TS Eliot (1) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Preface

When one engages with an artist with the intention of making a judgement on him or her the first thing one has to do is to discern what that artist is or is claimed to be by him or herself or by others. If one fails to do this one risks failing to do justice to the artist. In this sense it’s a question of getting the artist in the right perspective. Having achieved this one can then make judgements as to whether this thing (what the artist is claimed to be) is sufficient, acceptable or satisfying and, therefore, as to whether he or she is estimable. 

An interesting aspect of such an enquiry is that the enquirer cannot hep but give precedence to his or her framing of what is estimable and, if this is at odds with what the artist considers to be estimable that problem, in itself, will form part of the discussion and engagement.

On Prufrock

The subject-matter of the poem that is deemed to have begun modern literature is haplessness, irresolution and failure. These qualities are so shameful that the speaker only relates them at all confidently believing, as the speaker in the epigraph from Dante believes, no one will ever hear his confession. In this sense the whole poem is framed in a joke; a joke which adds to the predicament of and at the expense of the “loser,” J. Alfred Prufrock. Such qualities are negative qualities and not the usual stuff of literature. A proper measure of the poet, though, is whether, whatever quality he attempts to evoke, he evokes it in a tangible and real sense. Eliot is certainly successful in this in that he, for example, finds forms and metaphors that evoke moral égarement in the winding city streets that represent the meandering tributaries, never leading anywhere, in the stream of his protagonist’s consciousness. Eliot also enlists nature’s collaboration too, in the symbolic form of city fog, for example, personifying, in its behaviour, Prufrock’s indecision. The reader is button-holed, as, perhaps, the “you” in “you and I” and spectates the drama of Prufrock from a ringside seat in a form that otherwise resembles that of some of Browning’s monologues.

An alternative ending to the poem might have seen the “hero,” finally bringing his long-enduring indecision to a crisis and entering the world of action as Hamlet does but this is not to be. The poem ends on drowning and a kind of death. In this sense it is unedifying, uninspiring and deals in an emotional and spiritual negative. Human readers, on the whole, do not come from a negative place as life, as embodied in living humans, tends towards the positive as a default and, perhaps, irresistible, position. Depression is the exception, not the norm and it is more natural to celebrate and rejoice in life. This means that, to dwell with Eliot’s creation, for most humans, is an uncomfortable moment. Becoming aware that one was in the company of such a creature might lead one to wish to be elsewhere as his failures seem to be a matter of his own responsibility.

As a result, while one admires the artistic address that charmed Prufrock into being, one does not enjoy his company which seems miserable. One recalls how one of Eliot’s heroes, Dante Alighieri, in his incarnation as a character in his great poem, spent enough time, in Canto 3 of the ‘Inferno,’ to appreciate the nature of the man who made the Great (and cowardly) Refusal, Pope Celestine V, before being hurried away by his spirit guide, Virgil, while still experiencing disgust. One senses that Dante is grateful for not having to spend more time in Celestine's presence. 

There is, of course, the school of poetry that sees the employment of the art of poetry itself as, in some measure, charming and perhaps, thus, redeeming evil or disgusting content through a kind of sorcellerie évocatoire. Into this category fall Baudelaire and even Philip Larkin. The very act of “making” a poem and casting the content in a poem is an act of faith, that faith being in the power of the uniquely human resort to art and beauty to redeem negativity. I’m not sure that this is what happens with Eliot. One completes the reading of Prufrock experiencing merely the bitterness and ashes of his despair. One senses and is led to speculate that Eliot’s protagonist is not merely a distanced dramatic creation but someone with a degree of proximity to the author. Of course, in saying this, one remembers at all times that it can be foolish to confuse the artist himself with his artistic creation. However, it is perhaps fair to say that Eliot's subject matter is often personal.

The poet, Geoffrey Hill, in one of his poems saw poetry as “a sad and angry consolation” In other words one of, or perhaps the principle function of art is to console for (in his case) the horrors of history or (in most cases) the fact of the human condition and, especially, its mortality. The art of Baudelaire or of Philip Larkin could, perhaps, be deemed successful in this respect, in that they provide pleasure for those still experiencing that condition. The fact that the capacity for such pleasure exists is a consolation for the human condition in itself.

On the basis of this first outing as a poet Eliot provides little consolation. If this poem sets the tone of modern literature, as George Orwell suggested that it did, that tone is relentlessly despairing and it is hard to take pleasure in despair. This leaves open what is to follow in Eliot’s oeuvre as that may put Prufrock in a new context retrospectively.