Action vis-à-VIS INACTION IN ELIOT'S Love Song.

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Action vis-à-vis inaction in Eliot’s Love Song

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SOMA DEBRAY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

NARAJOLE RAJ COLLEGE

T. S. Eliot composed The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock while still in Harvard in 1910. It was published in 1915. The poem is considered to be one of the hallmarks of

Modernism (literary movement at the turn of the 20^th century). The poem deals with isolation and alienation in the personal and social contexts. The speaker `voices the anxieties and preoccupations of the narrator in this dramatic monologue.

Eliot takes his Epigraph from Dante’s Inferno, which echoes the confessional mode of the narrative but with all anxiety of discovery. Prufrock invites a second character that may be another person, a lover, or the other self of the narrator, on a walk. The walk fails the romantic expectations as it involves travelling through grey areas of the city. The destinations are no fashionable restaurants, but “one night cheap hotels”. The streets are deserted and sleepless loners look down the shabby windows. The streets follow each other almost with malicious intents in very monotonous patterns. An overwhelming question arises, which remains eternally unasked and unanswered. Women talking of Michelangelo emphasize the monotonous triviality of effort.

The yellow smoke rubbing its back upon the window panes, lingering on puddles, licking the corners of the mouth, leaping suddenly invokes the feline imagery often

associated with supressed sexual desire. Pufrock is afraid to encounter women. The concept of time eternally stretching out is repeated by Eliot in the poem through several images. Time is important as it robs the youth of Prufrock. The narrator of the poem is almost paralyzed by indecision. This is reflected in the speaker’s thoughts trailing off in apparently unrelated

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Action vis-à-vis inaction in Eliot’s Love Song

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directions, thus breaking off the momentum of the poem at times. It is also a manifestation of Prufrock’s sense of inadequacy.

From the very beginning the poem juxtaposes action and inaction. The very “let us go” in line 1 is an indication of the movement in time and space. However, the momentum is quickly stalled with a description of streets that lead nowhere; only to an “overwhelming question”. However no soon is the question mentioned there is a frantic call from the narrator not to ask the question; a strong hint at suppression of desire.

This habitual hesitation seems to emanate from social anxiety. Prufrock is paralyzed by the fear of making the wrong choice. For him, the frivolousness of life, things like how to dress or how to eat become ‘overwhelming questions’. This is the insignificance of modern existence. He imagines socialising, entering a room full of fashionable women, but in reality he remains glued outside the door. He is too timid to enter as he is afraid that people will laugh at his bald spot and his out of fashion dress indicating the middle age of the narrator.

He has wasted his time with indecisions; has achieved nothing.

Prufrock has no plan of action. He doesn’t even understand how to begin asking a question. He is absolutely incapable of beginning any action. Prufrock repeats, “how should I begin”, and “how should I presume?” at the end of 2 stanzas, generating the impression of failed start, and crippling doubt. The speaker trying to make the best choice, ends up making no choice at all. Repetition of the phrase, “Do I dare?” further deepens the inadequacy and

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Action vis-à-vis inaction in Eliot’s Love Song

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indecisiveness of Prufrock; the feelings leave him paralyzed. “Like the patient etherized on the table”.

There are times, situations are created in the poem, where it appears that Prufrock might be engaging in some kind of activity, but ultimately he lies tethered to merely wanting to act, whi h is not action. Launching on any meaningful action requires courage; an

individual must “dare” to make a choice. The speaker of the poem fails here. The speaker only engages in wishful thinking when he thinks that he’ll have plenty of time to do things, or to take decisions. Indecisions have stopped him from leading a full life, a meaningful life.

Given his tidings, Prufrock is likely to continue in his agony till there will be no more Time.

He will never manage to live a full life.

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THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK: AN ANALYSIS

SOMA DEBRAY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH NARAJOLE RAJ COLLEGE The Love Son of J. Alfred Prufrock was first published in the June 1915 issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Later the poem was published as part of a chapbook containing 12 poems by Eliot. At the time of publication Prufrock got rather rude reviews. An anonymous

reviewer went so far as to write: “The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr. Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation to poetry.” However, after years it was welcomed as “heralding a paradigmatic cultural shift from late 19th-century Romantic verse and Georgian lyrics to Modernism”.

The poem’s structure was heavily influenced by the works of Dante, the Bible, and

Shakespeare (especially Henry IV Part II, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet). The poetry of the 17^th century Metaphysical poet, Andrew Marvell, and the French Symbolists also left their mark up on Eliot when writing the poem. He uses the stream-of-consciousness technique often used by his peers. It is a variation of the dramatic monologue, an interior monologue of a rather depressed urban man, stricken with feelings of acute desolation, and an incapability to act. The protagonist of the poem epitomises the frustration, utter despair, and impotence of the modern individual. This is a poem about thwarted desires and modern disillusionment.

The protagonist, suffers from physical and emotional inertia. He laments the lost

opportunities. The poem is heavy with a visceral feeling of weariness, regret, embarrassment, longing, emasculation, sexual frustration, a sense of decay, coupled with an awareness of mortality. Prufrock becomes the archway that lets in Modernity.

It is very difficult to discuss the poem portraying a fragmented psychic landscape; no single feeling / emotion can describe the poem. The narrator, the protagonist of the poem is a middle aged man grappling with mortality and inexpressibility. He takes the reader through the smoggy, lurid streets of London. This is the London of the 20^th century. He is lost under the burden of an eternally unasked “overwhelming question” and “a hundred indecisions”. In the company of socialite ladies he becomes too conscious of his ageing, balding, thinning

appearance. Prufrock is never able to express the nature of his crisis and his question.

The poem begins with an ‘Epigraph’ from Dante’s Inferno. It is a section where the corrupt statesman, Guy de Montrefeltro, tells Dante his story of sin and condemnation, believing he will never return to earth. The poem begins with an invitation from Prufrock to listen to his story. The tone of despair set by the Epithet, continues to haunt Prufrock from the very beginning of the poem.

Like Guy, Prufrock’s story too is laced with guilt and shame, with doubt and possible failures. There is no definitive as to the “you” of the poem. It can be either or both the reader and an unnamed friend of Prufrock. Prufrock moves along the insidious half deserted London streets, lined by “one-night cheap hotels” and “sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells” when the evening is spread out like a patient on an operation table. The bleakness thickens as Prufrock paints the dissolute city. The physical city is a projection of aspects of Prufrock’s psychology and mental agony.

The “Streets that follow like a tedious argument/ Of insidious intent”… map out the psychology of Prufrock in the desolate urban surroundings. Throughout his meanderings

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SOMA DEBRAY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH NARAJOLE RAJ COLLEGE and bifurcating streets will lead him to the one question. The “question”, forever unasked adds propulsion to the poem. The narrator refuses to tell. Instead he says: “Let us go and make our visit.”

Prufrock returns from the doorstep of a festive parlour, not being able to decide whether he will enter to join the ladies who talk of Michelangelo. The hope of a dramatic visit dissolves into the yellow fog outside that like a cat, “rubs its back upon the window panes.” Prufrock is subsumed in deep thought without any explanation.

Prufrock insists that “indeed there will be time”, but the consolation is vague; seems almost out of context, sudden. He is lost in his own thoughts. But nowhere is it clear as to why Prufrock needs such consolation. Neither is it clear as to what really he wants to do with the time. Prufrock’s thoughts are scattered and chaotic. He states his purpose: “To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet”; “…time to murder and to create”; “…time yet for a hundred indecisions”. Prufrock is throughout the poem deferring his action, but nameless action.

There is a sudden shift to the salon where “Women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo”.

The narrative structure is severely fragmented. A successful stream of consciousness

technique, where thoughts are haphazard, connected only by the order they cross Prufrock’s mind. The trivial is lent a universal expanse; Prufrock terribly conscious and unsure of the acceptability of his appearance id really afraid of “disturb”[ing] the Universe. Prufrock becomes world weary: he has “known them all”; the passing of the days in unchanging

sequence, the women and their sexual appeal. He feels like the insect pinned and writhing. He knows all society can offer and recedes into isolation:

“lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows”; or, “a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas,”

Prufrock get all the more tangled in his thoughts as the narrative approaches. He wants to but fails to articulate the thoughts troubling him. Throughout the poem Prufrock can never point at his crisis, can never name his crisis. Death walks into the scene silently as Prufrock has

“seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, / And in short, I was afraid.” The readers have a feeling that in spite of his extreme sense of desolation and isolation Prufrock does not want to die; he is afraid to embrace the unknown. He wants to know death, to know the universe:

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it toward some overwhelming question.

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SOMA DEBRAY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH NARAJOLE RAJ COLLEGE However, throughout the poem, Prufrock never succeeds to come to terms with, or clearly recognize, and so, fails to articulate the ‘overwhelming question’ that torments him. The dilemma eats at the core of his existence. Prufrock connects the dilemma with the

imagination of a woman, “throwing off a shawl, / And turning toward the window [to] say: /

‘That is not it at all.’”

Prufrock compares himself to Prince Hamlet but instantly realizes that he was not destined to be any Prince; he is more of an attendant Lord, one who will, “swell a progress, start a scene or two” --- an unflattering but accurate self-portrait. Prufrock becomes Count de Montrefeltro of the Epigraph, “obtuse”, “ridiculous”, and “the Fool”.

As the poem ends Prufrock imagines himself to be walking along the beach, trousers rolled, chanting “I grow old… I grow old”. The final frame where Prufrock listens to mermaids singing is reminiscent of the ancient Greek myth of the sirens. He imagines he is going down and down, “chambers of the sea[…] Till human voices wake us and we drown” because he knows that the mermaids will never sing for him. The final imagery strikes deep as the reader realizes that death has silenced Prufrock, death that he had feared the most. Prufrock doesn’t drown alone but takes his readers along as they “awaken”.