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T.S. Eliot: Discovering J.
Alfred PrufrockSo, Let us go then, you and I(1), and explore the emotionsthat beat within a young and pedantic Eliots young breast, andpoised him at the brink of this questionto love or to not.
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INTRODUCTION
Due to the very private nature of
Thomas Stearns Eliot, the poet ofThe
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, little
connection has been made between
him and the protagonist of the poem,Prufrock.However, the insightful biographical detail from Valerie Eliots TheLetters of T. S. Eliot Vol. 1: 1898-1922, as well as the numerousbiographies on Eliot published after its release in 1988 helps us
surmise the motivations that led Eliot to create the character ofPrufrock.
In addition, the compilation of Eliots original manuscripts, Inventionsof the March Hareedited by Christopher Ricks, give us new insight to
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
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Despite what we maypresume with the titleThe Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock, far frombeing a love song, thepoem more closelyresembles a lament alament of a man who is
doomed to fail.
Prufrock is poised at thebrink of sexualindulgence and does not
know whether to plungeheadlong into the womenwho come and go/Talking of Michelangelo (13-14).
Prufrock never reaches that criticalstage of confessing his love song ashe sees the moment of his greatnessflicker (84)
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How should I presume?(54),
Prufrocks continual reverie,I should have, is as far as
his actions will take him
because he will never
physically act upon histhoughts. Due to his weak
character he is constricted
in an emotional paralysis,
which leaves him unable to
act upon his thoughts and
force the moment to its
crisis (80).
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Prufrock is hypersensitive about aging: I grow old I grow old (120),which resembles the thought process of a middle-aged man, not a
twenty-two year old university student.
Considering that Eliot was born
on September 26, 1888, and
Eliot began writing the poem
around 1910, we can surmise
that Eliot was twenty-two years
old at the time he wrote thepoem.
Unlike the young Eliot, who
would have no reason to be
troubled by balding at the time
the poem was written, Prufrock is
described
With a bald spot inthe middle of [his] hair (44).
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J. Alfred Prufrock and T.S.
Eliot Prufrock is never comfortable in polite
society:
And I have known the eyes, known them all
The eyes that fix you in a formulate 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? (55-61)
Eliot, the scion of a wealthy and elite Missourifamily would never have had reason to feel thenervousness in society that Prufrock did
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PRUFROCK:
ELIOT S MEDIUMFor Eliot being a poetmeant to be alwaysincorporating the past into apresent self. And not merelyhis own past life, but that of
his ancestors and of therace. The mind in his poetryis composed of all thatmemory could recoverand imagination order: themind of one man, but a manextraordinarily mindful of thewhole reach of his historyback to its remotest origins(Moody, A. D. Thomas Stearns Eliot.2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1994. 1.).
Instead, we may view The
Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock as a medium for
Eliot to convey his feelings in
light of the message found inthe epigraph of the poem,
which is taken from a scene
from Dantes Inferno:
Guido da Montefeltro,
consumed in flame aspunishment for giving false
counsel, confesses his shame
without fear of its being reported
since he believes Dante cannot
return to earth.
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By using the character of Prufrock, Eliot may
confess the madness, that grips him while
he is consumed by his fledgling love for Emily
Hale By using a dramaticmonologue, Eliot is
expressing his feelings
through the character of
Prufrock.
His inability to act upon
his thoughts that
surround an
overwhelming question,
or love confession, is the
paralysis that Prufrock
suffers under.
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Eliots madness, or
inability to confess his
love for Emily Hale,
arises from his inabilityto understand his love in
terms of his Christian
upbringing.
Eliots Christian
upbringing exacerbates
his view that sex is evil
as his father believes
syphilis was Gods
punishment.
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DO I DARE EAT A
PEACH? (122)
Like Eliot, Prufrock is afraid:And in short, I was afraid (86).
As an inquisitive childwith a nervoustemperament, Eliotgrew up in a wealthy
Anglo-SaxonProtestant household.
we discover Eliotdeveloped a fear of thedistractions of the fleshfrom his parents, which
enhanced his ownprivate and asceticnature.
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In The Love Songof J. AlfredPrufrock, we see
the pejorativelanguage againstwomen comes to lifethrough the
influence of thegreat French poetJules Laforgue
He is uneasily aware that the womanpoints up his pallid appetite but at thesame time, defensively scornful of hertaste conversation, and brains.
(Gordon, Lyndall. T. S. Eliot : An Imperfect Life. Boston: W. W. Norton
& Company, Incorporated, 1999. 37.)
In the room the women come and go / Talking about
Michelangelo.
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Before 1908 we see Eliot s poetry clearly
reflects a Henry Jamesian romantic style.
, ,evokes a style from a generation before
Eliot, with words such as thee and
ere, and has a consistent rhyme
structure:
These lines in The Love Song ofJ. Alfred Prufrock,
The flowers I sent thee when the
dew
Was trembling on the vine,
Were withered ere the wild beeflower
To suck the eglantine
(9-12).
The language of this poem is
representative of Henry James
as it is flowery and elite, and
uses romantic images of naturethat is noticeably missing in
Eliots poetry after 1908
I grow old I grow old
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousersrolled (120-121),
are not beautiful, nor is the couplet perfect in
rhyme structure, but it conveys the passage of
time that Eliot tried to show in the previous
lines from Song.
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Laforgue is almost omnipresent in The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Looking back at his poetry, Eliot himselfrealizes a change in his earlier poetry afterreading Laforgue in 1909:
I do feel more grateful to him than anyone to else,
and I do not think that I have come across anyother writer since who has meant so much to meas he did at that particular momentum or thatparticular year.
(Eliot, T. S. The Letters of T. S. Eliot Vol. 1 : 1898-1922. Ed. Valerie Eliot. Vol. 1. Danbury:Faber & Faber, Incorporated, 1988. 191.)
Adopted Laforguian tecniques: the undercutting contrast of sublime and banal phrases
language of ordinary conversation
control the drift of interior monologue through an ironic dialoguebetween rival aspects of self
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THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT,INVENTIONS OF THE MARCHHARE, CONTAINS THE LOVESONG OF J. ALFREDPRUFROCK ALONG WITHTHE UNPUBLISHED PORTIONOFTHE POEM, PRUFROCK SPERVIGILIUM
before the first magazine publicationin 1915, the poem was entitledPrufrock among the Women in theInventions of the March Hareoriginalmanuscript.
[1
Boston high-society life, Eliotdecided to run away to Paris and
study at the Sorbonne he is
squeeze[ing] the universe into a
ball / To roll it toward someoverwhelming question (92-93).
Eliot composed
most ofThe LoveSong of J. Alfred
Prufrock between
the years 1910-1911 while
studying abroad in
France. Tired of
the women and
niceties of
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Look at hers, so touching and nude,In a dcor of birds and roses;Ingenuous reflexes, its tics,
Attitudes copied from worldly poses;On a green background, jaundice-hued
(15-19).
Thewomen of the original title,
Prufrock among the Women, arewhat plagued him into writing the
poem, and are also the catalyst that
sent him to France.
However, we find that instead
of finding relief, Eliot finds the
same society of women in
Boston languish in the high-
society waiting rooms of Paris.
The line Arms that are braceleted
and white and bare (63) seems
like a compliment; however, the
next lines but (64) negates the
statement. In addition, this line
calls attention to a distasteful
aspect of the women: But in the
lamplight, downed with light
brown hair!
And with his growing distrust of familynorms, Harvard clichs, and Boston
manners, coupled with his already
solitary habits and the alienated
voices of nineteenth-century Frenchpoets, Eliot writes most of the original
manuscript ofThe Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock.
m y a e: o s a ness
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m y a e: o s a ness The original manuscript Inventions of the March Hareshows that
Prufrocks Pervigilium begins after line 69s And how should I
begin? (69), in the original draft ofThe Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock. In the 1917 published version of the poem, this question,
And how should Ibegin?
(69), is ignored:
And how should I
presume? / And I have known the arms already, known them all
(62)
In Prufrock s Pervigilium, Eliot addresses the questionAnd how should I begin? (69):
Shall I say, Ihave gone at dusk through narrow streetsAnd seen the smoke which rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirtsleeves, leaning out of windows (1-3)
(Eliot, T. S., Christopher Ricks, and Charles Boyle. Inventions of the March Hare : Poems,
1909-1917. Danbury: Faber & Faber, Incorporated, 1996. 44,).
Although we do not know the exact date Prufrocks
Pervigilium was written, because it was written in a later hand
than the rest ofThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, we can
surmise it was written in 1912, the same year Eliot meets and
falls in love with Emily Hale.Eliot T. S. The Letters of T. S. Eliot Vol. 1 : 1898-1922. Ed. Valerie Eliot. Vol. 1. Danbur : Faber &
I f bl d t th i d t i th ld
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THE BLIND OLD DRUNK (30),SINGS TO THE WORLD, ORCONFESSES HIS LOVE, ONLYTO SEE THE WORLD [BEGIN]TO FALL APART (32). ELIOT,LIKE THE BLIND DRUNK,
REALIZES THAT IN ORDER TOCONFESS HIS LOVE TO HALE,HE MUST RENOUNCE HISPURITAN UPBRINGING ANDHAVE THE WORLD THAT MADEUP HIS PAST FALL APART.
I fumbled to the window to experience the world
And to hear my Madness singing, sitting on the
kerbstone
[A blind old drunken man who sings and mutters,
With broken boot heels stained in many gutters]
And as he sang the world began to fall apart (28-
32).
(Eliot, T. S., Christopher Ricks, and Charles Boyle. Inventions of the March
Hare : Poems, 1909-1917. Danbury: Faber & Faber, Incorporated, 1996.
44.)
fallapart
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TO FORCE THE MOMENT TO ITS CRISIS
In Prufrock, we see Eliots
own anxiety in matters of
sex and women: Eliot
exploited his inhibition in
Prufrock-the-prophet
sstifling fears: his head
brought in, like John the
Baptists, upon a platter.
He imagines his
persecution. He sees hisgreatness flicker, and is
afraid. (Gordon, Lyndall. T. S. Eliot :An Imperfect Life. Boston: W. W. Norton &
Company, Incorporated, 1999. 68.)
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Eliot, through the medium of Prufrock, is asking his Madness if he dares
plunge himself into what his father considered the sin of indulging in the
feminine charms of the opposite sex.
We must consider that after falling in love
with Hale, Eliot names the nameless
you in the poem in order to confront
his fears of women.
Eliot, by his own admission, was
immature and inexperienced. He was
trying to appease his Christian
upbringing and familys views of sex with
his budding infatuation.
In addition, by giving a name to what
troubled him, [Eliot] fully enunciates
(instead of merely mimicking or
parodying) the fatigue repetitiveness of
his doubt and desire.(Vendler, Helen H.
"T.S. Eliot: Inventing Prufrock." Coming of Ageas a Poet : Milton, Keats, Eliot, Plath. New
York: Harvard UP, 2003. 108.)
We see Eliots turmoil with love
as a young virgin man from an
upper-class Protestant upbringing
reflected in the Madness of J.
Alfred Prufrock as he wonders,
Do I dare / disturb the universe
(45-46).
And in the end of the poem he
finds he cannot. Prufrock is notonly afraid to confess his love but
fears the high-society women who
talk of Michelangelo will ignore
him, as he believes the mermaids
will refuse to sing to him: I do not
think that they will sing to me
(125).
Similar to Prufrocks fears, Eliot is afraid of being rejected by Hale who was from the
same society as the women who talk of Michelangelo: She was born into the same
Boston Brahmin milieu as Eliots family. (Gordon, Lyndall. T. S. Eliot : An Imperfect Life.
Boston: W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated, 1999. 79.)
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The image of Prufrock standing on the beachwhile the mermaidsare riding seaward on thewaves (126), shows how Eliot is incapable of
reaching the mermaids, or the high societywomen, because of his cowardly character andChristian upbringing.
C l i
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Conclusion: Not a hero or a king, J. Alfred Prufrock isa mere attendant lord (112) who is used to swell a progress,
start a scene or two (113).
Like Eliot, Prufrock isunsure of professing his
love because he believes it
will disturb the universe
(45).
The scholarship of
Laforgue allowed thesethoughts to traverse onto
paper and roll it toward
some overwhelming
question (93); only to find,
in short, [he] was [too]afraid (86) to sing his
madness, his love song
for Emily Hale.
Through Prufrock, Eliot
finds he cannot have thePuritan upbringing and
beliefs on society women
which make up his
world fall apart (32).(Eliot, T. S., Christopher Ricks, and
Charles Boyle. Inventions of the March
In the case of Eliot, it is the world
of Bostonian society, which boxed
and enclosed a daily ritual of
social niceties: In the room the
women come and go/ Taking of
Michelangelo (13-14). It is alsothe world his parents cultivated, of
Puritan standards where the
pleasures of the sex were
considered debased.
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