Pessimism in T.S. Eliot’s Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
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Wolran Kim
February 2013
Poetry is often used as a tool for complaints, excuses, or catharsis of poets. This “Love Song” of Elliot is not beautiful or filled with ecstasy at all; rather it reeks of pessimism. Then why did the poet entitle it as a love song and what does the name Prufrock stand for? Within the category of love, the excitement begins before love, the pain of parting, and the longing process are all included. Elliot is perfectly shifting from his emptiness to his delusions to the name of Prufrock.
Poetry often leads readers to an impression through revealing the poet’s embarrassment. Showing one’s own disgrace is painful. Elliot is free from shame through a safe agent, Prufrock. In addition, the name of the third person gives the vividness of non-fiction rather than fiction in this dramatic monologue.
Elliott published this poem in 1917, when the First World War (1914-1918) was in its last-minute period. At this time, ridicule on reality and personal pessimism from social unrest were naturally widespread. This poem is based on the skepticism from the existing truths and radical modernism in an impoverished postwar society. The style is in free verse with 19 stanzas, irregularity, and variations in line length and meter; some lines contain only three words, and others as many as fourteen.
His choice of poetic words and expressions are distinctly different from the realism and romanticism of the mid-nineteenth century. The cause of pessimism usually can be diagnosed from romantic expectations and attitudes. Finding representations of pessimism is not hard from the first stanza as in the delusions of love, continuance of meaningless days, tiredness of daily life, and emptiness of the tide; evening is like a patient etherized, “one-night cheap hotels,” “tedious argument,” and “overwhelming question (3, 4).” These metaphors and images suggest an honest and new understanding about the inner reality of the human begins.
This poem is the last shilly-shally courtship of the speaker, Prufrock, who is alienated from the outside world. His hesitation is expressed through the epigraph quoted from Dante’s Inferno. The Italian epigraph, which appears as a secret sign, is Guido da Montefeltro’s words during his suffering in the flames. He can tell Dante about his past because he is convinced that no one will return to the world again. Accordingly, the poet Eliot is not only Guido who is saying everything without fear of infamy, but also is Dante who exposes all to the world. Poets have the privilege of confiding their own secrets and flaws through poetry. Consequently, Elliot is enjoying his advantage that he can choose anyone, Guido, Dante, or Prufrock, as his persona passing time and space including any contradiction.
The confession of the speaker who serves as such a persona begins with solicitation, “Let us go then, you and I, (3).” This would not be meant to go to hell (Inferno) together as Dante did, if we consider the title, Love Song. “You” is an apostrophe to all of mankind. There is a repetition with “Let us go” (Line 1, 4, and 12) and this shows the poet’s decisive intention that we should go although we are in anesthetized despair; nevertheless, “Streets that follow like a tedious argument/ of insidious intent (3, 4).” He starts with “And” in 20 lines in the entire poem.
This anaphora shows that the speaker stuck in the language and pessimistic feeling with the loss in grief and despair intact. The lines “When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherised upon a table;” and “lead you to an overwhelming question...” are depicted by personification, metaphor, and simile because Prufrock uses like to compare the evening to a patient (3, 4). Many could have experiences of the evening just like a patient etherised. Human despair is often anesthetized in our world just like an operating room does.
The women who are talking of Michelangelo in the second stanza are contrasted with those belonging to the evening like a patient etherised in the first stanza. A world dominated by men is ruined; however, women are now excited about a new world as in Michelangelo’s The Creation. No one knows that those gloomy lovers in the first stanza are resurrected and create a whole new world just like Jesus who was in Mary’s arms in Michelangelo’s Pieta. Poet uses quotes, paraphrases, or cites historical or fictional persons, places, or ideas, such as Michelangelo, the story of the Bible, and Dante’s Inferno.
The whole third stanza is a metaphor and personification also, because “The yellow fog” and “the yellow smoke” are both compared to a living creature by “tongue,” “leaps,” and “curls up. (4)” In the fourth stanza, all beings have a restless time that could disappear like mist at anytime. “Murder” is negative and “creation” is positive, therefore murder is hesitative to create (4). Murder for creation, this “overwhelming question” is severe and important although it is on your daily plate (4). In the fifth stanza, women still talk about the hope and composure of Michelangelo’s creation without fretfulness.
In the sixth stanza, the speaker consoles himself in that he might have the hesitant “time to murder and create” from the fourth stanza in the unknown time (4). He still keeps “insidious intent” in mind although he is getting old during the years of suffering (4). The line “Before the taking of a toast and tea is expressed by alliteration (4). He changed the words from “there will be time” to “there is time (4-5).” This time is free from other’s interference and is enough for “insidious intent (4).”
In the seventh stanza, the speaker says “the evenings, mornings, afternoons” rather than “the mornings, afternoons, evenings,” and this sequence shows the cyclic structure of continuance as forever, not divided into single days (5). He measured out his life “with coffee spoons” in the metaphor, and the quantity of days is the same as the number of coffee spoons (5). Every minute, this absolute time makes everything possible.
In the eighth stanza, the poet became an insect specimen. He has started a process of “creation” at the same time as the “murder” of himself as a specimen (4). “Fix you in a formulated phrase” is expressed by alliteration (5). “When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall” is also depicted by alliteration and metaphor (5). The speaker falls into chaos in the ninth stanza. All the artificial and changing appearances are disrupted with “perfume (5).” In the tenth stanza, “the smoke from the pipes” is connected to the loneliness and nihility; however, “a pair of ragged claws” is a lot better than fleeting smoke because claws are vital signs (5, 6). He is self-mocking, but still he is in agony to get out of “the floors of silent seas (6).”
In the eleventh stanza, the world is peacefully asleep, but the speaker alone is awake. He imagines that his neck is truncated just like John the Baptist in the New Testament while trying to create the new world. “The eternal Footman” scoffs at him (6). In the twelfth stanza, the speaker is skeptical as pessimist. To solve the problem he needs a surprise attack, the coexistence of a smile and a bite, and squeezing “the universe into a ball (6).”
Then the smaller ball rolls toward the huge truth, and the speaker uses a hyperbole and metaphor to represent. The love song that persisted as daily things by Prufrock was exposed by “Lazarus” who came back alive from the abyss as Guido in the epigraph (6). The speaker’s “insidious intent” from the first stanza shows here, yet he justifies himself as the whisper of a woman’s bed (4).
The thirteenth stanza depicts the same content in the same structure from the previous stanza; however, it goes to the front yard and street from inside the room. The speaker sighs for that he could not say everything he wanted to say despite a radius of action and a variety of experiences. He must be trying to talk about the “overwhelming question” in his “insidious intent (4).” He is denied from the woman and thrown away through the window in his imagination because of his scrupulous creation “as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: (7).”
It will be useless if he never gains the sympathy from the woman. All the words in the fourteenth stanza are widely read as a dual statement. The speaker is willing to be “Prince Hamlet” as “the Fool” to deliver his mind (7). He sneers at the ridiculousness of himself. He has the image of Hamlet who is struggling to solve the “overwhelming question” because the “Fool” is not a real fool but acts like a fool (4, 7). He must be a real Hamlet who is troubled over every decision and observes himself thoroughly to the bottom through disrepute and disparage.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth stanzas, human Hamlet who is not a man of decision and just gets deeper into worry goes to the sea intentionally after trying to find ageless ways in unavoidable aging reality. The mermaids in his imagination send and receive songs as if it is the poet’s wish of mutual understanding. To go into the sea is the same as going into the origin of human beings and the space of revival. Therefore, the speaker never dies despite drawn. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth stanzas, the mermaids will not sing for the poet to agree, though he talks about his experiences in the beach and the room as if Dante wrote the Divine Comedy from Guido’s words and the dead Lazarus saying everything after walking away from his grave.
That is just this poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Does not a story and a poem save us from the sea of meaningless, nihility, and death? For that reason, mutual understanding is needed in poetry, songs, or stories to obtain meaning as the songs of mermaids do.
This poem, which was written nearly 100 years ago, still feels new because of the modern poetic words and free structure. Prufrock sees all his alienation, embarrassment, indecision, inadequacy, and awareness of mortality in a mostly negative light. This pessimism is a much more human feeling unlike the epic heroes who move confidently with determination. Thus, the speaker’s extended hands are more touching because of his appearance of frustration, depression, and anxiety.
The poet is dead; however, the “time” for “you and I” “to murder and create” continues (3, 4). Since Prufrock talks about creation, we can read him as a figure for poets in general. He is a potential poet. The speaker’s words, “Disturb the universe?” are enough to be realized because people still read Elliot’s poetry 100 years later (5). A song of hope seems to be waiting for us if we wander around the alleys of the night holding Prufrock’s gloomy hands. The song is for the time of you and I, even if we might drown again and again without joining the sea of the mermaid’s sympathy.
===========================================================
Wolran Kim
February 2013
Poetry is often used as a tool for complaints, excuses, or catharsis of poets. This “Love Song” of Elliot is not beautiful or filled with ecstasy at all; rather it reeks of pessimism. Then why did the poet entitle it as a love song and what does the name Prufrock stand for? Within the category of love, the excitement begins before love, the pain of parting, and the longing process are all included. Elliot is perfectly shifting from his emptiness to his delusions to the name of Prufrock.
Poetry often leads readers to an impression through revealing the poet’s embarrassment. Showing one’s own disgrace is painful. Elliot is free from shame through a safe agent, Prufrock. In addition, the name of the third person gives the vividness of non-fiction rather than fiction in this dramatic monologue.
Elliott published this poem in 1917, when the First World War (1914-1918) was in its last-minute period. At this time, ridicule on reality and personal pessimism from social unrest were naturally widespread. This poem is based on the skepticism from the existing truths and radical modernism in an impoverished postwar society. The style is in free verse with 19 stanzas, irregularity, and variations in line length and meter; some lines contain only three words, and others as many as fourteen.
His choice of poetic words and expressions are distinctly different from the realism and romanticism of the mid-nineteenth century. The cause of pessimism usually can be diagnosed from romantic expectations and attitudes. Finding representations of pessimism is not hard from the first stanza as in the delusions of love, continuance of meaningless days, tiredness of daily life, and emptiness of the tide; evening is like a patient etherized, “one-night cheap hotels,” “tedious argument,” and “overwhelming question (3, 4).” These metaphors and images suggest an honest and new understanding about the inner reality of the human begins.
This poem is the last shilly-shally courtship of the speaker, Prufrock, who is alienated from the outside world. His hesitation is expressed through the epigraph quoted from Dante’s Inferno. The Italian epigraph, which appears as a secret sign, is Guido da Montefeltro’s words during his suffering in the flames. He can tell Dante about his past because he is convinced that no one will return to the world again. Accordingly, the poet Eliot is not only Guido who is saying everything without fear of infamy, but also is Dante who exposes all to the world. Poets have the privilege of confiding their own secrets and flaws through poetry. Consequently, Elliot is enjoying his advantage that he can choose anyone, Guido, Dante, or Prufrock, as his persona passing time and space including any contradiction.
The confession of the speaker who serves as such a persona begins with solicitation, “Let us go then, you and I, (3).” This would not be meant to go to hell (Inferno) together as Dante did, if we consider the title, Love Song. “You” is an apostrophe to all of mankind. There is a repetition with “Let us go” (Line 1, 4, and 12) and this shows the poet’s decisive intention that we should go although we are in anesthetized despair; nevertheless, “Streets that follow like a tedious argument/ of insidious intent (3, 4).” He starts with “And” in 20 lines in the entire poem.
This anaphora shows that the speaker stuck in the language and pessimistic feeling with the loss in grief and despair intact. The lines “When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherised upon a table;” and “lead you to an overwhelming question...” are depicted by personification, metaphor, and simile because Prufrock uses like to compare the evening to a patient (3, 4). Many could have experiences of the evening just like a patient etherised. Human despair is often anesthetized in our world just like an operating room does.
The women who are talking of Michelangelo in the second stanza are contrasted with those belonging to the evening like a patient etherised in the first stanza. A world dominated by men is ruined; however, women are now excited about a new world as in Michelangelo’s The Creation. No one knows that those gloomy lovers in the first stanza are resurrected and create a whole new world just like Jesus who was in Mary’s arms in Michelangelo’s Pieta. Poet uses quotes, paraphrases, or cites historical or fictional persons, places, or ideas, such as Michelangelo, the story of the Bible, and Dante’s Inferno.
The whole third stanza is a metaphor and personification also, because “The yellow fog” and “the yellow smoke” are both compared to a living creature by “tongue,” “leaps,” and “curls up. (4)” In the fourth stanza, all beings have a restless time that could disappear like mist at anytime. “Murder” is negative and “creation” is positive, therefore murder is hesitative to create (4). Murder for creation, this “overwhelming question” is severe and important although it is on your daily plate (4). In the fifth stanza, women still talk about the hope and composure of Michelangelo’s creation without fretfulness.
In the sixth stanza, the speaker consoles himself in that he might have the hesitant “time to murder and create” from the fourth stanza in the unknown time (4). He still keeps “insidious intent” in mind although he is getting old during the years of suffering (4). The line “Before the taking of a toast and tea is expressed by alliteration (4). He changed the words from “there will be time” to “there is time (4-5).” This time is free from other’s interference and is enough for “insidious intent (4).”
In the seventh stanza, the speaker says “the evenings, mornings, afternoons” rather than “the mornings, afternoons, evenings,” and this sequence shows the cyclic structure of continuance as forever, not divided into single days (5). He measured out his life “with coffee spoons” in the metaphor, and the quantity of days is the same as the number of coffee spoons (5). Every minute, this absolute time makes everything possible.
In the eighth stanza, the poet became an insect specimen. He has started a process of “creation” at the same time as the “murder” of himself as a specimen (4). “Fix you in a formulated phrase” is expressed by alliteration (5). “When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall” is also depicted by alliteration and metaphor (5). The speaker falls into chaos in the ninth stanza. All the artificial and changing appearances are disrupted with “perfume (5).” In the tenth stanza, “the smoke from the pipes” is connected to the loneliness and nihility; however, “a pair of ragged claws” is a lot better than fleeting smoke because claws are vital signs (5, 6). He is self-mocking, but still he is in agony to get out of “the floors of silent seas (6).”
In the eleventh stanza, the world is peacefully asleep, but the speaker alone is awake. He imagines that his neck is truncated just like John the Baptist in the New Testament while trying to create the new world. “The eternal Footman” scoffs at him (6). In the twelfth stanza, the speaker is skeptical as pessimist. To solve the problem he needs a surprise attack, the coexistence of a smile and a bite, and squeezing “the universe into a ball (6).”
Then the smaller ball rolls toward the huge truth, and the speaker uses a hyperbole and metaphor to represent. The love song that persisted as daily things by Prufrock was exposed by “Lazarus” who came back alive from the abyss as Guido in the epigraph (6). The speaker’s “insidious intent” from the first stanza shows here, yet he justifies himself as the whisper of a woman’s bed (4).
The thirteenth stanza depicts the same content in the same structure from the previous stanza; however, it goes to the front yard and street from inside the room. The speaker sighs for that he could not say everything he wanted to say despite a radius of action and a variety of experiences. He must be trying to talk about the “overwhelming question” in his “insidious intent (4).” He is denied from the woman and thrown away through the window in his imagination because of his scrupulous creation “as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: (7).”
It will be useless if he never gains the sympathy from the woman. All the words in the fourteenth stanza are widely read as a dual statement. The speaker is willing to be “Prince Hamlet” as “the Fool” to deliver his mind (7). He sneers at the ridiculousness of himself. He has the image of Hamlet who is struggling to solve the “overwhelming question” because the “Fool” is not a real fool but acts like a fool (4, 7). He must be a real Hamlet who is troubled over every decision and observes himself thoroughly to the bottom through disrepute and disparage.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth stanzas, human Hamlet who is not a man of decision and just gets deeper into worry goes to the sea intentionally after trying to find ageless ways in unavoidable aging reality. The mermaids in his imagination send and receive songs as if it is the poet’s wish of mutual understanding. To go into the sea is the same as going into the origin of human beings and the space of revival. Therefore, the speaker never dies despite drawn. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth stanzas, the mermaids will not sing for the poet to agree, though he talks about his experiences in the beach and the room as if Dante wrote the Divine Comedy from Guido’s words and the dead Lazarus saying everything after walking away from his grave.
That is just this poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Does not a story and a poem save us from the sea of meaningless, nihility, and death? For that reason, mutual understanding is needed in poetry, songs, or stories to obtain meaning as the songs of mermaids do.
This poem, which was written nearly 100 years ago, still feels new because of the modern poetic words and free structure. Prufrock sees all his alienation, embarrassment, indecision, inadequacy, and awareness of mortality in a mostly negative light. This pessimism is a much more human feeling unlike the epic heroes who move confidently with determination. Thus, the speaker’s extended hands are more touching because of his appearance of frustration, depression, and anxiety.
The poet is dead; however, the “time” for “you and I” “to murder and create” continues (3, 4). Since Prufrock talks about creation, we can read him as a figure for poets in general. He is a potential poet. The speaker’s words, “Disturb the universe?” are enough to be realized because people still read Elliot’s poetry 100 years later (5). A song of hope seems to be waiting for us if we wander around the alleys of the night holding Prufrock’s gloomy hands. The song is for the time of you and I, even if we might drown again and again without joining the sea of the mermaid’s sympathy.