Critically evaluate The Love Songs of J. Alfred Prufrock

Thomas Stearns was one of the representative metaphysical poets. He was regarded as the literary arbiter of the modern age. He was the most remarkable in the most influential poet of his period both in regard to subject matter and style. He is fore most in expression the disillusionment of the modern time. As Edwards Albert remarks,

“With the possible exception

of Yeats, no 20^th  century

poet has been held in such

esteem by his fellow poets as Eliot..”

           ‘The Love Songs of J. Alfred Prufrock’ is a mouthpiece of modern poetry by T.S. Eliot which reveals the inadequacy and purposelessness of modern life. The poem indicates urbanization, hollowness, cowardice, disappointment of urbanized and organized modern man through character of Prufrock. Eliot has succeeded in highlighting the dilemma of a modern man.  

Theme of the poem

          The great changed occurred in modern life during the First World War. Its consequence influenced many modern poets. The life suddenly swung from the traditional airing of sentimental philosophy to the drab. Good bye to village and tradition and welcome to town and heartless formality. The present poem written in 1914 is the representative of this type of poetry. The poem created great stir in decade of 1920-30. According to A.S. Collins,

“T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Songs

of J. Alfred Prufrock, we can

read in it an awareness of

dying world.”

Critical Summary of the poem

The poem is starting with epigraph. It is taken from Dante’s ‘Inferno’.  Then poem opens in colloquial Laforgian technique inviting ‘you’. ‘You’ is the other side of protagonist’s psychology. As he says,

“Let us go then you and I

When the evening is spread out against the sky.

Like a patient etherized upon a table”

          It is the time of evening, which is like a patient etherized, symbolic of the consciousness of Prufrock. For like an etherized patient the protagonist Prufrock is conscious but conscious of nothing. Prufrock himself is a symbolic character symbolizing the frustration and neurosis of the strange disease of modern life, its sick hurry and divided.

          Prufrock reaches the saloon of fashionable restaurant and conscious of women moving about the room and talking of Michael Angelo, about Renaissance art. Of course, they know nothing about it, but it is just a fashion to talk about it. Prufrock, like the fog moving slowly by and settling down, is no hurry to approach his lady love. Here the critic D. E. S. Maxwell point out, it is Eliot’s comment on the hypocrisy of modern life. 

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle, on the windowpanes.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes;

          Prufrock has passed all his life in upper class society and he knows everyone and everything goes on in it. Modern life is passed in giving ‘Tea Parties’ in which there is little sense. His life has been as useless as the butt-ends of smoked cigarettes. He has to ask an important question, but he loses all charge as he finds the woman looking at him searching eye. Here Eliot presents Prufrock’s moral cowardice in the matters of sex.   

“And I have known the arm already known them all-

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare.”

          Prufrock hesitates and fails to come to a decision. He knows every aspects of modern life, both of the upper classes and of the lower classes. He bored with trivial life. He wants to escape from his present surroundings. He is afraid of death and rejection. He is still undecided and thinks that it is useless to ask the question because the lady would certainly say that she loved him and was ready for marriage.  He has totally misunderstood her.

          In the end of poem, Prufrock, a romantic who often has vision of beauty, is unable to face life. He longs to escape from it to some world romance. His romantic inner self always been ‘submerged’ in this way by the realities of life. He feels that the romantic vision will not come to him, even in future. Here Eliot presents aloofness and disillusionment of modern man.

I have heard mermaid’s singing each to each

I do not think that they will sing to me”

         

Poetic style

As far as poetic style is concerned, the present poem is in blank verse having vivid juxtaposition of antithetical objects. There is no particular rhyme scheme, rhythm and line length.

          Some critics like Guardian says, the poem is an ‘Interior Monologue’. Prufrock only one does all the talking. There’s nobody who is listening to him. The protagonist’s emotions, thinking power, cowardice, and futile existence are brought out dramatically. The whole poem passed with Prufrock two sides of his personality.

          + The present poem is full of images which show Eliot’s use of various techniques. e.g.

The yellow for that rubs its back upon the windowpanes;

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant be;  ‘I am Lazarus come from the dead’;

Revolutionary poem

          The poem is the best example of T. S. Eliot’s style. It is revolutionary poem in a style. It marks a complete break from the 19^th century tradition. As F. R. Leavis writes,

It is a revolutionary poem,

one of the best specimens

of T. S. Eliot’s style, diction,

technique and versification.

         

Conclusion

To summing up, the poem is spokesman of modern urban as well as the sordidness, hypocrisy of modern life and the dying civilization Eliot has presented the sordidness and meaninglessness of modern urban civilization. Modern men suffer from loneliness, boredom, plenty of tensions which make them passive, unpleasant and rigid. They can’t escape and haven’t courage to face life. The poem shows the problem of the urban society as well as boredom, emptiness, and pessimism of modern life.   Pinto remarks about the poem.

“Here is the poet who has

thoroughly immersed himself

in the destructive elements

the sordidness the stupidity

and an ugliness of modern

urban life.”