2.9–T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Link to Full Text

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock

Author Bio:

T.S. Eliot, born Thomas Stearns Eliot on September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri, was a renowned American-British poet, essayist, and playwright, celebrated for his profound influence on 20th-century literature.

Eliot was born into a prominent family and grew up in St. Louis. He attended Harvard University, where he studied philosophy and wrote poetry. After graduating in 1909, he continued his education at the Sorbonne in Paris and later completed his studies at Oxford University.

Eliot’s literary career began with his first major work, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” published in 1915. This poem marked the beginning of his modernist approach, characterized by innovative forms and themes exploring modern alienation and existential angst. His subsequent works, such as “The Waste Land” (1922) and “The Hollow Men” (1925), solidified his reputation as a leading figure in modernist literature. “The Waste Land” is often cited as one of the greatest poems of the 20th century, showcasing Eliot’s fragmented narrative style and deep engagement with contemporary disillusionment.

Eliot moved to England in 1914 and became a British citizen in 1927. He continued to write and publish influential works throughout his life, including “Four Quartets” (1943), a set of meditative poems reflecting on time, spirituality, and existence.

Eliot’s contributions to literature were recognized with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. He passed away on January 4, 1965, in London, leaving behind a legacy of groundbreaking literary achievements that reshaped modern poetry and drama. His innovative use of language, structure, and themes continues to influence writers and scholars around the world.

Major Themes (and Things to Pay Attention To …)

So very much can be said about Eliot’s masterful work. Below is a quick rundown of major themes.

Alienation:

Prufrock seems alienated both from himself and the social world around him. Prufrock prepares a face to meet the faces that he meets,” for example, and thus hints that his social display is more about surfaces than depths. Additionally, the seemingly dismissive references to the women who “come and go, talking of Michaelangelo” makes it seem that the speaker feels disconnected from those around him.  Other useful references include the mention that the speaker “does not think they will sing for me,” the haunting question on whether the speaker “dares” to “disturb the universe” and one of the poem’s fundamental images: the “overwhelming question” that is neither named nor answered.

Scholars approach such alienation in a myriad of way: some argue for Eliot’s discomfort with masculiine norms (there is a good deal of discomfort, in this piece, with sexuality); others see the existential “angst” that had become to talk hold, in Europe, as WWI approached, and still others write about broken belief systems after Nietzsche famously wrote about the “death of God.” In sum, alienation is probably one of the overarching themes in this piece. If you choose to pursue it in an essay or discussion posting, one big task will be to focus the alienation: do you see if emanaing from personal sources such as sexuality or is it, instead, a response to shifts in cultural/social/historical dynamics?

Use of Allusions

Eliot’s poem is chock full of allusions.  Eliot references Hamlet. John the Baptist, Lazarus, and the poet John Donne. While entire volumes have been written on Eliot’s use of allusions (here and in the even-more-important poem called The Waste Land), before even considering how the allusions work, it is useful to read what Eliot wrote, in a similar time period, about what he “The Mythical Method” (and which he found in the works of James Joyce):

• “In manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr. Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him. They will not be imitators, any more than the scientist who uses the discoveries of an Einstein in pursuing his own, independent, further investigations. It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving shape and significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history. It is a method already adumbrated by Mr. Yeats, and of the need for which I believe that Mr. Yeats to have been first contemporary to be conscious. Psychology (such as it is, and whether our reaction to it be comic or serious), ethnology, and The Golden Bough have concurred to make possible what was impossible even a few years ago. Instead of narrative method, we may now use the mythic method. It is, I seriously believe, a step toward making the modern world possible for art.”

The take-away of the above–the references to the past as a way to control, order, and give shape to “the immense panorama of futility […] which is contemporary history.” In other words, Eliot sees his work as set in a long line of previous authors; they are his literary ancestors, Eliot seems to indicate, and any references he can make to those predecessors helps his work (remember, written amid the darkening clouds of WWI) and the confusing history he is living through, somehow make sense.

Keeping in mind Eliot’s determination to connect with his literary predecessors, here is a brief summary of Eliot’s allusions in Prufrock (courtesy of Chat GPT)

• Michelangelo: Prufrock references Michelangelo, the Renaissance artist, to contrast his own sense of inadequacy and mediocrity with the grandeur of Michelangelo’s art. This allusion highlights Prufrock’s feelings of inferiority and his self-perception as insignificant.
• John the Baptist: The poem alludes to John the Baptist, particularly through the image of “the women who come and go / Talking of Michelangelo.” John the Baptist’s role as a precursor to Christ and his martyrdom serve as a metaphor for Prufrock’s sense of being unfulfilled and overlooked, despite his own struggles.
• Dante’s Inferno: Prufrock’s existential anxiety is echoed in the poem’s epigraph, which quotes Dante’s “Inferno.” The reference underscores Prufrock’s fear of judgment and his feeling of being trapped in his own personal hell, much like Dante’s characters.
• Hamlet: Prufrock compares himself to Hamlet, but rather than seeing himself as a decisive hero, he identifies more with Hamlet’s hesitancy and indecision. This allusion emphasizes Prufrock’s paralysis and inability to take action, despite his intellectual awareness.
• The Bible: There are several subtle Biblical references, such as the “eyes” and “hair” images, which evoke themes of vision and insight, possibly alluding to the Biblical idea of spiritual blindness or insight.

Fragmented Writing Style

Again, historical context is vital. As Eliot wrote Prufrock, the world was preparing for war, Nietzche had killed God, Darwin had challenged inherited Judeo-Christian stories of creation, and Freud had demonstrated that the human subject was a conglomeration of barely constrained impulses and desires. So, when Eliot began to write in that choppy, fragmented style, he was (arguably) giving shape to the culture in which he lived, Notably, such fragmentation spread to many more works written in the same period: think of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, with their “stream of consciousness” approach to writing–both authors are engaging with the same cultural climate as was Eliot. Significantly, in The Waste Land (which many argue is the single most important poem in all of Western literature), Eliot would find salvation in the fragmentation–“these fragments I have shored against my ruin,” he famously wrote.  So, as you read Eliot’s poem, it is useful to wonder if Eliot breaks apart traditional form in order to find some sort of salvific moment in what remains.

Critical Context:

Clifton, Brian. “Textual Frustration:  The Sonnet and Gender Performance in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.‘” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 42, no. 1, doi: 10.2979/jmodelite.42.1.05.

Article Abstract:

Discussions of Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” have focused on alienation and anxiety or the poem’s formal elements. However, there seems to be a gap in explain[1]ing how these two aspects relate to each other. Throughout the monologue, Prufrock’s attempts to assert his (idea of) masculinity seem to be related to how the poem uses and frustrates the sonnet form. If the sonnet is understood as an inherently masculine form and if its appearance (fully or partially) within the poem points toward an attempt to fulfil the social constraints of masculinity, then the poem will allow gender and structure to enter in dialogue, which suggests that Prufrock’s inability to perform as masculine is related to his inability to both create and manipulate the sonnet structure.

Giles, Jamie. “A Sartrean Analysis of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.'” Existential Analysis, vol 31, no. 2, 2020.

First paragraph:

This paper examines the protagonist in T.S Eliot’s (1915: 3-7) The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock in relation to the existential philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). However, apprehending an arbitrary concept within Sartre’s theorisation and applying it to Prufrock would be impossible without examining Sartre’s broader perspective on the human condition as his theory, similar to Marxism, is a complete analysis. To examine one aspect would be nonsensical without explanation of the others first. There are obvious thematic connections between Eliot’s poem and Sartre’s novels – particularly Nausea (1938) and his plays, for example No Exit (1944) – in particular what Irwin (2009: 184) would call the “subjective, mood-laden impressions of the internal melancholic lives of their protagonists”, as well as their relationships with themselves and others. However, a comparison between Sartre’s fictional output and Eliot’s poetic protagonist is beyond the scope of this paper.