Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

 

The Love Song of J. Afred Prufrock

(1917)


T. S. Eliot

(September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965)

 


        S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
       A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
       Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
       Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
       Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
       Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
 
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
 
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
 
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
 
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;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
               So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
               And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
               And should I then presume?
               And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head
               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
               That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
               “That is not it at all,
               That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
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.










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Notes

Sio credesse...rispondo: The epigraph is from Canto 27, lines 61–66 of Dante's Inferno.

 


61  «S’i’ credesse che mia risposta fosse
62  a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
63  questa fiamma staria sanza più scosse;
 
64  ma però che già mai di questo fondo
65  non tornò vivo alcun, s’i’ odo il vero,
66  sanza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
  • The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Inferno: A Verse Translation, trans. Alan Mandelbaum (New York: Bantam, 1982): 249.
        “If I thought my reply were meant for one
    who ever could return into the world
    this flame would stir no more; and yet, since none—
        if what I hear is true—ever returned
    alive from this abyss, then without fear
    of facing infamy, I answer you.
  • The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, vol. 1 Inferno, trans. Robert M. Durling (New York: OUP, 1996): 419, 427.
        “If I believed that my reply were to a person who
    would ever return to the world, this flame would
    remain without further shaking;
        but since never from this depth has any one
    returned alive, if I hear the truth, without fear of
    infamy I answer you.
     
    61–66.  If I believed...I answer you: In answer to the pilgrim's promise of fame, Guido reveals his fear of infamy: he would say nothing more if he thought the pilgrim would return to earth, since he wishes to keep his reputation of having died repentant (which Dante had originally accepted; see the note to lines 79–81). Just as Guido in life gullibly believed an exaggerated promise, so here he has gullibly accepted the devil's word (cf. the inscription on the gate, 3.9). The lines are the epigraph to T. S. Eliot's epochal "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
  • Dante Alighieri, Inferno, trans. Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander (New York: Anchor, 2002)
    ‘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.
     
    61–66.  Guido's response, made familiar to English readers by T. S. Eliot as the epigraph to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, makes it clear that, for him, report among the living would bring infamy, not fame. Since he believes that Dante is a damned soul, and thus unable to regain the world of the living, he will speak.
  • Dante Alighieri, The Inferno, trans. John Ciardi (New York: Signet Classics, 1982).
    “If I believed that my reply were made
    to one who could ever climb to the world again,
    this flame would shake no more. But since no shade
     
    ever returned—if what I am told is true—
    from this blind world into the living light,
    without fear of dishonor I answer you.
  • Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy I: Inferno, trans. Robin Kirkpatrick (London: Penguin, 2006)
           ‘Should I suppose, in answering, I spoke
    to any person who should ever see
    the world again, this flame would shake no more.
           But since, if all I hear is true, there’s none
    who ever yet, alive, escaped these deeps,
    I may reply without the fear of infamy.
  • Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, vol. 1 Inferno, trans. Mark Musa (New York: Penguin, 1984).
    “If I thought that I were speaking to a soul
        who someday might return to see the world,
        most certainly this flame would cease to flicker;
     
    but since no one, if I have heard the truth,
        ever returns alive from this deep pit,
        with no fear of dishonor I answer you:


1  Let us go then, you and I:


1  Let us go then, you and I,
2  When the evening is spread out against the sky

  • Dante Alighieri, Canto IV, The Inferno, trans. John Ciardi (New York: Signet Classics, 1982).
    13  Death-pale, the Poet spoke: “Now let us go
    14  into the blind world waiting here below us.
    15  I will lead the way and you shall follow.”
     
    22  Now let us go, for a long road awaits us.”
    23  So he entered and so he led me in
    24  to the first circle and ledge of the abyss.




Beyond the Pale

“Love heeds not caste nor sleep a broken bed. I went in search of love and lost myself.”
Hindu Proverb.
[...]
One day the man—Trejago his name was—came into Amir Nath’s Gully on an aimless wandering; and, after he had passed the buffaloes, stumbled over a big heap of cattle food.
Then he saw that the Gully ended in a trap, and heard a little laugh from behind the grated window. It was a pretty little laugh, and Trejago, knowing that, for all practical purposes, the old Arabian Nights are good guides, went forward to the window, and whispered that verse of “The Love Song of Har Dyal” which begins:
    Can a man stand upright in the face of the naked Sun; or a Lover in the Presence of his Beloved?
    If my feet fail me, O Heart of my Heart, am I to blame, being blinded by the glimpse of your beauty?
There came the faint tchinks of a woman’s bracelets from behind the grating, and a little voice went on with the song at the fifth verse:
    Alas! alas! Can the Moon tell the Lotus of her love when the Gate of Heaven is shut and the clouds gather for the rains?
    They have taken my Beloved, and driven her with the pack-horses to the North.
    There are iron chains on the feet that were set on my heart.
    Call to the bowman to make ready—
The voice stopped suddenly, and Trejago walked out of Amir Nath’s Gully, wondering who in the world could have capped “The Love Song of Har Dyal” so neatly.
[...]
Trejago threw all the rubbish into the fireplace and laughed. He knew that men in the East do not make love under windows at eleven in the forenoon, nor do women fix appointments a week in advance. So he went, that very night at eleven, into Amir Nath’s Gully, clad in a boorka, which cloaks a man as well as a woman. Directly the gongs in the City made the hour, the little voice behind the grating took up “The Love Song of Har Dyal” at the verse where the Panthan girl calls upon Har Dyal to return. The song is really pretty in the Vernacular. In English you miss the wail of it. It runs something like this:—
Alone upon the housetops, to the North
    I turn and watch the lightning in the sky —
The glamour of thy footsteps in the North,
    Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

Below my feet the still bazar is laid
    Far, far below the weary camels lie —
The camels and the captives of thy raid,
    Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

My father’s wife is old and harsh with years,
    And drudge of all my father’s house am I. —
My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears,
    Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
As the song stopped, Trejago stepped up under the grating and whispered:—“I am here.”
Bisesa was good to look upon.
That night was the beginning of many strange things, and of a double life so wild that Trejago today sometimes wonders if it were not all a dream.

—Rudyard Kipling, "Beyond the Pale," Plain Tales from the Hills (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, 1898): 143–51.
 


2. Bohemian Boston at the Turn of the Century


Here is a summary thumbnail description of Eliot during his Harvard days from Steven Watson's Strange Bedfellows: The First American Avant-Garde (1991): "Bloodless, intellectual, nattily dressed, [Eliot] outwardly conformed to Harvard's social caste, aspiring to the clubs on Mount Auburn Street and the traditional literary clubs. But mostly he buried himself in his studies, which provided a well-polished shield for his intense shyness. Eliot's significant undergraduate experiences included his discovery of Symbolist poetry and his introspective wanderings around Boston, which he described as 'quite civilized but refined beyond the point of civilization.' They inspired such early poems as 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'" (Watson, Steven, 33). (52)



With the publication of the manuscript of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by Christopher Ricks in Inventions of the March Hare, we are able to see the poem in the process of becoming the poem we know. The text of the manuscript poem is dated (after the last lines) July–August 1911, when Eliot was in Munich at the end of his European tour near the finish of his academic year in Paris. [...] Some parts of the poem (including the Prince Hamlet lines) had been written earlier in 1910, before Eliot left for Paris. A major cut Eliot made before publication was nearly the whole (but not all) of "Prufrock's Pervigilium," an "insert" not completed presumably until 1912, which Aiken (according to Eliot) advised cutting (Gordon, EEY, [end of page 152] 45). We learn from the manuscript that "Prufrock" once had a parenthetical subtitle, "(Prufrock among the Women)."
And we also learn that its original epigraph was "'Sovegna vos al temps de mon dolor'— / Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina" ("'Be mindful in due time of my pain.' / Then he hid him in the fire which refines them"). These lines come at the end of Dante's Purgatorio, Canto XXVI, and are spoken by Arnaut Daniel, one of those who "failed to restrain their carnal appetites within the limits prescribed by the social institutions of humanity," or who "had not even observed the laws laid down by nature" (Dante, Purgatorio, 331, 322-23). It is perhaps the most important revelation of the manuscript of the "Love Song," linking Prufrock to the band of those brought together in Purgatory for the sin of same-sex lust—a lust that transcended "normal" sexual desire and that came to be known early in the twentieth century as Uranian or homosexual, identified not as "lust" but as same-sex love. With this revelation, the original subtitle, "Prufrock among the Women," makes some sense: the poem portrays a man who cannot love—feel sexual desire for—women; the question of same-sex love is not confronted in the poem except by inference, obliquely. [...]

There is the assertion by the poet, often ignored or discounted, that there was indeed a companion for the poem's speaker. In response to a query from Kristian Smidt, when writing his Poetry and Belief in the Work of T. S. Eliot (1949, 1961), Eliot wrote: "As for 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' anything I say now must be somewhat conjectural, as it was written so long ago that my memory may deceive me; but I am prepared to assert that the 'you' in 'The Love Song' is merely some friend or companion, presumably of the male sex, whom the speaker is at that moment addressing, and that it has no emotional content whatever' (Smidt, 85; emphasis added). [...] Eliot's statement—that the companion of Prufrock being of the "male sex" has "no emotional content whatever"—seems revealingly gratuitous. Such a statement from the author can only signal to the alert reader that it might be interesting to explore what "emotional content" it was Eliot wanted to dismiss so irrevocably. [...]
Later, near the end of his career, Eliot was asked about "Prufrock" in a 1962 interview published in the Granite Review. He said that Prufrock "was partly a dramatic creation of a man of about 40...and partly an expression of feelings of my own." He then made a significant generalization: "I always feel that dramatic characters who seem living creations have something of the author in them" (quoted in Bush, TSESCS, 241–42).

—James E. Miller Jr., T. S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet, 1888–1922 (University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2005): 52, 152–53.


Perhaps Pound's biggest discovery for Poetry was T. S. Eliot, whom he met in September of 1914 through the American poet Conrad Aiken. Their careers would intertwine tightly over the next decade both with each other and with magazines such as Poetry or The Dial, publishers such as The Egoist Ltd. or Alfred A. Knopf, and patrons such as John Quinn. "He has sent in the best poem I have yet had or seen from an American," exulted Pound to Monroe over "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." "pray god it be not a single and unique success" (SL, 40). Pound considered Eliot the only American he knew who had both trained and modernized himself in the art of poetry, and delighted in maneuvering Eliot into print past the objections and sometimes the rejections of more conventional editors. He deliberately chose "Prufrock" rather than "Portrait of a Lady" for Eliot's debut, viewing "Prufrock" as more experimental and distinctive, and hence more helpful for differentiating Eliot at once from other poets. Indeed, the leaps, allusions, and rhythms of "Prufrock" seemed so experimental that Pound had to coax Monroe into printing it at all, assuring her that winter from the Sussex cottage he again shared with Yeats, that the poem did not "go off at the end." To her credit, Monroe finally did publish it in the June 1915 issue, Eliot's first verse to appear in print since his undergraduate publications in the Harvard Advocate of 1908–10.

—George Bornstein, "Pound and the Making of Modernism," The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, ed. Ira B. Nadel (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001): 32.


 


 Study Questions


 



Vocabulary


allusion
rhyme
rhythm
repetition
simile
metaphor
metonymy
imagery
symbol, symbolic
irony, ironic
drama, dramatic
interior monologue
consciousness
fragmentation
collage
alienation
relationships
associations
tragic hero, anti-hero
aging
voice, voices
modern, modernism, the modern experience
make it new
experimentation
tradition
myth, mythology, myth-making
love
time



Sample Student Responses to T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" 


Study Question:


Response 1:


 

 

 

 

 

Student Name

2202235 Reading and Analysis for the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

January 15, 2016

Reading Response 1

 

Title

 

Text.

 

 

 

 

 

            

 

 

 


Reference


Eliot, T. S. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Poetry 6.3 (1915): 130–35.

Eliot, T. S. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Prufrock and Other Observations. London: The Egoist, 1917. 9–16.

Eliot, T. S. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Collected Poems 1909–1962. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963. 3–7. Print.



Links
Texts
Introduction and Commentary
Critical Articles
 Resources
 Modernism The Divine Comedy
  • The Divine Comedy, Digital Dante, Columbia University
  • The Divine Comedy, The Electronic Literature Foundation (27 searchable editions of the Divine Comedy)
  • Danteworlds, University of Texas at Austin ("multimedia journey" into the worlds of Dante's Divine Comedy)

 

 

Media
  • T. S. Eliot Reads "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (8:22 min.)

  • Anthony Hopkins Reads "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (6:22 min.)

  • Langdon Hammer, Modern Poetry, Yale University (2007; three lectures, with downloadable transcript, audio, and video clips)
    • Lecture 10 (49:47 min.; early poetry including "Prufrock")
    • Lecture 11 (50:00 min.; "Prufrock" and "The Wasteland")
    • Lecture 12 (49:59 min.; "The Wasteland")

  • "T. S. Eliot," Arena, BBC (2009 documentary on the life and work of Eliot; 1 hr. 30 min.)

 


T. S. Eliot

 


Further Reading 


Bush, Ronald, ed. T. S. Eliot: The Modernist in History. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. Print.


Menand, Louis. Discovering Modernism: T. S. Eliot and His Context. 2nd ed. Oxford: OUP, 2007. Print.

 

 

 

 

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Last updated March 20, 2016