“Lips that would kiss | Form prayers to broken stone.” To what extent and in what ways is Eliot’s poetry testament to a divided mind?
W.B. Yeats famously said that poetry was born from a “quarrel with ourselves,” and Faulkner later added in his Nobel Prize Speech that good writing comes only from “the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself.” These insights are no more apt than when applied to the poetry of T.S. Eliot. Exploding onto the poetic scene in 1915, Eliot and his friend Ezra Pound were at the forefront of the modernist movement. They reacted strongly against the traditional techniques of the Georgians and others who came before them, who seemed to the modernists to be attempting to represent the modern world in a
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In his essay Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919) Eliot controversially argues that “The emotion of art is impersonal,” and claims: “Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry.” And yet, ironically, his poetry is littered with impressions and experiences that were important to him: the similarities between Emily Hale and the lady in Portrait of a Lady; the references to his friend Jean Verdenal in The Waste Land; and the later reference to Margate Sands, where Russell and Eliot’s wife went on holiday, all demonstrate the personal nature of Eliot’s verse. Furthermore, Eliot later admitted that he was somewhat obnoxious in his earlier essays. He writes about Dante’s work that we “cannot afford to ignore Dante’s philosophical and theological beliefs.” Thus, we can infer that the beliefs and the quarrels within Eliot’s poems are beliefs and quarrels that he felt within himself.
In Eliot’s first poems, his mind seems to be focused largely on the conflict between a romantic and a realist view of life, if by romanticism we mean the hope of something better. Influenced by the anti-romantic teachings of Irving Babbitt, a Professor at Harvard, Eliot’s secular poems explore the possibility of a romantic or idealist worldview, which is then denied. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a perfect example, and indeed the “you and I” of the first line can be interpreted as the two dimensions of Prufrock’s character, the
By looking through a critical lens at T Stearns Eliot’s poetry in light of his 20th century, modernist context, much is revealed about his personal and the rapidly evolving societal beliefs of that era. Through his repeating motif of time and fragmentation throughout his poems, Eliot reveals the prevalent feelings of isolation while in society along with the need to hide one’s feelings and emotions in this degrading society. His exploration of the use of ambiguity and stream of consciousness by Eliot, which is a characteristic of modernist artists, allows his work to resound over decades while being interpreted and differently understood by every audience that encounters them.
When reading the title of T.S Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” it is believed we are in store for a poem of romance and hope. A song that will inspire embrace and warmth of the heart, regretfully this is could not be further from the truth. This poem takes us into the depths of J. Alfred Prufrock, someone who holds faltering doubt and as a result may never come to understand real love. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” takes us through Prufrock’s mindset and his self-doubting and self-defeating thoughts. With desolate imagery, a tone that is known through the ages and delicate diction we see a man who is insecure, tentative and completely fearful.
American born poet, T.S. Eliot reflects modernistic ideas of isolation, individual perception and human consciousness in his many poems. His poems express the disillusionment of the post–World War I generation with both literary and social values and traditions. In one of Eliot’s most famous poems, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” which was published in 1915, a speaker who is very unhappy with his life takes readers on a journey through the hell he is living in. In this journey, Prufrock criticizes the well-dressed, upstanding citizens who love their material pleasures more than they love other people, while explaining he feels ostracized from the society of women. Eliot’s use of isolation, human consciousness and individual perception is quite evident in his dramatic monologue within the story of J. Alfred Prufrock. Prufrock wants to be seen as a normal citizen who can find friends or a lover, but his anxiety-driven isolation forces him to live a life that relates more to Hell than paradise. In over examining every fine detail of his life, Prufrock perceives himself as useless and even a waste of life. By using many poetic devices including repetition, personification, and imagery Eliot drives readers to feel the painful reality of Prufrock’s life. In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T.S Eliot uses modernistic ideas and poetic devices to portray how Prufrock’s life relates to Hell while simultaneously criticizing social aspects of the younger post–World War I generation.
Poetry can sometimes allow one to explore the unknown. However, in some works of poetry, one can realise that some known ideas or values remain relevant to current society. This is certainly applicable to T.S. Eliot’s poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Eliot’s manipulation of poetic techniques in both these poems allows the responder to realise that some ideas prevail in both modern and post-modern society. These poems explore the unknown phenomena of the obscurity regarding the purpose and meaning of life. This unknown phenomena causes the persona in both texts to resort to a sense of isolation or alienation. Eliot uses poetic techniques such as metaphors and personification to convey his ideas.
T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is an ironic depiction of a man’s inability to take decisive action in a modern society that is void of meaningful human connection. The poem reinforces its central idea through the techniques of fragmentation, and through the use of Eliot’s commentary about Prufrock’s social world. Using a series of natural images, Eliot uses fragmentation to show Prufrock’s inability to act, as well as his fear of society. Eliot’s commentary about Prufrock’s social world is also evident throughout. At no point in the poem did Prufrock confess his love, even though it is called “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, but through this poem, T.S. Eliot voices his social commentary about the world that
T.S Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is an examination of human insecurity and folly, embodied in the title's J. Alfred Prufrock. Eliot's story of a man's "overwhelming question", his inability to ask it, and consequently, his mental rejection plays off the poem's many ambiguities, both structural and literal. Eliot uses these uncertainties to develop both the plot of the poem and the character of J. Alfred Prufrock.
In the early 20th century, many writers such as T.S. Eliot (Thomas Stearns Eliot) and Langston Hughes wrote what scholars of today consider, modern poetry. Writers in that time period had their own ideas of what modern poetry should be and many of them claimed that they wrote modern work. According to T.S. Eliot’s essay, “From Tradition”, modern poetry must consist of a “tradition[al] matter of much wider significance . . . if [one] want[s] it [he] must obtain it by great labour . . . no poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists’ (550). In another term, tradition only comes within the artist or the art itself; therefore,
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land explores modernism, specifically focusing on the troubling of binaries and the breakdown of the traditional. The boundaries between life and death, wet and dry, male and female, and more are called into question in Eliot’s conception of modernity and the waste land. The blurring of gender boundaries—significantly through Tiresias and the hooded figure scene in “What the Thunder Said”— in the poem lends itself to Eliot’s suggestion that traditional masculinity breaks down and decays in the waste land. Traditional masculinity is further challenged through Eliot’s criticism of hyper-masculinity and heterosexual relations in the modern era through allusions to the myth of Philomela and the “young man carbuncular” scene in “The Fire Sermon.” Along with this, Eliot stages scenes charged with homoeroticism to further challenge ideas of traditional masculinity. Homoerotic scenes such as the “hyacinth girl” scene in “The Burial of the Dead” and the Mr. Eugenides scene in “The Fire Sermon” suggest an intensity and enticement towards male-male relations, while also offering a different depiction of masculinity than is laid out in the heterosexual romance scenes. Through scenes depicting queer desire and homosexual behavior, Eliot suggests that masculinity in the modern era does not need to be marked by aggression and
I think this style of writing is also a reflection of Eliot's feelings about the time. Eliot was more of a Modernist than Victorian poet and as such held to beliefs like: there is no higher power in the universe, man is alone on this planet to govern his own affairs, everyone is truly alone, there is no unity, no support, for we live in a godless heartless world (Stacey Donohue). The floating, confusing, jumbled mix of emotions and directions in this poem mirrors the modernist image of society.
The Modern Poetry Era (1914-1945) was a time filled with many new and revolutionary poets. Of these poets was a man named T.S. Eliot, whom was considered by many to be the most significant poet of his time.
Eliot is not solely criticising modern life in the poem, it also serves as a reflection of Eliot’s social context and his own life, a product of its time.
The poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” written by T.S. Eliot, uses many literary sound devices, sensory references, and other literary techniques in order to convey the meaning of the poem. Eliot conveys such meaning throughout the poem in many ways, such as the timeframe, the speaker’s speech, and other imagery are used to convey the poem’s meaning of social isolation and indecisiveness. In the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, Eliot uses multiple references of imagery to define the feeling of social isolation and indecisiveness of the character. For example, the main speaker describes many scenes of being incomplete, “Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets” (Eliot, 4) and “Streets that follow like a tedious argument”
T.S. Eliot was an outstanding author and an exemplary representation of the ideas of modernism. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," despite being one of T.S Eliot's earliest publications, still manages to remain one of the most famous. He uses this poem to not only draw out the psychological aspect of members of modern society, but also to draw out the aspect of the time that he lived in. The speaker of this poem is a modern man who feels alone, isolated, and incapable of making decisive actions for himself. Prufrock desires to speak to a woman about his love for her, but he continuously hesitates while attempting to do so. This poem demonstrates a theme of fragmentation, which is a theme that we can see throughout the entire
T.S. Eliot in the twentieth-century wrote what is today widely-regarded as one of the most important text of modernist poems, “The Waste Land.” This poem evaluates many aspects of ancient and contemporary culture and customs, and how the contemporary culture has degraded into a wasteland. In “The Waste Land,” Eliot conjures, through allusions to multiple religions and works of literature in five separate sections, a fragmented and seemingly disjointed poem. Eliot repeatedly alludes to western and eastern cultural foundation blocks to illustrate the cultural degradation prevalent in the modern era of England. One specific eastern example is brought up in the third section of the poem, which T.S. Eliot names “Fire Sermon,” an allusion to
When reading T.S. Eliot’s critical comment, “It is to be observed that the language of these poets is as a rule simple and pure,” one might assume that he was referring to the Romantics (Eliot 2328). Specifically, we could apply this statement to poets the ilk of Wordsworth, who eschewed poetic affectations and “tricked out” language for sentiments that originated and flowed naturally (Wordsworth 270). Yet Eliot hadn’t focused his critical eye there, this time. Rather, he squinted a century back to a lesser-referenced literary group, the Metaphysical poets (Eliot 2328). That the Metaphysical poets and the Romantics share a characteristically simple/natural diction is important. While they are undoubtedly