prufrock presentation

7/30/2019 Prufrock Presentation

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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.


9/21Sex is Evil

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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