T.S. Elliot

T.S Elliot was raised in a very distinguished New England family. He entered into the modern poetry scene with his poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. People link him to Robert Browning who wrote the Last Duchess due to his strange and disturbing imagination. J. Alfred Prufrock is an ironic “love song” which is intended to mirror the European society, which can’t get past custom and habits in order to arrive at anything truly meaningful. Many of his works dealt with issues such as loneliness and isolation, which were issues that Elliot believed resulted from a disconnection from oneself.
In this blog, I am going to attempt to analyze T.S Elliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which begins with an anecdote from Dante’s Inferno in which Dante asks one of the damned souls for its name and it replies, “If I thought my answer were for one who could return to the world, I would not reply, but as none ever did return alive from this depth, without ear of infamy I answer thee”. After reading the poem multiple times, I’m still unsure as to what the connection is between Elliot’s poem and the anecdote. However, the anecdote itself is so harsh; the man that is going to hell and he is still prideful.
This poem seems very strange to me. Firstly, it was written in 1910, which would have made Elliot about 22 at the time. He is constantly talking about old age and possibly about his time to die. First he describes his physical appearance, “With a bald spot in the middle of m hair--” and then “ I have measured out my life in coffee spoons;” (p. 1195), which both give an image of his life being full and complete. I doubt the narrator in this poem is supposed to be symbolic of Elliot himself because he was still young when he wrote this poem, but I do think the aging process must be a metaphor for something.
Secondly, Elliot tends to ramble. He writes through a stream of consciousness and thus it is difficult to tell whether what he says is simply him just rambling or actually symbolic and/or meaningful to the purpose of the poem. For instance, “Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers…” (p. 1197). The two phrases before and after that phrase about the peaches, characterizes an elderly person, but “Do I dare eat a peach” seems so random. Does it have anything to do with his poem? Does it further his purpose at all?
Overall, I’m not really sure of Elliot’s intent. There are certainly overarching themes of death and dying; of one’s life being complete and full. I think it is interesting how the first few stanzas are repeating phrases like “And indeed there will be time”, “Time for you and time for me” (p. 1195), and the next few stanzas repeat phrases like, “For I have known them all already”, “ I have known the eyes”, I have known the arms” (p. 1196), but then the last stanzas change to “And would it have been worth it” and “would it have been worth while” (p. 1197). We see a transition throughout the poem from a belief in having more time to figure things out, to gaining knowledge about various things, to finally doubting whether you spent your time right before death.
Like I’ve said, I don’t believe T.S Elliot wrote this to be autobiographical. I wish I knew the metaphor he was trying to establish. As I stated in the first paragraph, our anthology suggests it is supposed to be mirroring the European society at the time; a society that was quickly going to change due to the war in a short amount of time.