| The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock | |
|---|---|
| byT. S. Eliot | |
 Cover page ofThe Egoist Ltd's publication ofPrufrock and Other Observations (1917) | |
| Original title | Prufrock Among the Women |
| First published in | June 1915 issue ofPoetry[2] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | magazine (1915):Harriet Monroe chapbook (1917): The Egoist Ltd (London)[1] |
| Lines | 140 |
| Pages | 6 (1915 printing)[2] 8 (1917 printing)[1] |
| Full text | |
 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock atWikisource | |
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is the first professionally published poem by the American-born British poetT. S. Eliot (1888–1965). It relates the varying thoughts of its title character in astream of consciousness. Eliot began writing it in February 1910, and it was first published in the June 1915 issue ofPoetry: A Magazine of Verse[2] at the instigation of his fellow American expatriate the poetEzra Pound. It was later printed as part of a twelve-poemchapbook entitledPrufrock and Other Observations in 1917.[1] At the time of its publication, the poem was considered outlandish,[3] but it is now seen as heralding a paradigmatic shift in poetry from late-19th-centuryRomanticism andGeorgian lyrics toModernism.
Its structure was heavily influenced by Eliot's extensive reading ofDante Alighieri[4] and makes several references to theBible and other literary works—includingWilliam Shakespeare's playsHenry IV Part II,Twelfth Night andHamlet; the works ofAndrew Marvell, a 17th-centurymetaphysical poet; and the 19th-centuryFrench Symbolists. Eliot narrates the experience of Prufrock using the stream of consciousness technique developed by his fellow Modernist writers. The poem, described as a "drama of literary anguish", is adramatic interior monologue of an urban man stricken with feelings of isolation and an incapability for decisive action that is said "to epitomize [the] frustration and impotence of the modern individual" and "represent thwarted desires and modern disillusionment".[5]
Prufrock laments his physical and intellectual inertia, the lost opportunities in his life, and lack of spiritual progress, and is haunted by reminders of unattained carnal love. With visceral feelings of weariness, regret, embarrassment, longing,emasculation,sexual frustration, a sense of decay and an awareness of ageing and mortality, the poem has become one of the most recognised works in modern literature.[6]
Eliot wrote "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" between February 1910 and July or August 1911. Shortly after arriving in England to attendMerton College, Oxford, in 1914, Eliot was introduced to the American expatriate poetEzra Pound, who instantaneously deemed Eliot "worth watching" and aided the start of his career. Pound served as the overseas editor ofPoetry: A Magazine of Verse and recommended to the magazine's founder,Harriet Monroe, thatPoetry should publish "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", extolling that Eliot and his work embodied a new and unique phenomenon among contemporary writers. Pound claimed that Eliot "has actually trained himself AND modernized himself on his own. The rest of thepromising young have done one or the other, but never both."[7] The poem was first published by the magazine in its June 1915 issue.[2][8]
In November 1915 "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" — along with Eliot's poems "Portrait of a Lady", "The Boston Evening Transcript", "Hysteria", and "Miss Helen Slingsby" — was included inCatholic Anthology 1914–1915 edited by Ezra Pound and printed byElkin Mathews in London.[9]: 297 In June 1917 The Egoist Ltd, a small publishing firm run byDora Marsden, published a pamphlet entitledPrufrock and Other Observations (London), containing 12 poems by Eliot. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was the first in the volume.[1] Eliot was appointed assistant editor ofThe Egoist periodical in June 1917.[9]: 290
According to Eliot's biographerLyndall Gordon, while he was writing the first drafts of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in his notebook in 1910–1911, he intentionally kept four pages blank in the middle section of the poem.[10] According to the notebooks, now in the collection of theNew York Public Library, Eliot finished the poem, which was originally published sometime in July and August 1911, when he was 22 years old.[11] In 1912 he revised the poem and included a 38-line section now called "Prufrock's Pervigilium" which was inserted on those blank pages, and intended as a middle section for the poem.[10] However, Eliot removed this section soon after seeking the advice of his fellow Harvard acquaintance and poetConrad Aiken.[12] This section would not be included in the original publication of Eliot's poem but was included when published posthumously in the 1996 collection of Eliot's early, unpublished drafts inInventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917.[11] ThisPervigilium section describes the "vigil" of Prufrock through an evening and night[11]: 41, 43–44, 176–90 described by one reviewer as an "erotic foray into the narrow streets of a social and emotional underworld" that portray "in clammy detail Prufrock's tramping 'through certain half-deserted streets' and the context of his 'muttering retreats / Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels.'"[13]
Critical publications initially dismissed the poem. An unsigned review inThe Times Literary Supplement from 1917 found: "The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr. Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone – even to himself. They certainly have no relation to 'poetry,' [...]."[14][15] Another unsigned review from the same year imagined Eliot saying "I'll just put down the first thing that comes into my head, and call it 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.'"[3]
The Harvard Vocarium atHarvard College recorded Eliot's reading ofPrufrock and other poems in 1947, as part of its ongoing series of poetry readings by its authors.[16]
In his early drafts, Eliot gave the poem the subtitle "Prufrock among the Women."[11]: 41 This subtitle was apparently discarded before publication. Eliot called the poem a "love song" in reference toRudyard Kipling's poem "The Love Song of Har Dyal", first published in Kipling's collectionPlain Tales from the Hills (1888).[17] In 1959, Eliot addressed a meeting ofthe Kipling Society and discussed the influence of Kipling upon his own poetry:
Traces of Kipling appear in my own mature verse where no diligent scholarly sleuth has yet observed them, but which I am myself prepared to disclose. I once wrote a poem called "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock": I am convinced that it would never have been called "Love Song" but for a title of Kipling's that stuck obstinately in my head: "The Love Song of Har Dyal".[17]
However, the origin of the name Prufrock is not certain, and Eliot never remarked on its origin other than to claim he was unsure of how he came upon the name. Many scholars and indeed Eliot himself have pointed towards the autobiographical elements in the character of Prufrock, and Eliot at the time of writing the poem was in the habit of rendering his name as "T. Stearns Eliot", very similar in form to that of J. Alfred Prufrock.[18] It is suggested that the name "Prufrock" came from Eliot's youth inSt. Louis in the United States, where the Prufrock-Litton Company, a large furniture store, occupied one city block downtown at 420–422 North Fourth Street.[19][20][21] In a letter in 1950 Eliot said: "I did not have, at the time of writing the poem, and have not yet recovered, any recollection of having acquired this name in any way, but I think that it must be assumed that I did, and that the memory has been obliterated."[22]
The draft version of the poem's epigraph comes from Dante'sPurgatorio (XXVI, 147–148):[11]: 39, 41
'sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor'.
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina.
'be mindful in due time of my pain'.
Then dived he back into that fire which refines them.[23]
He finally decided not to use this, but eventually used the quotation in the closing lines of his 1922 poemThe Waste Land. The quotation that Eliot did choose comes from Dante 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.
Ma perciocchè giammai di questo fondo
Non tornò vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
If I but thought that my response were made
to one perhaps returning to the world,
this tongue of flame would cease to flicker.
But since, up from these depths, no one has yet
returned alive, if what I hear is true,
I answer without fear of being shamed.[24]
In context, theepigraph refers to a meeting betweenDante Alighieri andGuido da Montefeltro, who was condemned to theeighth circle of Hell for providing counsel toPope Boniface VIII, who wished to use Guido's advice for a nefarious undertaking. This encounter follows Dante's meeting withOdysseus, who himself is also condemned to the circle of the Fraudulent. According to Ron Banerjee, the epigraph serves to cast ironic light on Prufrock's intent. Like Guido, Prufrock had never intended his story to be told, and so by quoting Guido, Eliot reveals his view of Prufrock's love song.[25]
Frederick Locke contends that Prufrock himself is suffering from a split personality, and that he embodies both Guido and Dante in theInferno analogy. One is the storyteller; the other the listener who later reveals the story to the world. He posits, alternatively, that the role of Guido in the analogy is indeed filled by Prufrock, but that the role of Dante is filled by the reader ("Let us go then, you and I"). In that, the reader is granted the power to do as he pleases with Prufrock's love song.[26]
Since the poem is concerned primarily with the irregular musings of the narrator, it can be difficult to interpret.Laurence Perrine wrote that "[the poem] presents the apparently random thoughts going through a person's head within a certain time interval, in which the transitional links are psychological rather than logical".[27] This stylistic choice makes it difficult to determine what in the poem is literal and what is symbolic. On the surface, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" relays the thoughts of a sexually frustrated middle-aged man who wants to say something but is afraid to do so, and ultimately does not.[27][28] The dispute, however, lies in to whom Prufrock is speaking, whether he is actuallygoing anywhere, what he wants to say, and to what the various images refer.
The intended audience is not evident. Some believe that Prufrock is talking to another person[29] or directly to the reader,[30] while others believe Prufrock's monologue is internal. Perrine writes "The 'you and I' of the first line are divided parts of Prufrock's own nature",[27] while the poetry criticMutlu Konuk Blasing suggested that the "you and I" refers to the relationship between the dilemmas of the character and the author.[31] Similarly, critics dispute whether Prufrock is going somewhere during the course of the poem. In the first half of the poem, Prufrock uses various outdoor images and talks about how there will be time for various things before "the taking of a toast and tea", and "time to turn back and descend the stair." This has led many to believe that Prufrock is on his way to anafternoon tea, where he is preparing to ask this "overwhelming question".[27] Others, however, believe that Prufrock is not physically going anywhere, but instead is imagining it in his mind.[30][31]
Perhaps the most significant dispute lies over the "overwhelming question" that Prufrock is trying to ask. Many believe that Prufrock is trying to tell a woman of his romantic interest in her,[27] pointing to the various images of women's arms and clothing and the final few lines in which Prufrock laments thatmermaids will not sing to him. Others, however, believe that Prufrock is trying to express some deeper philosophical insight or disillusionment with society, but fears rejection, pointing to statements that express a disillusionment with society, such as "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" (line 51). Many believe that the poem is a criticism ofEdwardian society and Prufrock's dilemma represents the inability to live a meaningful existence in the modern world.[32] McCoy and Harlan wrote, "For many readers in the 1920s, Prufrock seemed to epitomize the frustration and impotence of the modern individual. He seemed to represent thwarted desires and modern disillusionment."[30]
In general, Eliot uses imagery of ageing and decay to represent Prufrock's self-image.[27] For example, "When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table" (lines 2–3), the "sawdust restaurants" and "cheap hotels", the yellow fog, and the afternoon "Asleep...tired... or it malingers" (line 77), are reminiscent of languor and decay, while Prufrock's various concerns about his hair and teeth, as well as the mermaids "Combing the white hair of the waves blown back / When the wind blows the water white and black," show his concern over ageing.
Like many of Eliot's poems, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" makes numerous allusions to other works, which are oftensymbolic themselves.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
Prufrock public domain audiobook atLibriVox (Whole book & multiple versions of the one poem)| Early poems |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Later poems | ||
| Plays | ||
| Prose | ||
| Adaptations | ||
| Publishing | ||
| Related | ||
| People | ||
