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Skip Poem: Take Me to Taboo's Critique
Collection Source Link: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
by T. S. Eliot
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.
--Dante's Inferno
"LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised 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
Disturb the universe?
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!)
It is 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;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
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."
--Collection Source Link: T.S. Eliot
I FIRST READ PRUFROCK as a 13 year-old boy. I was sifting through my mother's library, mining gold for my own letter writing--to woo the ladies with my knowledge of poetry. There's some sexy stuff in this poem ("We have lingered in the chambers of the sea / By seagirls wreathed in seaweed red and brown / Till human voices wake us and we drown. /") and I--that eager, horny little boy--thought I understood something about the world.
I had wisdom. I knew poetry. Joke. Puke.
In high school I chose to write about Prufrock for a class, because I loved it (loved me) so much. I wanted to show how the narrator, Prufrock, of course, was so alone, so stoic (I was always impressed with stoic, as I was with what I perceived to be Hemingway's stoicism), so determined to pass up truth, to pass up his own happiness for fear of harming others ("Do I dare / disturb the universe?").
If, like me, you're impressed with this sort of "noble", perhaps "selfless" stoicism, there's a lot of beauty in Prufrock. In college, however, I learned where the quotation at the poem's beginning comes from, and, perhaps, what it means. Here's the translation of that passage from Dante's Inferno:
"If I believed that my answer would be
To someone who would ever return to earth,
This flame would move no more,
But because no one from this gulf
Has ever returned alive, if what I hear is true,
I can reply with no fear of infamy."
In T.S. Eliot's poem, Prufrock refuses to answer "the question," and finds all sorts of clever ways to avoid answering it ("Oh do not ask what is it / let us go and make our visit. / ") or proving that the answer wouldn't have any lasting value:
"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. "
In the Inferno passage, the speaker can answer "the question" because his words won't make it back to the land of the living--he's dead and in hell. But Prufrock is alive. It isn't stoicism that holds him back, but rather ignorance and fear.
I was crushed when I learned this about Prufrock--not only had I not understood my favorite poem in the slightest, but the worth and value in which I wanted to believe was not to be found.
It gets worse: in the weird light of my new perspective, I pursued every piece of critical writing ever published concerning Prufrock. Essay after essay used a term I thought I understood without simply looking up the damn word in the dictionary. Eventually, I did:
BATHOS: n. - An abrupt, unintended transition in style from the exalted to the commonplace, producing a ludicrous effect.
- An anticlimax.
- Insincere or grossly sentimental pathos: “a richly textured man who [...] can be [...] sentimental to the brink of bathos” (Kenneth L. Woodward).
- Banality; triteness.
---The American Heritage® Dictionary
T.S. Eliot, had never intended Prufrock to be stoic, or noble. or even a gentleman. Prufrock is ridiculous. Prufrock is ignorant. Prufrock is pompous: Prufrock the peacock.
And the worst bit was finding out that Prufrock was I, he is me. My "understanding" made me important. So I thought. In reality, the poem is tremendous, hollow, and brutal; but Prufrock is a joke, and a sad joke at that. Source Link: The Entire T.S. Eliot Collection
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Copyright ©2004, ©2005, ©2006 Joshua P. Suchman. Work Cited "bathos." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,
Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 31
Jan. 2006. Answers.com: Bathos
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Poetry. Answers Corporation, 2005.
Answers.com 31 Jan. 2006.
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