On "The Love Song of J. Arthur Prufrock"

The point of my comments is not to show that "Prufrock" is a bad poem. In fact, "Prufrock" is a very good poem which I like very much. But the interesting thing is that Eliot has managed to create this wonderful poem by breaking all sorts of rules of good writing. I think it's an intriguing challenge to figure out how he gets away with this.
 

From: Lee Lady
To: Une Amie en France
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000
 
>Concerning T.S. Eliot, he's always been my favourite
>poet, even if I don't understand the Waste land, I
>started to like it when listening to some actor
>reading it on a tape and after my teacher explained
>what modernist things are about. The Waste Land is
>usually studied for the master degree (in Lyon 2, univ.).

The thing to understand about the Waste Land, as with so much other modernist poetry, is that there's really nothing to understand. One just accepts it for what it is and appreciates all the really good lines.

But for that matter, the same applies even to Eliot's first long poem, the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. One of the most popular poems of the Twentieth Century, and certainly one of my own favorites. And yet if one really looks at it closely, all it is is a collection of good lines that don't really fit together. (It was a book by Hugh Kenner that made me realize this.)

Notice also that it's not free verse but classic iambic.

Let us go then, you and I,

[ Okay, so far so good. ]

When the evening is spread out against the sky

[ Hm.... Well, this doesn't actually make sense, but I know exactly what he's talking about; the sky has that dark gray quality just after the sun has gone down and we look at it and know that evening is beginning. ]

Like a patient etherised upon a table;

[ ????     What a bizarre simile! What the hell does it mean to say that the sky is like a patient in a hospital? And "etherised" is such an odd word to use; usually one would say "anesthetized." In fact, I don't care whether it's in the dictionary or not: "etherised" is not a legitimate word. ]

Let us go through certain half deserted streets,

[ Okay. ]

The muttering retreats

[ What the hell does this mean? One has to really make an effort here. One can only assume that "retreat" doesn't mean "the process of retreating" (as in a battle) as the dictionary would say, but rather "retreat" means "the place one retreats to."

[ But "muttering"? The retreat is muttering? Or is the street muttering?

[ Well, let's finish the sentence: give it a fair chance. ]

The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells;

[ Oh I do like this very much, but this sentence is not making very much sense. "Sawdust restaurants" I understand; the sawdust is on floor. I've encoutered this in bars, although I'm not sure the Health Department would approve in a restaurant. Are the oyster shells also on the floor? That's where I see them, anyway. I like the idea, but not very practical to walk on.

[ But what is the sentence saying? "The streets are the retreats of stays in hotels and of restaurants." So is it saying that these streets are where one retreats after spending a night in one of these hotels and going to the restaurant? Or are these streets good places to retreat to because there are lots of cheap hotels and restaurants to be found on them??? The image is charming, but what the hell is he actually saying?

[ Let's try to figure this out: "Now that it's evening, let us go through certain half-deserted streets where one finds lots of cheap hotels and restaurants." Maybe. "Go" then, in this case, apparently means "wander." There doesn't seem to be any place we're actually going to; we're just going to wander through the streets.

[ This might be what it means, but when one looks at it literally, it's not actually very good English. My English teachers in school would have put big red marks all over it.

[ But we're not done. ]

Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent

[ Okay, I think I get the point of the first line. These little streets are full of turnings and dead ends, and one tries to get somewhere but the turnings and dead ends force one to keep changing direction, until one starts getting more and more lost.

[ "Of insidious intent." So this is an argument which is long and tedious, but also the person you're arguing with is somehow using the argument in order to harm you. Now how does this simile apply to the streets? One gets more and more lost, and going through these streets is very tedious because one has to keep on going and going and doesn't seem to get anywhere, and one starts to suspect that maybe the streets have been intentionally designed to cause one to get lost or to force one to arrive at some evil place.

[ Hm.... I can sort of see this.

[ But I didn't finish the sentence. It might make sense when I have the whole sentence. ]

Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question....

[ This is almost always bad writing, but what's interesting is that Eliot has managed to get away with it, and one doesn't even notice how badly the sentence is constructed until one looks closely. (Which means, I guess, that an an ultimate level the sentence is not badly constructed at all.)

[ So anyway I need to understand what Eliot is saying on two levels. What is this saying about the argument ("of insidious intent"), and how does this apply to the streets?

[ So this person is arguing with me, and keeps going on and on, and it's very tiresome, but secretly their real purpose is to make me aware of some overwhelming question.

[ This is sort of an odd experience. I don't really expect an argument which is extremely tedious to wind up by raising some big important question. Rather strange, but I can see how arguing with a philosopher might be something like this. The argument could be tedious, because I don't really even care about all this stuff he keeps talking about, but then finally, in the end, he reaches the conclusion he's been trying to get to, but it turns out that the conclusion is only a big question.

[ Socrates was a lot like this. Kept you arguing on and on. If I walked into a bar and saw Socrates sitting there, I'd make a it a point not to sit near him. But Socrates's arguments were never designed to make you have questions. He always had the answer, and he was trying to convince you that his answer was the only right one.

[ Very frustrating and very annoying, in any case. I would prefer not to get into any more conversations with this philosopher person.

[ But then what is this saying about the streets? They keep forcing me to go now in this direction, now in that one, never in the direction I want to go in, and in the end they wind up leading me to some place that's a complete mystery; I have no idea where I am or what sort of place this is I have got to. ]

Oh, do not ask "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

[ Our visit???? You mean we're actually going somewhere, to visit someone? It certainly didn't sound like that. It sounded like you were asking me to just go on a walk where we would get lost in some very frustrating streets.

[ You're suggesting to me that we go visit someone, but you don't tell me anything about where we're going or who we're visiting. You just tell me that it's going to be a very tedious and frustrating walk.

[ Why don't you go make the visit and I think I'll just get something to eat at one of those restaurants? They sound rather nice. I think they must have cheap spaghetti and a good vin rouge ordinaire. Oh, no! They have seafood. Of course! That's why the oyster shells are on the floor. Even better! A good cheap seafood restaurant. Yes, you go make your visit and I'll stay and have some oysters. ]

[ And now a two-line stanza. ]

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

[ Wonderful rhyme! That's always been one of the great things about T.S. Eliot: his marvelously surprising rhymes. (Did you notice all the rhymes in the preceding part?)

[ But what's actually happening in the poem at this point? Well, I guess we managed to find our way through all those frustrating streets, and we got to some sort of cocktail party. Very upper class, apparently, with women talking about art.   "The women come and go..." Apparently they keep wandering off to other rooms, or maybe it's a very big room and they keep wandering around it. Very discontented these women (or very frivolously superficial), never willing to stay in one place and talk to the same person very long.

[ Okay, this sounds like an interesting party. I'd like to hear more about these women.

[ But now a new stanza starts. ]

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered on 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,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house and fell asleep.

[ Oh, this is so beautiful!

[ But what exactly is happening in the poem now? I'm in the room with these pretentious women who keep moving from one conversation to another (and I'm sure they're all very elegantly dressed!) and when I look at the windows, I notice that there's yellow fog and yellow smoke against the windowpanes. Ah yes, I know all about this: the famous London fog and smog. "Thick as pea soup," undoubtedly.

[ I know what he's talking about. One can actually see the fog drifting here and there along the streets. But do I see all this while I'm looking out the window from this cocktail party? No, the fog's too thick for me to see all this out the window. Somehow I am now outside the house. I have a suspicion that I, the reader, am never going to hear any more about those elegantly dressed cultured women at the party.

[ I do love this bit about the fog, though! However I do not exactly understand how it is that the fog can make a sudden leap. This sounds like very un-fog-like behavior. "Curled around the house and went to sleep," though, that I understand. Probably that would happen around noon the next day, though. The fog has mostly all burned off, there's just a little left along the ground. I don't think that's what usually happens but I'm willing to believe it.

[ I'll bet those elegantly dressed women have now also gone to sleep by now. That took a long time, watching the fog go through all those stages.

[ But there will be time, the poem now assures us. Time "to murder and create," in fact. "To create" presumably by having sex and creating children. Why not "create" by writing poetry? Well, yes, that too, but the parallel between "murder" and "create" suggests that it's people one is creating.

[ And then after that stanza, one suddenly gets back to those elegantly dressed women that I thought we'd lost track of for good. ]

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

[ But then the poem wanders off to talk about time again, and the women are lost forever.

[ In fact, the narrator, who started off by inviting me to go somewhere with him, now turns into someone totally self-obsessed who only wants to talk about how meaningless his life is and how dreadful it is to be getting old.

[ But is this narrator already old? Or is it possible that he's a young man who's thinking about the fact that he will eventually get old? The poem never really tells us.

[ Oh better that we should just enjoy the beauty of this poem and not try to make any sense of it. ]
 

Oh do not ask "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

Love & kisses,
-- Lee

I'll send you another poem by Tom Waits (Who Are You This Time?). You'd never know it by the way he sings it, but by reading it aloud without music, I've realized that it's actually a Bob Dylan pastiche.

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The object in writing poetry is to make all poems as different as possible from each other, and the resources for that of vowels, consonants, punctuation, syntax, words, sentences, and meter are not enough. We need the help of meaning: subject matter. That is the greatest help towards variety.      --- Robert Frost