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| Echo and Narcissus Painting by Nicholas Poussin Public Domain |
Appreciating
the many of layers of this long poem can be confusing.
In
his book,
T.S. Eliot: the Poems,
Martin Scofield says that “Prufrock”, "... as well as being
a mask for the poet, is an "observation." Eliot's use of
masks allows him to diversify freely in The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
so that, on the surface, the poem is a combination of fragmented
social observations of his failed attempted relationships with women.
Even Prufrock's name is ironic and is deliberately provocative. "Pru"
stands for "prudish" while "frock" is a female
garment, so that the name sounds a little like the old British insult
for a hopeless man: "a big girl's blouse."
On
a deeper level, the poem is a "theatre of consciousness...
Prufrock's interior monologue." It is this which makes its
fragmentary arrangements logical and the irregular rhyming scheme
appropriate. Contrasts and unexpected changes of style/voice feature
in the poem. the confidential style of the opening stanza, "Let
us go then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out..."
juxtaposes with, "Like a patient etherized upon a table."
The language provides shock value, but is evocative. The simile is
less confusing when considering Eliot's view of the evening as the
still, unconscious time, when noise and bustle of the working day is
over.
Ambiguity
and the Double-Self
Authors
of critical studies offer various interpretations of the identity of
the initial "we" and the subsequent "you and me"
in the poem. As a poetic device, it is clear the first line
deliberately draws the reader in. Martin Scofield suggests: "One's
first sense is that it is the person, presumably a woman, to whom
Prufrock is addressing his love song." Scofield encounters
problems with the more ambiguous "you and me." He says,
"Prufrock is addressing himself in his song, addressing a kind
of alter
ego." He
likens Prufrock's "self-love and self-absorption" to "The
Death of Saint Narcissus."
Robert
Southam, quoting Eliot, says. "I am prepared to assert that the
"you" in "The Love Song" is merely some friend or
companion... and that it has no emotional content whatsoever,"
although later, Eliot contradicts himself by asserting he is
"...employing the notion of the split personality."
Southam's conclusion is that Eliot had borrowed from Bergson's "Time
and Free Will" which develops the idea of the double self, "one
aspect being the everyday self... the other a deeper self."
The
questions posed and the defences dredged up from Prufrock's anxious,
appeasing self are in the common language of dialogue. They seem to
need, yet seem not to expect, an answer. The paradox arises because,
throughout the poem, Prufrock portrays himself as victim, out of his
depth in society. His unease is expressed in lines such as: "...
prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet." He has
succumbed to his destiny, although a part of him continues to cling
to hope.
Verb-Driven
Emotion
Eliot
uses metaphors which are melodramatic, yet at the same time
distressing. "And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin /
When I am pinned and wriggling on a wall." Much of the emotion
in Prufrock's predicament is expressed in the use of verbs:
sprawling, pinned, wriggling. Ultimately, Prufrock is a man bereft of
power, unable to believe in himself as he is, nor to change into his
perception of what others, in his view, might expect.
Eliot
uses dramatic irony. "I should have been a pair of ragged claws
/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas." Again, the
self-derision is intensified in "scuttling," a verb used to
describe the low, crawling progeny of the earth, to which Prufrock,
half-humorously, compares himself.
In
the poem, women appear only as disembodied eyes and arms, for
example: "Arms that lie along a table, or wrap around a shawl,"
Although erotic, this emphasises the absence of an individual whole
woman, revealing Prufrock's inadequate, fragmented personality. The
repetition intensifies the tiredness of a defeated Prufrock, driven
to continue behaviour patterns that, since they are all he has ever
known, represent his only means of communcation with the external
world.
Time
is a recurring feature. Southam says that Eliot is: "...echoing
the words of the preacher in Ecclesiastes iii, 1-7: "To
everything there is a season." Also, he refers to the process of
death and rebirth: "There will be time to murder and create."
He is frustrated with the chaotic, unstable elements of time: "For
decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."
This
is a man for whom time is the enemy. It has made him old and
undesirable. He reflects on his wasted youth: "I have measured
out my life with coffee spoons." When he says: "Though I
have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in on a platter,"
he identifies with John the Baptist.
Eliot,
Hulme and the Inner Life
Southam
quotes Hulme, a philosopher admired by Eliot. Hulme describes the
inner life: "...compared to a continual rolling up... for our
past follows us, it swells... consciousness means memory." Eliot
takes on this concept, asking, "And would it have been worth it,
after all," and five lines later, "To have squeezed the
universe into a ball / To roll it toward some overwhelming question."
Scofield comments: "The mind of Prufrock is unable to cohere
into a single train of thought, unable to squeeze "the universe
into a ball..." Prufrock admits this failing. "Is it a
perfume from a dress / That makes me so digress."
The
most musical lines in the poem, with their stunning assonance, appear
towards the end. "We have lingered in the chambers of the sea /
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown." The final
line is a paradox. "Till human voices wake us and we drown."
This is a tantalisingly ambiguous ending to the poem. Scofield says,
"... the "reality" of the waking state may be less
vital and real than that of the dream." Mermaids, traditionally,
lured heroes from their tasks. If Scofield's suggestion is correct
and that this allusion is intended by Eliot as central to the poem's
meaning - then Scofield's assertion that: "... it is upon the
rack of the eternal feminine that he is broken," applies equally
well to the line.
It
is a fitting conclusion when considering the theme of the poem.
Certainly, from Prufrock's, or Eliot's viewpoint, it absolves him,
finally, from personal responsibility for his fragmented condition.
Note:
Although American by birth, T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) became a British
citizen at 39 years old.
The
Waste Land and Other Poems,
T.S. Eliot, Faber & Faber, 1940 (reset 1972.)
T.S.
Eliot: The Poems, Martin
Scofield,
Cambridge University Press, 1988.
A
Guide to the Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot,
B.C. Southam, Faber & Faber, 1968.
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