The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, commonly known as Prufrock, is a poem by T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

, begun in February 1910 and published in Chicago in June 1915. Described as a "drama of literary anguish," it presents a stream of consciousness in the form of a dramatic monologue

Dramatic monologue

M. H. Abrams notes the following three features of the dramatic monologue as it applies to poetry:-Types of monologues:One of the most important influences on the development of the dramatic monologue is the Romantic poets...

, and marked the beginning of Eliot's career as an influential poet. With its weariness, regret, embarrassment, longing, emasculation, sexual frustration, sense of decay, and awareness of mortality, Prufrock has become one of the most recognized voices in modern literature.

Composition and publication

Composed mainly between February 1910 and July or August 1911, the poem was first published in Chicago in the June 1915 issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, after Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

, the magazine's foreign editor, persuaded Harriet Monroe

Harriet Monroe

Harriet Monroe was an American editor, scholar, literary critic, poet and patron of the arts. She is best known as the founding publisher and long-time editor of Poetry Magazine, which made its debut in 1912. As a supporter of the poets Ezra Pound, H. D., T. S...

, its founder, that Eliot was unique: "He has actually trained himself AND modernized himself ON HIS OWN. The rest of the promising young have done one or the other, but never both." This was Eliot's first publication of a poem outside school or university.

In November 1915 (see 1915 in poetry

1915 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Russian poet Sergei Yesenin , published his first book of poems titled "Radumitsa."...

), the poem—along with Eliot's "Portrait of a Lady

Portrait of a Lady (poem)

Portrait of a Lady is a poem by T. S. Eliot, first published in September 1915 in Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, March 1916 in Others: An Anthology of the New Verse, in February 1917 in The New Poetry: An Anthology, and finally in his 1917 collection of poems, Prufrock and Other...

," "The Boston Evening Transcript," "Hysteria," and "Miss Helen Slingsby"—was published in London in Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

's Catholic Anthology 1914–1915, which was printed by Elkin Mathews. In June 1917 (see 1917 in literature

1917 in literature

The year 1917 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* January - Francis Picabia produces the first issue of the Dada periodical 391 in Barcelona....

), The Egoist

The Egoist (periodical)

The Egoist was a London literary magazine published from 1914 to 1919, during which time it published important early modernist poetry and fiction. In its manifesto, it claimed to "recognise no taboos," and published a number of controversial works, such as parts of Ulysses...

, a small publishing firm run by Dora Marsden

Dora Marsden

Dora Marsden was an English feminist editor of avant-garde literary journals, and an author of philosophical writings.-Early life:...

, published a pamphlet entitled Prufrock and Other Observations (London), containing twelve poems by Eliot. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was the first in the volume.

Eliot's notebook of draft poems, published posthumously in 1996 by Harcourt Brace, has the dates "July–Aug. 1911" at the end of the poem marking him as 22 when the poem was completed. The notebook includes 38 lines from the middle of a draft version of the poem. This section, now known as Prufrock's Pervigilium, describes the "vigil

Vigil

A vigil is a period of purposeful sleeplessness, an occasion for devotional watching, or an observance...

" of Prufrock through an evening and night.

The Harvard Vocarium at Harvard College

Harvard College

Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...

recorded Eliot's reading of Prufrock and other poems in 1947, as part of their ongoing series of poetry readings by their authors.

Title

In the drafts, the poem had the subtitle Prufrock among the Women. Eliot said "The Love Song of" portion of the title came from "The Love Song of Har Dyal," a poem by Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

, published in the 1888 collection Plain Tales from the Hills
Plain Tales from the Hills
Plain Tales from the Hills is the first collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. Out of its 40 stories, "eight-and-twenty", according to Kipling's Preface, were initially published in the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, Punjab, British India, between November 1886 and June 1887...

. The form of Prufrock's name is like the name that Eliot was using at the time: T. Stearns Eliot.

On the origin of the name "Prufrock", there was a "Prufrock-Littau Company" in St Louis

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

at the time Eliot lived there, a furniture store. In a 1950 letter, 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." It has also been suggested that Prufrock comes from the German word "Prüfstein" meaning "touchstone" (cognate to proof-stone, with stone changed to rock).

Epigraph

In context, the epigraph

Epigraph (literature)

In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component. The epigraph may serve as a preface, as a summary, as a counter-example, or to link the work to a wider literary canon, either to invite comparison or to enlist a conventional...

refers to a meeting between Dante

Dante Alighieri

Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...

and Guido da Montefeltro, who was condemned to the eighth circle of Hell for providing counsel to Pope Boniface VIII

Pope Boniface VIII

Pope Boniface VIII , born Benedetto Gaetani, was Pope of the Catholic Church from 1294 to 1303. Today, Boniface VIII is probably best remembered for his feuds with Dante, who placed him in the Eighth circle of Hell in his Divina Commedia, among the Simonists.- Biography :Gaetani was born in 1235 in...

, who wished to use Guido's advice for a nefarious undertaking. This encounter follows Dante's meeting with Ulysses

Odysseus

Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....

, 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 intended his story never be told, and so by quoting Guido, Eliot reveals his view of Prufrock's love song.

Frederick Locke contends that Prufrock himself is suffering from multiple personalities of sorts, and that he embodies both Guido and Dante in the Inferno 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 you, the reader, as in "Let us go then, you and I," (1). In that, the reader is granted the power to do as he pleases with Prufrock's love song.

Although he finally chose not to use it, the draft version of the epigraph for the poem came from Dante's Purgatorio
Purgatorio
Purgatorio is the second part of Dante's Divine Comedy, following the Inferno, and preceding the Paradiso. The poem was written in the early 14th century. It is an allegory telling of the climb of Dante up the Mount of Purgatory, guided by the Roman poet Virgil...

(XXVI, 147-148):

'sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor'.

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina.

Eliot provided this translation in his essay "Dante" (1929):

'be mindful in due time of my pain'.

Then dived he back into that fire which refines them.

He would eventually use the quotation in the closing lines of his 1925 poem The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...

. The quotation that Eliot did choose comes from Dante also. Inferno
The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature...

(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.

One translation, from the Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

Dante Project, is:

"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."

Interpretation

Because the poem is concerned primarily with the irregular musings of the narrator, it can be difficult to interpret. Laurence Perrine

Laurence Perrine

Laurence Perrine was a best-selling author and college professor.After earning B.A. and M.A. degrees from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. from Yale University, Laurence Perrine began his distinguished career as a member of Southern Methodist University's English faculty in 1946 and was named the Daisy...

wrote, "[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". This stylistic choice makes it difficult to determine exactly what 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. The dispute, however, lies in to whom Prufrock is speaking, whether he is actually going 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 or directly to the reader, 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", while Mutlu Konuk Blasing suggests that the "you and I" refers to the relationship between the dilemmas of the character and the author. 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 (the sky, streets, cheap restaurants and hotels, fog), and talks about how there will be time for various things before "the taking of 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 an afternoon tea, in which he is preparing to ask this "overwhelming question". Others, however, believe that Prufrock is not physically going anywhere, but rather, is playing through it in his mind.

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, pointing to the various images of women's arms and clothing and the final few lines in which Prufrock laments that the mermaids 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 of Edwardian society and Prufrock's dilemma represents the inability to live a meaningful existence in the modern world. 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."

As the poem uses the stream of consciousness technique, it is often difficult to determine what is meant to be interpreted literally or symbolically. In general, Eliot uses imagery which is indicative of Prufrock's character, representing aging and decay. 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 aging.

Prufrock and Raskolnikov

John C. Pope has postulated that Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock is connected to Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov

Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov

Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov is the fictional protagonist of Crime and Punishment by Feodor Dostoyevsky. The name Raskolnikov derives from the Russian raskolnik meaning "schismatic"...

of Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. It was later published in a single volume. This is the second of Dostoyevsky's full-length novels following his...

. While Dostoyevsky "caught the undercurrent of stifled suffering" in the "withering life of cities", Pope suggests that Prufrock is a victim of "stifled suffering," while the "withering life of cities" is more referential to the slow demise of fashionable society.

Use of allusion

Like many of Eliot's poems, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" makes numerous allusions to other works, which are often symbol

Symbol

A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...

ic themselves.
Laurence Perrine identifies the following allusions in the poem:

In "Time for all the works and days of hands" (29) the phrase 'works and days' is the title of a long poem - a description of agricultural life and a call to toil - by the early Greek poet Hesiod
Hesiod
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...

.
"I know the voices dying with a dying fall" (52) echoes Orsino's first lines in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.
The prophet of "Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter / I am no prophet - and here's no great matter" (81-2) is John the Baptist
John the Baptist
John the Baptist was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure mentioned in the Canonical gospels. He is described in the Gospel of Luke as a relative of Jesus, who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River...

, whose head was delivered to Salome
Salome
Salome , the Daughter of Herodias , is known from the New Testament...

by Herod
Herod Antipas
Herod Antipater , known by the nickname Antipas, was a 1st-century AD ruler of Galilee and Perea, who bore the title of tetrarch...

as a reward for her dancing (Matthew
Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth...

14:1-11, and Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

's play Salome
Salome (play)
Salome is a tragedy by Oscar Wilde.The original 1891 version of the play was in French. Three years later an English translation was published...

).
"To have squeezed the universe into a ball" (92) and "indeed there will be time" (23) echo the closing lines of Marvell
Andrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell was an English metaphysical poet, Parliamentarian, and the son of a Church of England clergyman . As a metaphysical poet, he is associated with John Donne and George Herbert...

's 'To His Coy Mistress
To His Coy Mistress
To His Coy Mistress is a metaphysical poem written by the British author and statesman Andrew Marvell either during or just before the Interregnum....

'. Phrases such as, "there will be time" and "there is time" are also reminiscent of the opening line of Marvell's poem:"Had we but world enough and time"
"'I am Lazarus, come from the dead'" (94) may be either the beggar Lazarus
Lazarus and Dives
The Parable of the rich man and Lazarus is a well known parable of Jesus which appears in one of the Four Gospels of the New Testament....

(of Luke
Gospel of Luke
The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...

16) returning for the rich man who was not permitted to return from the dead to warn the brothers of a rich man about Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...

or the Lazarus
Lazarus of Bethany
Lazarus of Bethany, also known as Saint Lazarus or Lazarus of the Four Days, is the subject of a prominent miracle attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus restores him to life four days after his death...

(of John
Gospel of John
The Gospel According to John , commonly referred to as the Gospel of John or simply John, and often referred to in New Testament scholarship as the Fourth Gospel, is an account of the public ministry of Jesus...

11) whom Christ
Christ
Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...

raised from the dead, or both.
"Full of high sentence" (117) echoes Chaucer's description of the Clerk of Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

in the General Prologue
General Prologue
The General Prologue is the assumed title of the series of portraits that precedes The Canterbury Tales. It was the work of 14th century English writer and courtier Geoffrey Chaucer.-Synopsis:...

to The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...

.
"There will be time to murder and create" is a biblical allusion to Ecclesiastes 3.

Johan Schimanski identifies these:

In the final section of the poem, Prufrock rejects the idea that he is Prince Hamlet
Prince Hamlet
Prince Hamlet is a fictional character, the protagonist in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. He is the Prince of Denmark, nephew to the usurping Claudius and son of the previous King of Denmark, Old Hamlet. Throughout the play he struggles with whether, and how, to avenge the murder of his father, and...

suggesting that he is merely "an attendant lord" (112) whose purpose is to "advise the prince" (114), a likely allusion to Polonius
Polonius
Polonius is a character in William Shakespeare's Hamlet. He is King Claudius's chief counsellor, and the father of Ophelia and Laertes. Polonius connives with Claudius to spy on Hamlet...

. Prufrock also brings in a common Shakespearean element of the Fool, as he claims he is also "Almost, at times, the Fool."
"Among some talk of you and me" may be a reference to Quatrain 32 of Edward FitzGerald
Edward FitzGerald (poet)
Edward FitzGerald was an English writer, best known as the poet of the first and most famous English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The spelling of his name as both FitzGerald and Fitzgerald is seen...

's first translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám , a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer...

("There was a Door to which I found no Key / There was a Veil past which I could not see / Some little Talk awhile of ME and THEE / There seemed - and then no more of THEE and ME.")

In popular culture

The poem is frequently referred to in film, television, literature, and music, from Patricia Rozema

Patricia Rozema

Patricia Rozema is a Canadian film director and screenwriter.-Life and career:Rozema was born in Kingston, Ontario and raised in Sarnia, Ontario. Her parents, Jacoba Berandina and Jan Rozema, were Dutch Calvinists. Television was severely restricted and she didn’t go to a movie theatre until she...

's 1987 film I've Heard the Mermaids Singing
I've Heard the Mermaids Singing
I've Heard the Mermaids Singing is a 1987 theatrical-release feature film, directed by Patricia Rozema. The title is taken from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot.-Plot:...

to the young adult novel The Chocolate War
The Chocolate War
The Chocolate War is a young adult novel by American author Robert Cormier. First published in 1974, it was adapted into a film in 1988. Although it received mixed reviews at the time of its publication, some reviewers have argued it is one of the best young adult novels of all time...

by Robert Cormier

Robert Cormier

Robert Edmund Cormier was an American author, columnist and reporter, known for his deeply pessimistic, downbeat literature. His most popular works include I Am the Cheese, After the First Death, We All Fall Down and The Chocolate War, all of which have won awards. The Chocolate War was challenged...

, I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous by Frank Turner

Frank Turner

Frank Turner is an English folk/punk singer-songwriter from Meonstoke, Winchester. Initially the vocalist of post-hardcore band Million Dead, Turner embarked upon a primarily acoustic-based solo career following the band's split in 2005. To date, Turner has released four solo albums, two rarities...

, Afternoon and Coffeespoons by Crash Test Dummies

Crash Test Dummies

The Crash Test Dummies is a Canadian folk rock/alternative rock band from Winnipeg, Manitoba, widely known for their 1993 single "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm".The band is most identifiable through Brad Roberts and his distinctive bass-baritone voice...

, "Yellow Brick Road" by "Raine Maida

Raine Maida

Raine Maida , is a Canadian musician best known as being the lead vocalist and primary songwriter of the alternative rock band Our Lady Peace. He has come to be known for his unique countertenor nasal falsetto singing voice, as well as his cryptic and poetry-influenced song lyrics...

", and the When Beauty Tamed the Beast novel by Eloisa James.