Famous Quotes

Literary and sound devices

"The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock", by T.S. Eliot, is a poem that employs many literary and sound devices. Among these are similes, personification, repetion, allusion, and imagery. These devices contribute to the tone of the poem, doleful, and the theme of indecision leading to missed opportunities.

Simile: "the evening... spread out against the sky like a patient etherised upon a table", it describes the somber outdoor setting that contrasts to the party setting going on later in the poem.

Personification: "yellow fog that rugs its back upon the window panes". This is also a descriptive tool that aids in setting the melancholy mood and tone of the poem.
Allusion: "I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet", he is alluding to John the Baptist. Other allusions "I am an attendant lord" also reveal Prufrock's character, ultimately characterizing him as a sad and lonely man, tying him into the tone.

Imagery:  "should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas", he is indicating that he wishes he hadn't been born. Prufrock also does not feel comfortable revealing his feelings- he views it as a lantern throwing "nerves in patterns on a screen". So this literary device also reveals the inner feelings of Prufrock.

Repetition: "In the room the women come and go talking of Michaelangelo" continually brings the reader back to the setting that the speaker finds himself in. In addition, Prufrock continually think over and tell us the idea of revealing a woman at the party his true feelings, but he cannot.

Style & Form

"Prufrock" displays the two most important characteristics of Eliot’s early poetry. First, it is strongly influenced by the French Symbolists, like Rimbaud and Baudelaire, whom Eliot had been reading almost constantly while writing the poem. From the Symbolists, Eliot takes his sensuous language and eye for anti-aesthetic detail that contributes to the total beauty of the poem (the yellow smoke and the hair-covered arms of the women are two good examples of this). The Symbolists, too, privileged the same kind of individual Eliot creates with Prufrock: the moody, urban, isolated-yet-sensitive thinker. However, whereas the Symbolists would have been more likely to make their speaker himself a poet or artist, Eliot chooses to make Prufrock an unacknowledged poet, a sort of artist for the common man.

"Prufrock" is a variation on the dramatic monologue, a type of poem popular with Eliot’s predecessors. Dramatic monologues are similar to soliloquies in plays. Three things characterize the dramatic monologue. First, they’re the words of a specific individual (not the poet) at a specific moment in time; then the monologue is specifically directed at listeners whose presence is not referenced but is just suggested in the speaker’s words, and the primary focus is the development and revelation of the speaker’s character. Eliot modernizes the form by removing the implied listeners and focusing on Prufrock’s interiority and isolation.

The rhyme scheme of this poem is irregular but not random. While sections of the poem may resemble free verse, in reality, “Prufrock” is a carefully structured amalgamation of poetic forms. One of the most prominent formal characteristics of this work is the use of refrains. Prufrock’s continual return to the “women (who) come and go / Talking of Michelangelo” and his recurrent questionings (“how should I presume?”) and pessimistic ideas (“That is not it, at all.”) help Eliot describe the consciousness of a modern, neurotic individual. Another important formal feature is the use of fragments of sonnet form, particularly at the poem’s conclusion, in fact the three three-line stanzas are rhymed as the conclusion of a Petrarchan sonnet would be.

Epigraph

 

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

 

 

 



The epigraph of this poem is a six-line quotation from Canto 27 of the "Inferno" by the Renaissance Italian poet Dante Alighieri. Eliot doesn’t translate it out of the Italian, which shows that he was totally obsessed with Dante. Little references to this author pop up everywhere in Eliot’s poems, but this one is more obvious, because it’s a direct quotation.

The quote from this epigraph is said by one of the characters in the eighth circle of Hell in Dante's poem, where some of the worst people are stuck for eternity. This man’s name is Guido da Montefeltro, and when Dante asks to hear his story, here’s what he says:
"If I thought that my reply would be to someone who would ever return to earth, this flame would remain without further movement; but as no one has ever returned alive from this gulf, if what I hear is true, I can answer you with no fear of infamy."
Dante is really curious to know why Guido ended up so far down in Hell, but Guido is selfish and he’s afraid that people back on earth will find out about his sins and he’s concerned about his reputation. On the other hand, Guido explains that he is speaking freely to Dante only because he believes Dante is one of the dead who could never return to earth to report what he says.

In conclusion, the epigraph to this poem describes Prufrock’s ideal listener: one who is as lost as the speaker and will never reveal to the world the content of Prufrock’s present confessions.



Analysis of the poem

Summary

The poem is an examination of the tortured psyche of the prototypical modern man, who is overeducated, eloquent, neurotic, and emotionally showy.

Prufrock, the poem’s speaker, is a presumably middle-aged, intellectual, indecisive man, who invites the reader along with him through the modern city. He describes the street scene and notes a social gathering of women discussing Renaissance artist Michelangelo. He seems to be addressing a potential lover, with whom he would like to “force the moment to its crisis” by somehow consummating their relationship. But Prufrock knows too much of life to “dare” an approach to the woman: in his mind he hears the comments that others make about his inadequacies, and he blames himself for thinking that emotional interaction could be possible at all.

 The poem moves from a series of fairly concrete physical settings—a cityscape (“patient etherised upon a table”) and several interiors (women’s arms in the lamplight, coffee spoons, fireplaces), to a series of vague ocean images conveying Prufrock’s emotional distance from the world as he comes to recognize his mediocre status (“I am not Prince Hamlet’). “Prufrock” is powerful for its range of intellectual reference and also for the vividness of character achieved.

Themes

• Love - It’s hard to tell whether Prufrock is really in love with the person he is talking to. He speaks about himself a lot, and he ignores her for most of the poem. Maybe he’s too shy to speak his mind, but there are a couple of points where he almost overcomes his fear of rejection, especially when he is standing on top of the stairs and wondering, "Do I dare?" (line 38). However, he's so taken up with pleasures like coffee and peaches that it’s hard to believe that the feeling he has is really "love."
• Passivity - Prufrock never does anything. In this poem, no one does. Actions are discussed as either future possibilities or as thing already done and past.The only thing he's good at seems to be eating and wearing nice clothes.
• Time - In relation to time, this poem bounces back and forth between the past and the future, almost never settling on the present. One moment Prufrock is talking about all the things he’s going to do before having tea; the next moment he has had tea and still doesn’t have the energy to do anything. But somehow, by the end of the poem, Prufrock’s big chance has passed him by, and he becomes a sad, old man in flannel pants.
 

 

Author's Briography

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 26, 1888 to Henry Ware (a businessman) and Charlotte Stearns Eliot (a poetess). Endowed with and proud of their social connections and respectability, the Eliot family made the most of it. Eliot went to only the very best schools: Smith Academy in St. Louis (grammar school), Milton Academy in Massachusetts (secondary school). By 1906 he was a freshman at Harvard University. He finished his bachelor's degree in only 3 years, graduated in philosophy from 1910-1914, and even studied at the Sorbonne in Paris for a year.

As he had taken up residence in England and liked it so much, he decided not to return to America. Part of this decision had to do with his falling in love with a beautiful English girl named Vivienne Haigh-Wood.  Eliot only returned home for occasional visits, and became a British citizen in 1927 after a period of much soul-searching. However, Eliot said that he should be considered an American rather than an English poet.

In 1915 Eliot married Vivienne, who would later die in 1945 after a long period of increasingly degenerate health (both physical and mental).  Eliot would not remarry until 1957 to Valerie Fletcher.

Being an introspective kind of person, Eliot underwent a profound religious calling.  After much soul-searching and inner turmoil, Eliot was confirmed as a member of the Anglican church in 1927.  This brought him a much more positive attitude towards life that can be seen in his writings after this date.

Eliot died on January 4, 1965.

 

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Here you are the famous poem by T.S. Eliot

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 

 

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

LET us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats 5 Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question…. 10 Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15 The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20 And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window panes; 25 There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30 Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go 35 Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40 (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) Do I dare 45 Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55 The eyes that fix you in a formulated 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? 60 And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress 65 That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin? . . . . . . . . Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70 And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?… I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . . . . . And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75 Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep … tired … or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80 But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85 And in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, 90 To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 95 If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say: “That is not what I meant at all; That is not it, at all.” And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, 100 After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105 Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: “That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.” . . . . . . . . 110 No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, 115 Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old … I grow old … 120 I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. 125 I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130 Till human voices wake us, and we drown.