Evaluate 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' as a great poetic achievement of T.S. Eliot
A Revolutionary Modern Poem
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a complex poem which marks a landmark in the history of English poetry. It was first published in Eliot's volume of poems, entitled "Prufrock and Other Observations" (1917). It reveals Eliot's qualities as a modern poet. The poem represents a complete break with the nineteenth-century tradition and a new start.
The poem is in the form of an interior monologue. Here, Eliot has used the symbolist and the stream of consciousness techniques. The subjet of the poem is also modern because it exposes the neurosis, hypocrisy, barrenness and artificiality of modern civilization.
Themes
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a complex poem with multiple themes. The main theme of the poem is paralyzed self-consciousness, inadequacy and timidity. A middle-aged balding man meditates on his failure to declare his love to a woman whom he desires to win. One part of Prufrock's personality is romantic with heroic aspirations. The other part is realistic and calculating.
In fact, the poem deals with the debate between the head and heart, the outer and inner selves of the central character. The poem also deals with the theme or anti-love. Though the title of the poem indicates that is a love song, it brings out Prufrock's helplessness and incapacity for love.
Instead of expressing his love in passionate words, he simply seeks excuses for postponing and delaying his proposal. He thinks that he will have a lot of time to make decisions, if any:
Time for you and time for me
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions.
Prufrock has romantic dreams, but he does not have the capacity to fulfil them. He assumes that his beloved might reject him as her lover. The problem of neurosis, the barrenness, the frustration, the boredom and isolation, and the emptiness of modern life are some of the other themes of the poem.
Prufrock is the victim of modern urban civilization in which each individual is isolated. His affairs with women are only a device to escape the loneliness and boredom of his life;
For I have known them all already, known them all
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons...
So how should I presume?
And how should I begin?
In short, the poem brings out the tragedy that lies at the heart of life.
Structure
Structurally, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock may be divided into two broad divisions. Lines 1-69 form the first half of the poem. It describes Prufrock's anticipation of his proposal. Lines 70-131 form the second half of the poem. In it Prufrock offers thoughtful excuses and explanations for his failure in making the love proposal to his beloved.
Moreover, the repetition of certain lines and phrases gives the poem a unity. Thus, lines 23-48 are kept together by: "There will be time"; lines 49-69 by the refrain: "I have known"; and, lines 87-110 by the refrain: "Would it have been worth it after all".
The whole poem, in fact, is the graph of Prufrock's mental flow. The broken passages represent the wavelength of his introspection. The whole poem grows around the multi-coloured personality of Prufrock. Every detail of the poem is concerned with his inner life, his growing age and the articles of his dress. What Prufrock thinks, in fact, is the substance of the poem.
An Anti-romantic Poem
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is thoroughly an anti-romantic poem. It is urbane in theme, setting, imagery and style. A romantic poem deals with beauty. But here the emphasis is on ugliness rather than on beauty. The items that compose the setting of the poem are tedious streets, the yellow fog, drains with dirty water and smoky chimneys.
The central human figure, Prufrock, is a sophisticated man of town. His emotional springs have gone dry. His love song is not the product of the heart of a romantic lover. On the contrary, his love song is the product of his pitiless analysis of his own cowardice and indecision.
It is only towards the end of the poem that a vision of romantic beauty comes to his tired mind and he is reminded of the mermaids. But this romantic note is only momentary and soon he is brought back to the plain of reality:
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Use of Symbols and Imagery
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a symbolic poem which depicts the very mood of modern city life. Prufrock himself is the symbol of the mental tension, the frustration and the irresolution of the modern man. The images and symbols of the poem are mainly functional, precise and compact.
They are influenced by the Metaphysical poets and the French symbolist poets. The whole poem is full of a variety of images. Thus, we have images of living creatures, images of death-wish, sea images, literary images, and images drawn from city life. In the very beginning, we have the following image which is like a
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table.
The variety and freshness of Eliot's images add to the literary and artistic qualities of the poem.
Style and Verification
The style of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is conversational and deliberately avoids the poetical and colourful phrasing. The poem is full of echoes from Dante, Hesiod, Hamlet, Donne, Marvell and the Bible.
Here Eliot has used the stream-of-consciousness technique. The placement of an unromantic and timid person in a romantic situation produces an ironical effect which dominates the poem.
In this poem, Eliot has rejected the traditional verse form and rhythms. Here the metrical base is iambic, but the lines vary in length and in the number of stressed syllables. The rhymes are at irregular intervals:
I grow old.....I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk on the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing each to each.
In short, the free verse used in the poem successfully conveys the exact graph of Prufrock's introspection. Thus, the poem is a representative modern poem, both in subject and in substance.
