The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock Part 1

Monday, September 12, 2011

   T.S. Eliot, at times, can be an intellectual bully.  To read “The Wasteland” well, you need a familiarity with Grail Mythology and with “The Acts of the Apostles” in the Bible.  To read Prufrock, he assumes that his readers will be able to read Italian and have a firm grasp of what goes on in Dante’s Inferno.  All right, “Cats” was easy and lame, but wasn’t he writing those rhymes for his godchildren?


    Still, when I read Eliot without footnotes, I think, “Wow, this is great poetry even if I don’t know what he’s alluding to.  The tones and moods are vivid. The irony and sarcasm is nasty. And the plight of poor old Prufrock is all too real.  I think, once I give you the basic idea of the epigram, I can have a great time reading Prufrock  with my own meager intellect.  It’s a poem about how analysis can render a guy pathetic and impotent He gets in his digs at women too, though.  They come off as verbal bullies.

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


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.

    I like the name Prufrock.  Split it one way, and it sounds like a modest dress, a PRUdent FROCK.  This connects with the Michelangelo women later in the poem.  Split it another way and it sounds like rock solid proof of something.


    Some guy in the eighth level of hell tells Dante’ something like this...” If I thought anybody ever got out of this place, I’d refuse to tell you my story.  But, we’re stuck down here, so I don’t have to worry about you blabbing my sins to everyone.”  Take that quote and mix it with the title.  For Prufrock, the whole mating game is an inescapable hell.

    A lot of critics have argued that Prufrock doesn’t even have a friend that he invites along on his visit.  They think he’s alone in his room, imagining that he has a buddy and imagining that they are going to chase women with carnal intent.  But, I like it if Prufrock is taking somebody on a tour, like Virgil took Dante’ in the Inferno.  Maybe the reader is the “you” in the poem, or maybe it’s some guy, but there’s more action if J. Alfred leaves his room.


    The evening is powerless, like an etherized patient, like Prufrock.  People do things to it.


    “One night-cheap hotels” are where people hook up.  There’s no doubt from here on that this poem is in large part about sexual frustration.


    “A tedious argument of insidious intent” sounds like an attempt at seduction.  Insidious means sneaky evil. The argument is tedious because we’ve heard it so many times before. So Prufrock says, “...do not ask, ‘What is it?”  The problem is obvious.

    The women coming and going shows their elusiveness. Prufrock hasn’t had the opportunity, much less the gumption, to get with one of them. 


    The “talking of Michelangelo” has always killed me with it’s complexity. It’s safe sexy. Michelangelo’s “David” and “Creation” feature anatomically correct males, but he’s an old master who often painted and sculpted religious scenes. So a woman could safely discuss the sensuality and power of Michelangelo.  Also, if a woman compares nearly any man to David, the mere mortal will be found lacking.  It’s the first hint of the women intimidating Prufrock.

    So many stories set in London describe the fog as yellow, (Check out Sherlock Holmes!) but Eliot’s lazy feral cat just sounds dirty and sordid.  Get a load of all the “l” and “s” sounds.  Lewd lascivious, sexy, sin... those are the sounds of sluttiness.  Still, the pools and the drains and the soot, make the sensuality less appealing. Prufrock is the speaker, so we get an “approach/avoidance” worldview from him.  The world is sensual but nasty.

    This “...there will be time” mantra of Prufrock’s is his  problem.  He never goes for it.  He considers the possibilities he might go for some other time.  He is rendered impotent by his procrastination.  Or maybe he procrastinates because he fears impotence?


    Note the insincerity of the mating game.  He prepares a face for the women to see, he doesn’t present his true self.  Or, maybe, he doesn’t feel like he has a true self.  He has to create selves to meet people with.  (That would be existential.)


“...time yet for a hundred indecisions’ is pretty ironic.  He’s not putting off deciding whether to act.  He’s putting off not deciding.  The “visions” when he thinks he sees clearly become “revisions” which of course are yet more inactions.


    The “a” before toast and tea kills me.  It’s a formal event, attended by these elusive, intimidating women.

And really it’s here where we see how Prufrock assumes he will be bullied by these women.  He wants to dare to approach them, but he fears that they will mock his body.  (his true self!) Regardless of his rich, assertive clothes, they will criticize him where he has no defense. (He can’t un-thin his hair!)  They find him “thin,” as in insubstantial.  There’s not much to him.


     People have seen Prufrock as a symbol of Western Culture after WWI.  The war proved how thin the veneer of civilization was and how ineffectual all our beliefs were in avoiding catastrophe.  I like that, but it’s a pretty good poem already if it’s about gossipy women emasculating guys.


    He never answers his own “Do I dare?”  He know what the question is, but has no clue of the answer. (More existentialism!)  Of course virile men just dare without questioning.  It’s the intellectual who is impotent, maybe like how ideas that once were a big deal seemed to have no power in post war Europe.

PART TWO COMING SOON TO A BLOG NEAR YOU