The poem begins with a quote from Dante, seemingly illustrative of Prufrock's address to the reader (which forms the text of Eliot's poem). In Dante, the statement is made by a damned soul, who answers a question only because he believes that his listener can never return to Earth to give away the answer, which he wishes to keep secret. This seemingly places Prufrock in the position of one who speaks out from the gulf of some abyss, addressing arcane matters not to be shared with those on Earth. In so doing, he implies something about the reader as well as about the speaker. Should it perhaps be recalled, however, that the damned soul in Dante, quoted at the beginning of Prufrock, was sent to hell for the sin of false, deceitful, and treacherous counselling?
The indecisive Prufrock seems to be trying to decide whether to continue climbing the stair, or to turn back. There might also be an element of Dante here, as well. The suggestion that he has "known them all before" (the evenings, afternoons, and mornings of his life) should perhaps be taken literally. He is not living on Earth, but is reliving, in some sense, elements of his life elsewhere, though "elsewhere" needn't be taken literally as indicative of physical place. Shall he continue this phantom existence, with its odd corruptions (e.g., the arm which seems at first fair and feminine but which reveals a hirsute defect when viewed under the lamp), or shall he address the "overwhelming question" and thereby "disturb the universe"? (The phrase "disturb the universe" should certainly be taken literally.) Yet throughout, he remains coy, skirting this question (much less its answer!). He does not return from the dead to advise the living (q.v. the story of Dives and Lazarus), but instead employs obscure metaphors suggestive (falsely?) of concealed meanings and mysteries. But perhaps he has decided that nobody would believe him, "though he rose from the dead".
Mark Adkinsmsadkins04@yahoo.com
― Mark Adkins, Tuesday, 9 August 2005 20:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― Mark Adkins, Tuesday, 9 August 2005 20:40 (eighteen years ago) link
― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 10 August 2005 00:01 (eighteen years ago) link
― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 10 August 2005 00:04 (eighteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 10 August 2005 06:42 (eighteen years ago) link
― youn, Wednesday, 10 August 2005 10:43 (eighteen years ago) link
― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 10 August 2005 14:59 (eighteen years ago) link
The ontology is what the poem is about, and thus is obviously what makes it.
― Mark Adkins, Wednesday, 10 August 2005 22:57 (eighteen years ago) link
― Mark Adkins, Wednesday, 10 August 2005 23:00 (eighteen years ago) link
That is much more present in the poem than a few tossed off allusions to Dante.
― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 10 August 2005 23:25 (eighteen years ago) link
― as it clung to her thigh I started to cry (pr00de), Wednesday, 10 August 2005 23:29 (eighteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 10 August 2005 23:37 (eighteen years ago) link
I'm not sure this is so "obvious." Prufrock was written in 1917. According to various articles I'm finding on the net, body hair removal didn't become popular among women until the 1920s. So it's hard to understand why the narrator would be disgusted by a little arm hair (not to mention that it could have a subtle sexual undertone) -- also, the word "downed" sounds pleasant enough to me.
― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 11 August 2005 03:46 (eighteen years ago) link
― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 11 August 2005 04:09 (eighteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 11 August 2005 05:12 (eighteen years ago) link
― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 11 August 2005 05:16 (eighteen years ago) link
― as it clung to her thigh I started to cry (pr00de), Thursday, 11 August 2005 05:45 (eighteen years ago) link
― Josh (Josh), Thursday, 11 August 2005 05:55 (eighteen years ago) link
― John (jdahlem), Thursday, 11 August 2005 13:33 (eighteen years ago) link
I too always connected the peach with the downy-arms. I have personal associations with the peach thing, too: I have this massive fruit-phobia that really takes shames with peaches. So Archel, I love that you put "risk" on the peach-association list, because that's 90% of what I get out of them -- they're so rarely ideally ripe, and when they're not, they're quite disgusting, and so biting into one is a huge gamble of pleasant possibilities vs. grainy or mushy or god-forbid wormy ... So it's always made sense to me on some intuitive level that it'd be a peach. Peaches are a big leap.
I mean, alternately, it could be an Allman Brothers reference.
― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 11 August 2005 16:31 (eighteen years ago) link
― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 11 August 2005 16:34 (eighteen years ago) link
― Mark Adkins, Thursday, 11 August 2005 18:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 11 August 2005 19:04 (eighteen years ago) link
― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 11 August 2005 19:20 (eighteen years ago) link
― jed_ (jed), Thursday, 11 August 2005 19:57 (eighteen years ago) link
― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 11 August 2005 20:08 (eighteen years ago) link
― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 11 August 2005 20:24 (eighteen years ago) link
In a recent interview, noted contemporary poet David Berman claims that TS Eliot's seminal modernist poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is the "Stairway to Heaven" of twentieth century. In fact, the ontological intention behind the poem could be nothing further from this assessment. While Berman's rockist assertion aligns Prufrock with the more or less progressive rock band Led Zeppelin, Eliot instead meant his poem to stand as orphic warning about the evils of progressive rock. Eliot offers Prufrock as a prophetic allegory of the aging prog rock movement whose increasingly banal self-regard betrays the moral bankruptcy of their chief appeal: arrogant virtuosity. In this article I demostrate that Eliot's elliptical lines forecast the minimalism of punk even as Prufrock himself is autopsized as a somnambulent dinosaur prog rock corpse.
― Nobodaddy, Thursday, 11 August 2005 23:56 (eighteen years ago) link
In a recent interview, noted contemporary poet David Berman claims that TS Eliot's seminal modernist poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is the "Stairway to Heaven" of twentieth century American poetry. In fact, the ontological intention behind the poem could be nothing further from this assessment. While Berman's rockist assertion aligns Prufrock with the more or less progressive rock band Led Zeppelin, Eliot instead meant his poem to stand as orphic warning about the evils of progressive rock. Eliot offers Prufrock as a prophetic allegory of the aging prog rock movement whose increasingly banal self-regard betrays the moral bankruptcy of their chief appeal: arrogant virtuosity. In this article I demostrate that Eliot's elliptical lines forecast the minimalism of punk even as Prufrock himself is autopsized as a somnambulent dinosaur prog rock corpse.
― Nobodaddy, Thursday, 11 August 2005 23:57 (eighteen years ago) link
― Nobodaddy, Thursday, 11 August 2005 23:59 (eighteen years ago) link
― as it clung to her thigh I started to cry (pr00de), Friday, 12 August 2005 00:27 (eighteen years ago) link
― as it clung to her thigh I started to cry (pr00de), Friday, 12 August 2005 00:29 (eighteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 12 August 2005 02:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― Hurting (Hurting), Friday, 12 August 2005 03:11 (eighteen years ago) link
I think, like others above, that this is only one (probably 'wrong') interpretation. To me the exclamation mark is revelation, not dismay. And yes, nabisco, I totally associate the peach with the fuzz of arm hair too. It's not so much a defect as something that is always there but not always revealed, it's the exciting and tactile reality/corporality as opposed to the mere surface.
― Archel (Archel), Friday, 12 August 2005 08:19 (eighteen years ago) link
― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 12 August 2005 09:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― Hurting (Hurting), Friday, 12 August 2005 11:19 (eighteen years ago) link
― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 12 August 2005 12:19 (eighteen years ago) link
― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 12 August 2005 18:08 (eighteen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 12 August 2005 21:57 (eighteen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 12 August 2005 21:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― Hurting (Hurting), Saturday, 13 August 2005 03:31 (eighteen years ago) link
Hurting, do you have your "show LoChris, If it is obvious to me, then it is obvious to everyone that your educational credentials are woefully inadequate for the moderation of this board. I suggest you resign immediately and turn over the keys to one of the recently arrived eggheads.
Hurting, do you have your "show Username" option checked?
― k/l (Ken L), Saturday, 13 August 2005 03:48 (eighteen years ago) link
Anyway, just joshing, Chris.Just kidding, Josh.
― k/l (Ken L), Saturday, 13 August 2005 03:49 (eighteen years ago) link
― the bellefox, Monday, 15 August 2005 12:30 (eighteen years ago) link
― John (jdahlem), Monday, 15 August 2005 12:45 (eighteen years ago) link
― John (jdahlem), Monday, 15 August 2005 12:46 (eighteen years ago) link
― David A. (Davant), Wednesday, 17 August 2005 05:27 (eighteen years ago) link
"The poem seems pretty obsessed with 'mundane existance', and thisseems to be where many of the narrator's anxieties lie: There are ...oyster shells...standing water, soot-filled chimneys, make up, toast and tea, stairs to walk down...coats, neckties, and tie pins..."
What an amusing misrepresentation. It's as if a robot, asked to comment on the meaning of a play, reeled off a list of the props.
Casuistry: "[These things are] much more present in the poem than a few tossed off allusions to Dante."
Those things are the outer trappings, the background, like props in a play. The quote from Dante occupies a prominent place at the start of the poem precisely because it foreshadows the poem's content.
The rest of your comments are equally inane and I shall ignore them.
― Mark Adkins, Friday, 14 October 2005 14:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 14 October 2005 16:07 (eighteen years ago) link