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‘Prufrock’ in a Nutshell
You love to read literary criticism, don’t you? Of course, you do. It’s why you come to Ricochet. So let me offer you a small diversion this morning by analyzing one of the staples of the British literary canon, T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I think I can do this by focusing our attention on only three lines from the poem.
If you remember, Love Song is a portrait of an upper-middle-class Englishman, perhaps a banker (like T. S. Eliot himself was for a time), a little twit, anxious and afraid of life, who comes to an understanding of what he is during the course of the poem. Here, then, is the first sentence I’d like to consider.
“In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo.”
These simple two lines appear abruptly, seeming to have nothing to do with their previous and succeeding lines. So Eliot forces us to use our imagination if we’re going to make any sense whatsoever of them.
So let’s jump in. First, the lines seem to suggest that the ladies, probably upper-middle-class (Prufrock’s class), are in an art gallery — perhaps a reception of some kind is going on — where their conversation is about Michelangelo.
But Eliot, it seems to me, has bigger game in mind than setting a scene. You see, by juxtaposing these two particular images in the same sentence — the chattering British women with the powerful artist who painted the story of mankind’s salvation on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel — Eliot gently satirizes the small, pretentious lives of the women. (Eliot uses the same kind of ironic juxtaposition in the title of the poem, where he sets off the romantic phrase “Love Song” with the prissy and decidedly unromantic name of “J. Alfred Prufrock.”)
For my second quote, I have chosen Prufrock’s own assessment of himself:
”I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.”
Now that is a dreadful summation of one’s life. There are various ways a person can measure out his life: in the bloody gauze patches a nurse uses to staunch soldiers’ wounds, in the tears a mother sheds as she tends to her brain-damaged child, in the calluses that form on a working man’s hands over the years. But Prufrock measures out his petty life in the spoons of the teas and luncheons he attends. Prufrock is coming to know himself, and it’s not a pretty picture.
Finally, in the last major image of the poem, Prufrock’s ultimate judgment on his life:
”I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each./ I do not think that they will sing to me.”
Mermaids, figures out of the world of myth and imagination, stand in contrast with the small and ordinary drawing rooms and tea rooms of Prufrock’s world. He knows he will never hear the song of the mermaids. After all, Prufrock’s a man who agonizes, as he says himself, over whether he should part his hair in the back, a man who timidly asks, “Do I dare to eat a peach?” Prufrock hasn’t lived a life worthy of the mermaid’s song, so he knows they will never sing to him.
So there, in a three-quote nutshell, is T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I’ve assumed quite a bit and used a little imagination in my analysis — perhaps more than you prefer. But that’s the way we lit-crit roll. We’re the warm fuzzies of the university. We think an algorithm is a tap dance done by the onetime Vice President.
Postscript: My wife Marie actually grimaced in pain as she read this post. She didn’t care for it at all. She still remembers the angst she felt when she was asked, in an English class long ago, to write a paper on the imagery and symbols in D. H. Lawrence’s Odour of Chrysanthemums. So for those of you who suffered like my wife as you worked your way through my post, here’s a little reward, a photo of Bob taking his afternoon nap. It’s a little revealing, but we’re all sophisticated adults here, aren’t we?
I would have studied literature instead of engineering if only my teachers had identified, as you so precisely have, the maximum number of lines of writing I can handle at a time.
Well done.
Or perhaps it is not dreadful if one is content. Bob shows us that (and a lot more in this photo).
So that’s where Prufrock came from!
When I saw the title I thought this was going to be about Micah Mattix’s Prufrock newsletter, which I get in my e-mail as often as he puts them out, which is frequently. I don’t usually linger over what it may have to say about T.S. Eliot, but I’ve found my way to several interesting books and articles through it. I find it a good diversion from the Trump wars or whatever is the current topic of interest at Ricochet.
The Weekly Standard, the magazine once loved by many of our Ricochetti, was the sponsor of this newsletter before it went defunct. I didn’t know that until it went defunct and Mattix was looking for a new sponsor. I’m not sure who sponsors it now.
Kent, if I’d had a teacher like you when I was in school I might have appreciated poems that weren’t about people from Nantucket.
Nice of you to say that, Mr. Antisocial, though with a name like yours, I’m not sure if I would have wanted you as a student. I kid.
”. . . . weren’t about people from Nantucket.” Funny line.
Gossamer, “it” is just as cute as the rest of him, though, isn’t it? I expect an answer from you.
Retic, after my wife Marie had finished proofing my article, she said, “I didn’t know there was an actual poem with Prufrock in it.” So you’re not alone.
I grow old… I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
That’s where we are right now, Kent.
Mark, the rest of Prufrock is murkier than the lines I have chosen. Three lines is plenty.
Doug, I’m so old I don’t bother rolling them any longer. If the bottoms of my pants hang too low, they can go to hell.
Here’s another line that pops up out of nowhere like the Michaelangelo line…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
What do you make of that one? That sounds like a worse assessment of your life than the coffee spoons line.
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No.
Now that I’ve got that out of the way, I’m going to read the rest of your post.
Ok, read it. Nice post, but wot?
How could you possibly have missed the best line of the poem, @kentforrester? Thank goodness there are those here who can take up the slack.
This is because Marie has sense. I added meeting Marie to my bucket list some time ago. A fellow crafter who holds D.H. Lawrence in as much disdain as I do is a gift from God. Has she read Cold Comfort Farm?
(Full disclosure. Other than in his role as “Old Possum,” I don’t really care for Eliot. I think he had much insight, but what he writes doesn’t really do it for me. Probably a defect on my part, but there it is.)
Bob, perhaps Prufrock the introvert would like to be at the bottom of the sea and away from the eyes of men and women — the eyes, Prufrock says, that pin you down as if you were a wriggling insect.
Looking at the frayed bottoms of my pants, alas, I’m with you.
I’ve always been quite taken with the imagry of the opening line:
It says to me, “This looks like fun…”
Dan, I’ve never known quite how to take that first line. The sky or evening is dead? Or numb? Why? I think Ezra Pound, who specialized in obscurity in his Cantos, had a bad influence on Eliot.
I’m disappointed, Mrs. She. I thought you might enjoy a few comments on an important piece of British literature. As you probably know, he grew up in America but finally renounced (dropped? abandoned?) his American citizenship to become a British citizen.
He’s usually too obscure for me, so I don’t particularly care for him either, but there are lines from poems, including some from Prufrock and The Wasteland, that have stuck with me all these years.
I sometimes think that certain obscure poets continue to live because teachers enjoy explicating them for their students. Makes them feel oh so special.
Marie has ordered Cold Comfort Farm as a Kindle book from the Portland Libary.
Duplicate.
You do know that I’m kidding, right? Not about Cold Comfort Farm, though. I hope Marie likes it.
Completely agree. I could usually tell the ones who felt that way about themselves because they were always explicating something they called “litter-a-TOOR.” I never read any of it myself, but you could spot those teachers a mile away.
PS: Agree with you about Ezra Pound. Quite reliable as a meteorologist, but otherwise precious and baffling (IMHO).
You make me blush.
I think that The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock was the first work of poetry that for me, an incredibly naive 16 year old numskull rang true. I knew even then that I would grow old and worry about my trousers rolled. I can’t think of anything I read over 50 years ago that rings as true as that.
“Dare I eat a peach?”
That’s the line that nailed it for me.
I’ve taught this poem for roughly ten years at the college and high school level, and I have to tell you: my interpretation of the poem is entirely different than yours.
I taught it, off and on, for 30 years at the university level. Our “entirely different” interpretations
might say something about the indeterminate nature of Prufrock itself.
Let the games begin!
M. Brandon, your play, sir.
I like these analyses.
So what is yours?
Yes, break it out. I’m intrigued.