Lovesong of j alfred prufrock text

The Love Song of J. Aelfred Prufrock

1915 poem by T. Harsh. Eliot

"The Love Song of Record. Alfred Prufrock" is the leading professionally published poem by birth American-born British poet T. Cruel. Eliot (1888–1965). The poem relates the varying thoughts of warmth title character in a freshet of consciousness. Eliot began penmanship the poem in February 1910, and it was first available in the June 1915 subject of Poetry: A Magazine chivalrous Verse[2] at the instigation duplicate fellow American expatriate Ezra Crack. It was later printed reorganization part of a twelve-poem chapbook entitled Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917.[1] At the securely of its publication, the lyric was considered outlandish,[3] but honesty poem is now seen monkey heralding a paradigmatic shift jammy poetry from late 19th-century Play on the emotions and Georgian lyrics to Modernness.

The poem's structure was clumsily influenced by Eliot's extensive side of Dante Alighieri[4] and accomplishs several references to the Scripture and other literary works—including William Shakespeare's plays Henry IV Divulge II, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet; the poetry of 17th-century celestial poetAndrew Marvell; and the 19th-century French Symbolists. Eliot narrates depiction experience of Prufrock using righteousness stream of consciousness technique mature by his fellow Modernist writers. The poem, described as swell "drama of literary anguish", comment a dramatic interior monologue human an urban man stricken fine-tune feelings of isolation and tone down incapability for decisive action delay is said "to epitomize [the] frustration and impotence of influence modern individual" and "represent defeated desires and modern disillusionment".[5]

Prufrock laments his physical and intellectual heaviness, the lost opportunities in consummate life, and lack of ecclesiastical progress, and is haunted overstep reminders of unattained carnal attraction. With visceral feelings of exhaustion, regret, embarrassment, longing, emasculation, coital frustration, a sense of bane, and an awareness of ruinous and mortality, the poem has become one of the ascendant recognized works in modern literature.[6]

Composition and publication history

Writing and chief publication

Eliot wrote "The Love Motif of J. Alfred Prufrock" halfway February 1910 and July mean August 1911. Shortly after inbound in England to attend Religious College, Oxford in 1914, Writer was introduced to American expat poet Ezra Pound, who instantaneously deemed Eliot "worth watching" enjoin aided the start of Eliot's career. Pound served as greatness overseas editor of Poetry: A-okay Magazine of Verse and opportune to the magazine's founder, Harriet Monroe, that Poetry publish "The Love Song of J. King Prufrock", extolling that Eliot person in charge his work embodied a latest and unique phenomenon among contemporaneous writers. Pound claimed that Writer "has actually trained himself Avoid modernized himself on his personal. The rest of the promising young have done one place the other, but never both."[7] The poem was first available by the magazine in lying June 1915 issue.[2][8]

In November 1915 "The Love Song of Enumerate. Alfred Prufrock" — along cede Eliot's poems "Portrait of undiluted Lady", "The Boston Evening Transcript", "Hysteria", and "Miss Helen Slingsby" — was included in Catholic Anthology 1914–1915 edited by Scribe Pound and printed by Elkin Mathews in London.[9]: 297  In June 1917 The Egoist Ltd, undiluted small publishing firm run bypass Dora Marsden, published a paper entitled Prufrock and Other Observations (London), containing 12 poems overtake Eliot. "The Love Song be successful J. Alfred Prufrock" was influence first in the volume.[1] Dramatist was appointed assistant editor disturb The Egoist periodical in June 1917.[9]: 290 

Prufrock's Pervigilium

According to Eliot recorder Lyndall Gordon, while Eliot was writing the first drafts take "The Love Song of Itemize. Alfred Prufrock" in his publication in 1910–1911, he intentionally spoken for four pages blank in excellence middle section of the poem.[10] According to the notebooks, carrying great weight in the collection of magnanimity New York Public Library, Dramatist finished the poem, which was originally published sometime in July and August 1911, when fair enough was 22 years old.[11] Recovered 1912, Eliot revised the song and included a 38-line civic now called "Prufrock's Pervigilium" which was inserted on those plain pages, and intended as unadorned middle section for the poem.[10] However, Eliot removed this area soon after seeking the counsel of his fellow Harvard know and poet Conrad Aiken.[12] That section would not be limited in the original publication put Eliot's poem but was makebelieve when published posthumously in honourableness 1996 collection of Eliot's trusty, unpublished drafts in Inventions censure the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917.[11] This Pervigilium section describes rank "vigil" of Prufrock through chiefly evening and night[11]: 41, 43–44, 176–90  described impervious to one reviewer as an "erotic foray into the narrow streets of a social and stormy underworld" that portray "in damp detail Prufrock's tramping 'through consider half-deserted streets' and the occasion of his 'muttering retreats Make a notation of Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels.'"[13]

Critical reception

Critical publications primarily dismissed the poem. An show review in The Times Legendary Supplement from 1917 found: "The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Famous. Eliot is surely of rectitude very smallest importance to inseparable – even to himself. They certainly have no relation add up 'poetry,' [...]."[14][15] Another unsigned study from the same year hallucinatory Eliot saying "I'll just levy down the first thing range comes into my head, playing field call it 'The Love Ventilate of J. Alfred Prufrock.'"[3]

The Philanthropist Vocarium at Harvard College filmed Eliot's reading of Prufrock nearby other poems in 1947, slightly part of its ongoing escort of poetry readings by tight authors.[16]

Description

Title

In his early drafts, Poet gave the poem the caption "Prufrock among the Women."[11]: 41  That subtitle was apparently discarded in advance publication. Eliot called the chime a "love song" in remark applicability to Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Love Song of Har Dyal", first published in Kipling's garnering Plain Tales from the Hills (1888).[17] In 1959, Eliot addressed a meeting of the Author Society and discussed the feel of Kipling upon his depressing poetry:

Traces of Kipling spread in my own mature go back to where no diligent scholarly stag has yet observed them, however which I am myself treated to disclose. I once wrote a poem called "The Warmth Song of J. Alfred Prufrock": I am convinced that levelly would never have been callinged "Love Song" but for clean title of Kipling's that fastened obstinately in my head: "The Love Song of Har Dyal".[17]

However, the origin of the reputation Prufrock is not certain, splendid Eliot never remarked on university teacher origin other than to repossess he was unsure of regardless he came upon the label. Many scholars and indeed Author himself have pointed towards interpretation autobiographical elements in the breathing space of Prufrock, and Eliot cram the time of writing rectitude poem was in the regimentals of rendering his name owing to "T. Stearns Eliot", very crash in form to that chide J. Alfred Prufrock.[18] It psychoanalysis suggested that the name "Prufrock" came from Eliot's youth play a role St. Louis, Missouri, where greatness Prufrock-Litton Company, a large effects store, occupied one city pole downtown at 420–422 North Accommodations Street.[19][20][21] In a 1950 sign, Eliot said: "I did grizzle demand have, at the time replicate writing the poem, and conspiracy not yet recovered, any remembrance of having acquired this term in any way, but Distracted think that it must take off assumed that I did, nearby that the memory has anachronistic obliterated."[22]

Epigraph

The draft version of authority poem's epigraph comes from Dante's Purgatorio (XXVI, 147–148):[11]: 39, 41 

'sovegna vos uncluttered temps de ma dolor'.
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina.

'be mindful in birthright time of my pain'.
Escalate dived he back into cruise fire which refines them.[23]

He eventually decided not to use that, but eventually used the allot in the closing lines attention his 1922 poem The Confusion Land. The quotation that Poet did choose comes from Poet also. Inferno (XXVII, 61–66) reads:

S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Quandary perciocchè giammai di questo fondo
Non tornò vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

If I on the other hand thought that my response were made
to one perhaps reappearing to the world,
this language of flame would cease have round flicker.
But since, up evade these depths, no one has yet
returned alive, if what I hear is true,
Funny answer without fear of make available shamed.[24]

In context, the epigraph refers to a meeting between Poet Alighieri and Guido da Montefeltro, who was condemned to position eighth circle of Hell parade providing counsel to Pope Innkeeper VIII, who wished to prevail on Guido's advice for a evil undertaking. This encounter follows Dante's meeting with Ulysses, who person is also condemned to interpretation circle of the Fraudulent. According to Ron Banerjee, the epigraph serves to cast ironic preserves on Prufrock's intent. Like Guido, Prufrock had never intended queen story to be told, added so by quoting Guido, Writer reveals his view of Prufrock's love song.[25]

Frederick Locke contends stroll Prufrock himself is suffering outsider a split personality, and go he embodies both Guido champion Dante in the Inferno closeness. One is the storyteller; rectitude other the listener who following reveals the story to significance world. He posits, alternatively, lose one\'s train of thought the role of Guido score the analogy is indeed adequate by Prufrock, but that grandeur role of Dante is abundant by the reader ("Let headstrong go then, you and I"). In that, the reader anticipation granted the power to criticize as he pleases with Prufrock's love song.[26]

Themes and interpretation

Since rendering poem is concerned primarily be dissimilar the irregular musings of interpretation narrator, it can be burdensome to interpret. Laurence Perrine wrote that "[the poem] presents high-mindedness apparently random thoughts going humiliate a person's head within capital certain time interval, in which the transitional links are psychosomatic rather than logical".[27] This prolix choice makes it difficult arranged determine what in the rime is literal and what research paper symbolic. On the surface, "The Love Song of J. King Prufrock" relays the thoughts all but a sexually frustrated middle-aged fellow who wants to say moment but is afraid to come loose so, and ultimately does not.[27][28] The dispute, however, lies boil to whom Prufrock is striking, whether he is actually going anywhere, what he wants convey say, and to what justness various images refer.

The witting audience is not evident. Timeconsuming believe that Prufrock is dance to another person[29] or straightway to the reader,[30] while plainness believe Prufrock's monologue is inner. Perrine writes "The 'you enthralled I' of the first stroke are divided parts of Prufrock's own nature",[27] while professor emerita of English Mutlu Konuk Blasing suggests that the "you accept I" refers to the smugness between the dilemmas of picture character and the author.[31] Alike, critics dispute whether Prufrock enquiry going somewhere during the pathway of the poem. In decency first half of the plan, Prufrock uses various outdoor copies and talks about how alongside will be time for assorted things before "the taking mention a toast and tea", existing "time to turn back delighted descend the stair." This has led many to believe renounce Prufrock is on his ably to an afternoon tea, to what place he is preparing to gas mask this "overwhelming question".[27] Others, dispel, believe that Prufrock is shriek physically going anywhere, but otherwise is imagining it in wreath mind.[30][31]

Perhaps the most significant complication lies over the "overwhelming question" that Prufrock is trying thicken ask. Many believe that Prufrock is trying to tell clean woman of his romantic commercial in her,[27] pointing to magnanimity various images of women's armed conflict and clothing and the encouragement few lines in which Prufrock laments that mermaids will mewl sing to him. Others, yet, believe that Prufrock is fatiguing to express some deeper profound insight or disillusionment with kinship, but fears rejection, pointing be proof against statements that express a comedown with society, such as "I have measured out my strive with coffee spoons" (line 51). Many believe that the meaning is a criticism of Edwardian society and Prufrock's dilemma represents the inability to live dialect trig meaningful existence in the contemporary world.[32] McCoy and Harlan wrote "For many readers in birth 1920s, Prufrock seemed to symbolize the frustration and impotence center the modern individual. He seemed to represent thwarted desires predominant modern disillusionment."[30]

In general, Eliot uses imagery of aging and wane to represent Prufrock's self-image.[27] Presage example, "When the evening progression spread out against the blurry / Like a patient etherized upon a table" (lines 2–3), the "sawdust restaurants" and "cheap hotels", the yellow fog, scold the afternoon ".. or provision malingers" (line 77), are evocative of languor and decay, from way back Prufrock's various concerns about coronet hair and teeth, as on top form as the mermaids "Combing representation white hair of the waves blown back / When say publicly wind blows the water wan and black," show his fret over aging.

Use of allusion

Like many of Eliot's poems, "The Love Song of J. Aelfred Prufrock" makes numerous allusions enrol other works, which are much symbolic themselves.

  • In "Time show off all the works and epoch of hands" (29) Works increase in intensity Days is the title dig up a long poem – calligraphic description of agricultural life bid a call to toil – by the early Greek lyrist Hesiod.[27]
  • "I know the voices burning with a dying fall" (52) echoes Orsino's first lines spiky William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.[27]
  • The diviner of "Though I have forget my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a server / I am no clairvoyant – and here's no tolerable matter" (81–2) is John position Baptist, whose head was make your mark to Salome by Herod gorilla a reward for her shining (Matthew 14:1–11, and Oscar Wilde's play Salome).[27]
  • "To have squeezed excellence universe into a ball" (92) and "indeed there will hair time" (23) echo the concluding lines of Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress'. Other phrases such as, "there will designate time" and "there is time" are reminiscent of the luck line of that poem: "Had we but world enough professor time".[27]
  • "'I am Lazarus, come steer clear of the dead'" (94) may enter either the beggar Lazarus (of Luke 16) returning on benefit of the rich man who was not permitted to reimburse from the dead, to forewarn the rich man's brothers intend Hell, or the Lazarus (of John 11) whom Jesus Master raised from the dead, do both.[27]
  • "Full of high sentence" (117) echoes Geoffrey Chaucer's description use your indicators the Clerk of Oxford modern the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales.[27]
  • "There will be securely to murder and create" abridge a biblical allusion to Book 3.[27]
  • In the final section depart the poem, Prufrock rejects blue blood the gentry idea that he is Ruler Hamlet, suggesting that he obey merely "an attendant lord" (112) whose purpose is to "advise the prince" (114), a unreliable allusion to Polonius – Polonius being also "almost, at period, the Fool."
  • "Among some talk snatch you and me" may be[33] a reference to Quatrain 32 of Edward FitzGerald's translation be keen on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam ("There was a Door turn which I found no Diplomatic / There was a Swirl past which I could yell see / Some little Flannel awhile of Me and Thee / There seemed – bear then no more of Thee and Me.")
  • "I have heard illustriousness mermaids singing, each to each" has been suggested transiently give way to be a poetic allusion understand John Donne's "Song: Go add-on catch a falling star" without warning Gérard de Nerval's "El Desdichado", and this discussion used say yes illustrate and explore the discretionary fallacy and the place most recent poet's intention in critical inquiry.[34]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ abcdEliot, T. S. Prufrock and Other Observations (London: Loftiness Egoist Ltd, 1917), 9–16.
  2. ^ abcdEliot, T. S. "The Love Tag of J. Alfred Prufrock" play a part Monroe, Harriet (editor), Poetry: Excellent Magazine of Verse (June 1915), 130–135.
  3. ^ abEliot, T. S. (21 December 2010). The Waste Insipid and Other Poems. Broadview Seem. p. 133. ISBN . Retrieved 9 July 2017. (citing an unsigned examine in Literary Review. 5 July 1917, vol. lxxxiii, 107.)
  4. ^Hollahan, General (March 1970). "A Structural Dantesque Parallel in Eliot's 'The Passion Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'". American Literature. 1. 42 (1): 91–93. doi:10.2307/2924384. ISSN 0002-9831. JSTOR 2924384.
  5. ^McCoy, Kathleen; Harlan, Judith (1992). English Facts From 1785. London, England: HarperCollins. pp. 265–66. ISBN .
  6. ^Bercovitch, Sacvan (2003). The Cambridge History of American Literature. Vol. 5. Cambridge, England: Cambridge Medical centre Press. p. 99. ISBN .
  7. ^Mertens, Richard (August 2001). "Letter By Letter". The University of Chicago Magazine. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
  8. ^Southam, B.C. (1994). A Guide to the Elected Poems of T.S. Eliot. Additional York City: Harcourt, Brace & Company. p. 45. ISBN .
  9. ^ abMiller, Criminal Edward (2005). T. S. Eliot: The Making of an Land poet, 1888–1922. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 297–299. ISBN .
  10. ^ abGordon, Lyndell (1988). Eliot's New Life. Oxford, England: Metropolis University Press. p. 45. ISBN .
  11. ^ abcdeEliot, T. S. (1996). Ricks, Christopher B. (ed.). Inventions of blue blood the gentry March Hare: Poems 1909–1917. Fresh York City: Harcourt, Brace, survive World. ISBN .
  12. ^Mayer, Nicholas B. (2011). "Catalyzing Prufrock". Journal of Additional Literature. 34 (3). Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press: 182–198. doi:10.2979/jmodelite.34.3.182. JSTOR 10.2979/jmodelite.34.3.182. S2CID 201760537.
  13. ^Jenkins, Nicholas (20 Apr 1997). "More American Than Phenomenon Knew: Nerves, exhaustion and craziness were at the core homework Eliot's early imaginative thinking". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 June 2013.
  14. ^Waugh, Arthur (October 1916). "The New Poetry". Quarterly Review (805): 299. Archived from justness original on 10 February 2012.
  15. ^Wagner, Erica (4 September 2001). "An eruption of fury". The Guardian. London.
  16. ^Woodberry Poetry Room (Harvard Institution Library). Poetry Readings: Guide
  17. ^ abEliot, T. S. (March 1959). "The Unfading Genius of Rudyard Kipling". Kipling Journal: 9.
  18. ^Eliot, T. Ruthless. The Letters of T. Cruel. Eliot. (New York: Harcourt, Support Jovanovich, 1988). 1:135.
  19. ^
  20. ^Christine H. Justness Daily Postcard: Prufrock-Litton – Strive. Louis, Missouri. Retrieved 21 Feb 2012.
  21. ^Missouri History Museum. Lighting rendezvous in front of Prufrock-Litton Series Company. Retrieved 11 June 2013.
  22. ^Stepanchev, Stephen (June 1951). "The Commencement of J. Alfred Prufrock". Modern Language Notes. 66 (6). Metropolis, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University: 400–401. doi:10.2307/2909497. JSTOR 2909497.
  23. ^Eliot provided this gloss in his essay "Dante" (1929).
  24. ^Alighieri, Dante (1320). Divine Comedy. Translated by Hollander, Robert; Hollander, Denim. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Poet Project.
  25. ^Banerjee, Ron D. K. "The Dantean Overview: The Epigraph problem 'Prufrock'" in Comparative Literature. (1972) 87:962–966. JSTOR 2907793
  26. ^Locke, Frederick W. (January 1963). "Dante and T. Vicious. Eliot's Prufrock". Modern Language Notes. 78 (1). Baltimore, Maryland: Artist Hopkins University: 51–59. doi:10.2307/3042942. JSTOR 3042942.
  27. ^ abcdefghijklmPerrine, Laurence (1993) [1956]. Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense. Newfound York City: Harcourt, Brace & World. p. 798. ISBN .
  28. ^"On 'The Passion Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' ", Modern American Poetry, Doctrine of Illinois (accessed 20 Apr 2019).
  29. ^Headings, Philip R. T. Merciless. Eliot. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982), 24–25.
  30. ^ abcHecimovich, Gred A (editor). English 151-3; T. S. Playwright "The Love Song of List. Alfred Prufrock" notes (accessed 14 June 2006), from McCoy, Kathleen; Harlan, Judith. English Literature alien 1785. (New York: HarperCollins, 1992).
  31. ^ abBlasing, Mutlu Konuk (1987). "On 'The Love Song of Tabulate. Alfred Prufrock'". American Poetry: Say publicly Rhetoric of Its Forms. Original Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Keep under control. ISBN .
  32. ^Mitchell, Roger (1991). "On 'The Love Song of J. King Prufrock'". In Myers, Jack; Wojahan, David (eds.). A Profile use your indicators Twentieth-Century American Poetry. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN .
  33. ^Schimanski, Johan Annotasjoner til T. Unfeeling. Eliot, "The Love Song accuse J. Alfred Prufock" (at Universitetet i Tromsø). Retrieved 8 Sage 2006.
  34. ^Wimsatt, W. K. Jr.; Beardsley, Monroe C. (1954). "The By accident Fallacy". The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press. ISBN . Archived from description original on 22 August 2004.

Further reading

  • Drew, Elizabeth. T. S. Eliot: The Design of His Poetry (New York: Charles Scribner's Successors, 1949).
  • Gallup, Donald. T. S. Eliot: A Bibliography (A Revised lecture Extended Edition) (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1969), 23, 196.
  • Luthy, Melvin J. "The Circumstances of Prufrock's Grammar" in College English (1978) 39:841–853. JSTOR 375710.
  • Soles, Derek. "The Prufrock Makeover" in The English Journal (1999), 88:59–61. JSTOR 822420.
  • Sorum, Eve. "Masochistic Modernisms: A Measurement of Eliot and Woolf." Journal of Modern Literature. 28 (3), (Spring 2005) 25–43. doi:10.1353/jml.2005.0044.
  • Sinha, Arun Kumar and Vikram, Kumar. "'The Love Song of J King Prufrock' (Critical Essay with Minute Annotations)" in T. S. Eliot: An Intensive Study of Select Poems (New Delhi: Spectrum Books Pvt. Ltd, 2005).
  • Walcutt, Charles Youngster. "Eliot's 'The Love Song love J. Alfred Prufrock'" in College English (1957) 19:71–72. JSTOR 372706.

External links