The Serenade of a Sad, Frustrated, Aging Lover - Essay Example

The Serenade of a Sad, Frustrated, Aging Lover More than any of his contemporaries, Thomas Stearn Elliot influenced the poetry of modern times on both sides of the Atlantic. Of Puritan New England tock, he was born in St. Louis, Missouri on September 26, 1888. He was educated at Harvard at a time when Charles W. Eliot, a relative, was president. He concluded his studies in Sorbonne and Oxford. In 1914, he took up residence in London, subsequently becoming a British subject in 1927. He taught at a boys’ school, worked in a bank and became an assistant editor. In his infrequent leisure time, he composed poetry and wrote critical essays. His first volume of verse appeared in 1917 and created a stir. “This book of poetry was immediately hailed as a new trend in English literature. The subject matter was strange; the technique was puzzling; the style, alternately sonorous and discordant, elaborately obscure and conversationally simple – was harshly criticized and widely imitated.” (Untermeyer, 1942: 481) At this point, for purposes of clarity, we shall refer to Eliot’s work as “Prufrock” (with the quotes) and the character as Prufrock (without the quotes). “Prufrock”, written when T.S. Eliot was still a student at Harvard is his first and most famous work. It is adjudged a highly allusive picture of decadence against the background of a sterile society. It is also a most vital commentary, concentrating on moments of intensity. Eliot depicts a tired world through the eyes of a futile dilletante. The title, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” sets the mood for the poem with its contrast between the alluring love song and the unromantic business signature of J. Alfred Prufrock. We shall now venture to analyze Eliot’s poem – the words love song taken from the title suggests conventional sentiment to readers, but this is immediately questioned by the curious name, J. Alfred Prufrock. This name is generally associated with a business card, not with a love song. There is some kind of secrecy and pretentiousness in the initial J, especially followed by the good old Anglo-Saxon Alfred which is frank, honest and open. The Pru in Prufrock points to prudence; while frock hints at formality as in frock coat, as suggested by the author later in the poem. At any rate, the name Prufrock is both strange and dubious in a love song. We pause at this point to discuss the physical aspects of the love song. The entire poem consists of twenty stanzas of diverse length and following no definite meter (although the predominant beat is iambic pentameter. Take the first stanza. It has 12 lines, two of which do not rhyme. The third and the tenth and the lines that do, have the rhyme scheme aa, bb, cc, dd and ff. However, this is not true of the rest of the poem. We can say then that the rhyme scheme of the poem is irregular, but not random. Some sections 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 piece is read aloud. “Prufrock” is not without assonance and alliteration. Examples of assonance are: Let and then, patient and table, half-directed, restaurants and oyster shells, streets and tedious, overwhelming and question, is, it and visit. Examples of alliteration are: spread and sky, sawdust and shells, insidious and intent – all these in the first stanza alone. There are four important matters to keep in mind in order to understand T.S. Eliot’s poetry which falls under the category of modern poetry. “First, most of Eliot’s symbols are textual (personal). Second, Eliot does not provide transitions between the scenes of his “story”. Third, Eliot uses the method of dramatic opposition. And fourth, he uses a method which he calls objective correlative.” (Knickerbocker and Reminger, 1955: 423) Most of Eliot’s symbols are personal. They are not conventional symbols the meanings of which are readily apparent; they must be understood in the complete text of the poem itself. We have already mentioned the “discord” suggested by the title and the personal. This discord is continued in the opening stanza with its inviting promise: “Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread against the sky.” The second line contains a metaphor wherein there is a direct comparison between evening and a sheet spread out to dry in the open air This image provides an atmosphere of freshness and cleanliness to the setting. And then the shock, the reminder of the world’s desperate illness: “Like a patient etherized upon a table.” This line is also a simile which is a fairly concrete setting of a cityscape. Another image of the cityscape is in the line “muttering retreats of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels.” This contains a personification wherein nights and the restless one retreats to a seedy hotel for the night. In regard to Eliot’s failure to provide his readers with transitions, whatever logical sequence exists, is implied and not stated. Note the absence of any conventional transition, for example, between two lines – lines 73 and 74 and line 75 of the following stanza. Lines 73 and 74 have to do with crab as scavenger. It is involved in a lot of activity: whereas line 74 suggests people at rest after the day’s work. Perhaps the contrast between crab and people, together with the difference in their respective settings – namely, land and sea make up for the transition. One of the most prominent formal characteristics of this work is the use of refrains. Prufrock’s continued return to the “women who come and go/ talking of Michaelangelo” 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). Prufrock is “opposed” to Michaelangelo, John the Baptist, Lazarus and Shakespeare, in order to contrast sharply the great values of the past with those represented by Prufrock. Eliot uses the fourth method (the objective correlative). By this means, he dramatizes sensations, emotions and feeling through a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events, etc. “For example, instead of having Prufrock tell us directly that he has wasted his life in frivolous activity, Eliot has him say, ‘I have measured out my life with coffee spoons’, and we participate in Prufrock’s emotion of frustration.” (Ibid, p. 423). By correlating Prufrock’s frustration with the objective set of measuring out his life in useless activity, Eliot dramatizes Prufrock’s sensations. Still another metaphor is given in the lines “Then how should I begin /To spit out all the butt ends of my days and ways?’ Prufrock smokes and this to him is another useless activity which must be spat out like the butt ends of a cigarette. “Prufrock” is a variation of the dramatic monologue. The monologue was a kind of poem popular among the predecessors of Eliot. The dramatic monologue is similar to the soliloquy, as in Hamlet’s “to be or not to be.” The dramatic monologue has three characteristics: the first of which is that it is the utterance of a particular person at a particular moment in time. Secondly, the speech is directed to a listener whose presence is only suggested in the speaker’s words. In “Prufrock”, the speaker is not Eliot, but Prufrock himself, and the words suggesting that he has a listener (even in the first stanza above) are the following lines (lines 1, 4, 11 and 12): “Let us go then, you and I,” “Let us go through certain half-deserted streets”, “Oh, do not ast, ‘what is it?’ Let us go and make our visit.” Third, the primary focus in said poem is the development and revelation of the speaker’s character. Later in the poem, the implied listener is removed and focuses on the inferiority and isolation of Prufrock. There is some sort of a transition from the first stanza on, till line 31 when the speaker says “Time for you and time for me.” But when we reach line 37, no longer does the reader sense the presence of the listener; it is Prufrock alone, talking to himself. The conversation has turned into a soliloquy. Prufrock starts out by focusing on his aging appearance and how people will regard him despite his formal attire: “And indeed there will be time To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’ Time to turn back and descent 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 to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a single pin – [They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!]” By now, it is clear that the poem is a soliloquy and the title is ironic, since it is supposed to be a love song and it turns out to be a speech directed to and about the speaker himself. The action takes place in Prufrock’s mind and, as he is talking to himself, he tries to objectify his neurotic self to examine it. It is a glaring fact that this “love song” is a far cry from the love songs written by Shakespeare, Spenser, Herrick and Marvell. Prufrock’s love song may never be sung at all. Why? Because it is a poem of self-love; part of the speaker is addressing another part of himself. If we use the Freudian terms of id and ego, the you of the first line is the id and the I is the ego. The ego is addressing the alter-ego. Prufrock is singing a love song to himself and the love is, of course, self-love. He fears the shame he will incur in case the narcissistic side of himself will be known to others. At the start of the poem, the id asked the ego to come with him to visit the room where “women were coming and going” – that is, the normal, physical world. Suspecting the id for this reason, the ego launches into a long monologue pretending to accede, and yet trying to convince the id of the hopelessness of the venture since it would only result in failure and rejection. “Time for you and time for me, And time for a hundred indecisions And for a hundred visions and revisions Before the taking of a toast and tea,” This is hyperbole, an exaggeration in which the speaker confesses that time passes ever so slowly for him when deciding whether or not to join the real world. The two most important characteristics of Eliot’s early poetry are displayed in “Prufrock”. First, it is strongly influenced by the French symbolists, and secondly, it uses fragmentation and juxtaposition. The French Symbolists who influenced Eliot greatly are: Mallarme, Rimbaud and Beudelaire. While beginning to write the poem as a student in Harvard, he had constantly been reading them. Eliot learned from the Symbolists to take his sensuous language for anti-aesthetic detail to contribute to the overall beauty of the poem. Two good examples of this are: “The yellow fog that rules its back upon the window frames, The yellow smoke that rules its muzzle on the window panes…” And “Arms that are braceleted and white and bare [But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]” 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. Regarding the use of fragmentation and juxtaposition – Eliot sustained his interest in these throughout his career. Eliot also introduces an image that recurs in his later poetry – that of the scavenger, Prufrock thinks: “I 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 suggest that making something beautiful out of the refuse of modern life, as a crab nourishes and sustains itself on garbage, may, in fact, be the highest form of art.” (Ibid) At the very least, the notion subverts romantic ideals about art. At best, it suggests that fragments may become integrated and that in some way, art may help to heal a broken, modern world. “Prufrock” is, in effect, the psychological self-analysis of a man who is incapable of love, spiritually or physically. He is awkward. He is timorous. He is in short, afraid… since he is aging, he considers himself impotent. Either he has erectile dysfunction or is unable to achieve an orgasm. And since he is convinced he has really aged, he might as well dress the part: “I grow old…I grow old.. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled”. In “Prufrock”, Eliot describes the consciousness of a modern neurotic individual. Prufrock’s obsessiveness is aesthetic, but it is also a sign of compulsiveness and isolation. “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? Isolation was never more described so subtly and so aptly as in the lines above. “Prufrock” is an examination of the tortured psyche of the prototype of modern man. He is overeducated,, eloquent, neurotic and emotionally stilted. Prufrock, in this case, is addressing someone – a potential lover with whom he would woo, have sex with and consummate their relationship – with whom he would like to “force the moment to its crisis.” Prufrock obviously shies away from women, yet he seems to be drawn to them. he is not only afraid to love, to receive love, but of love, per se. We may also go beyond this observation and say that Eliot is using Prufrock’s fear of love as a symbol for his own inadequacies. In his mind, he hears the comments others make about his inadequacies and chides himself from presuming that emotional interaction could be possible. In the line “Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter”, Prufrock makes a contrast between himself and John the Baptist. He is no prophet, but he and St. John are both victims of their respective eras – St. John, of Bible times and Prufrock, of modern times. “Prufrock” progresses from a series of physical settings – a cityscape – “the dooryards and the sprinkled streets.”, sexual interiors – “women’s arms in the lamplight, coffee spoons, fireplaces,” to a series of vague ocean images. These images convey Prufrock’s emotional distance from the world, as he accepts his second-rate status. He says, “I am not Prince Hamlet.” Prufrock assigns himself a role in one of Shakespeare’s plays. Unlike Hamlet, however, he never welds himself together for any heroic action. While he is no Hamlet, he could still be useful as “an attendant lord, one that will do/ to swell a progress, start a scene or two…” The poet Eliot is implying that Hamlet is still relevant to us and the world of Shakespeare. We are still part of a world that could come up with something as great as the Shakespeare’s dramas. It is also implied that Eliot who has created an “attendant lord” could to on to create another Hamlet. The poem “Prufrock” exalts its creator, although it devaluates its hero. Prufrock has been carrying on in his divided self between ego and id and they lead always to a question. All of his questions leading to a single question begin with “Do I dare” or “How should I presume” and “How do I begin”. This single dominant question which overwhelms him – dare he try to join the real world, yield to the id and accept the normal life, make his overtures to a woman and take the chance of being accepted (or rejected)? Dare he sing his love song? He looks at the normal world and is strongly attracted to it, but realizes that both parts of his nature find it unattainable, and so he opts for aloofness and self-love. “Another important formal feature is the use of fragments of sonnet form, particularly at the poem’s conclusion on the 3-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 that they (the mermaids) would sing to me,” creates a contrast that comments bitterly on the bleakness of modernity.” (from www.csua.berkely.edu) “I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown black” In this metaphor, the waves or the sea is compared to an old man with white hair. Could Prufrock be alluding to Triton, the God of the sea? In which case, the lines conform to another personification. The last line of the poem suggests that when the world intrudes, “When human voices wake us”, the dream is shattered and “we drown.”. With this line, the poet Eliot demolishes the romantic notion that poetic genius is all that is required to triumph over the destructive impersonal forces of the modern world. Eliot mirrors Prufrock’s soliloquy. Both are an expression of aesthetic ability and sensitivity that seems to have no place in the modern world. “The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a powerful poem for its range of intellectual reference and also for the vividness of character achieved. Bibliography Knickerbocker, K.L. and Reminger, W.H., Interpreting Literature, Hold and Co., Inc. 1955 Untermeyer, L., A Treasury of Great Poems, English and American. New York: Pocketbooks, 1942 http://www.csua.berkely.edu Read More