instead, we are introduced the doubts, uncertainty and lack of self-confidence of the speaker of the poem.

The choice of the motto from Dante is not obvious. The classic theme of the importance of life ironically contradicts the futility the poem talks about, but it is also far from the theme of love indicated in the title. We can see how different Prufrock’s attitude to the ultimate questions is from that of Dante’s at the end of first stanza: ’Oh, do not ask, ˝What is it?˝ .’ The rejection of responsibility and challenges of his own life is the main motive. The most important tool of Eliot’s for this is the constant irony and the frequently used bathos.

The first stanza begins with a suggestion, addressed not so much to the supposed lover, but more to himself, as Prufrock says: ’Let us go then.’ Where?, we would ask, expecting a philosophical answer.The dignity of the second line (’When the evening is spread out against the sky’) heightens our expectations, but the whole matter is pulled down to the ground with a grinning simile: ’Like a patient etherized upon a table.’ The twist that turns such a sensitively chosen poetic image into the cruelty of raw and materialistic reality is the first example for bathos in the poem. Many others follow later. Their purpose is to break the tone in order to emphasize the valuelessness of questions, answers and life itself. The answer to our above question comes from the third line: let us go through the scenes of an ordinary, boring, unheroic and typically modern life. These scenes may recall the energy and enthusiasm of youth and love (’restless nights in one-night cheap hotels’), but it is followed by the expressions of weariness straight away: ’a tedious argument’ and ’insidious intent.’ Such contradiction can only enhance the hesitance. Instead of asking and answering the questions, ’Let us go and make our visit,’ which expresses the will of postponement.

This stanza is followed by a couple of lines without any visible connection to the foregoing: ’In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo.’ The rhythm of the two lines and their second appearance later give them a refrain-like role. However, they only appear twice, painting a picture of the hectic but shallow life, which is the basic experience of the speaker. They are snapshots with no depth.

The depressing image of the unhealthy autumn night in the city, which is described in the second stanza, is a symbol of sexuality. It is very interesting that here again we are not shown the positive aspects of partnership, such as conforming intimacy or redeeming passion. In contrast to the ideality of physical love, expressions like ’yellow fog’ and ’yellow smoke’ talk about heaviness. There is disgust haunting in the actions, too: ’rubs its back,’ ’rubs its muzzle’ and ’licked its tongue.’ There is also a sign of defencelessness against all this; through the windowpanes we might be being watched and constantly watched over by an invisible beast that ’curled once about the house, and fell asleep’.

Such circumstances should awaken resistence and heroism, we would think. But Prufrock is to disappoint us again: ’And indeed there will be time,’ he says, meaning apathy and resignation. There will be time to learn to be impersonal and untouched (’To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet’). There is time for the meaninglessness of social engagements, which are contrasted with the worthy labour described in Hesiod’s work. There is time so that we can put the ultimate question further off (’And time yet for a hundred indecisions,/ And for a hundred visions and revisions’), so that we can retreat behind the lines of everyday life routine: ’Before the taking of a toast and tea,’ which is another ironic twist in the style, e.g. bathos.

The fourth stanza is concerned with the question of the motto. The reference to Dante and to the myth of Orpheus (’time to turn back and descend the stair’) is also very profaned, though. The theme of travelling through life and the nether world is repeatedly disrupted by worries about others’ opinions and the bodily signs of aging. These are matters which should be despised in the presence of those ancient questions, but which are most natural in a world of Prufrocks, therefore in our world. The reaction here again is doubt: ’Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?’ And the answer is: only if there is a chance to turn back anytime; only with no existential responsibility (’In a minute there is time/ For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse’). The repetition of the line ’There will be time’, sustaining the song-like rhythm, is the main motive of the first part of the poem: postponement. The next part will be concerned with hesitance.

The following three stanzas are attempts to give explanations, or we would rather say: excuses for this attitude. They speak about physical and spiritual experiences which, instead of refining the soul, only show and prove the admitted worthlessness of Prufrock’s life. First, there is a hint at the heros of history, compared to whom the speaker’s pettiness is undeniable: ’I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,’ instead of great acts. Then, we can see that the direct confrontation with the ’overwhelming question’ is referred to as a most painful experience: ’I am pinned and wriggling on the wall.’ Being tortured, by the interrogating eyes of existence itself, he cannot be expected to recall ’the butt-ends’ of his life, which might be able to show the dearness of this seemingly worthless comedy. Finally, we find out how sexuality drives one away from true commitments: ’Is it perfume from a dress/ That makes me so digress?’ Even emotions are turned inside out by the indifferent observation when the attractive ’arms that are braceleted and white and bare’ turn out to be ’downed with light brown hair.’ All three pictures lead to the same conclusion: ’How should I presume?’ This question is the ’rhythm-line’ of the second part of the poem, expressing the awareness of the importance but the lack of capability of realising values in life.

This is followed by a few broken lines with an admittedly miscarried suggestion (’Shall I say…’). Responding with a random impression (the lonely walk among self-occupied strangers) is no answer, but it is all one can think of when being so examined. The notion of such uselessness is carried by the parallel of the backward-moving crab (’I should have been a pair of ragged claws’), which can be the symbol of futility.

In the third part of the poem, the idea of hesitance and unwillingness is expounded further, but from a different view and through a different image. The third scene is the home and the bedroom, where the questions take the form of a fictitious dialogue again. The picture of a peaceful moment is to justify the decision that decisions should not be made yet: ’Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,/ Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?’ – as if such engagements would spoil the fragile moments of comfort. Awareness versus determination is what awakes tension again. Awareness of mortality, inevitable fear and fate are presented as visions, and with Biblical references. The weakness and cowardice to evaluate and commit himself to the uncertain truth are formulated as opposites of the vocation and martyrdom of the prophets John the Baptist and Lazarus. The speaker claims to have experienced all the critical stages of life, expressed by the use of the perfective forms: rises (’I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker’) and falls (’I have seen my head … brought in upon a platter’). Even death appears in the character of ’the eternal Footman.’ To all this, there is a disillusioning answer, a complete rejection: ’I am no prophet,’ says Prufrock. What’s more, he continues: ’and here’s no great matter.’ So he is not only admitting his weakness, but also his lack of concern and interest. He simply gives everything up before beginning it. This reaction is again present in the language of the poem, too: the severed head is ’growing slightly bold’ and the Footman is ’snickering.’ The irony of bathos creates the same distance from the seriousness of the topic as the contrast of the repeated lines of the third part, the question of the speaker: ’would it have been worth it…’ and the supposed answer from the supposed lover: ’That is not what I meant at all.’ Excuses for the hesitance here are the unwillingness to disturb the peace of the moment, which is described through pictures of everyday life again (cups, marmalade, porcelain, dooryards, skirts etc.), the danger of destroying the solemnity and depth of the issue (’To have bitten off the matter with a smile’), and the risk of the obtuseness and the lacking interest of the partner (’…settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl/ And turning toward the window…’). In conclusion, he says: ’It is impossible to say just what I mean.’ But we know that the ability is blocked because of half-heartedness and underestimation.

The finale begins with a severe refusal of all questions discussed: ’No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be.’ It is not his fate to face doubts and missions. The picture of the Shakespearian drama continues with the role of ’an attendant lord,’ who only has formal duties in a play, and who even acts as the Fool if it is necessary. Nothing matters, any second-hand role or mere substitution is acceptable if this way one can avoid responsibility and commitments. Since all heroism has been rejected, now the speaker feels relieved and returns to his only real concern: growing old. The ridiculously pityful images of his future self are so heavy with mockery that we feel that the picture of the Fool is being carried on: ’I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled./ Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?’ Another one of the great regrets of the old is the absence of desire and temptation, here symbolized with mermaids, which picture leads back to the sirens of Odysseus. Prufrock makes a resigned gesture when he says ’I do not think that they will sing to me,’ but again talks about experiences: ’I have heard the mermaids singing…’ and ’I have seen them riding…’ However many worlds he has been through, he remains within the choice of submission to empty reality: ’…Till human voices wake us, and we drown.’

What Eliot (and Prufrock) sensed almost a century ago is still present. But unlike Prufrock, we have to be able not only to recognize, but to realize values. If we had done so in time, there would not have been such madness as world wars, which followed shortly after the first publication of the poem. Knowing that Eliot later found some consolation in religion for the depressing chaos and vanity of modern life, we may conclude that values lie within humanity, and not in the material world. But we need to assume responsibility for them.

 

Bibliography:

 

Eliot, T. S.: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Ousby, Ian 1995. The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

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