THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

“The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was written by T. S. Elliot and it is a dramatic monologue in which Prufock is dialoguing with is consciousness.

Right from the title the intelligent reader could expect something musical that speaks about love. It is a song and the speaking voice is speak to his consciousness.

The dramatic monologue is introduced by an epigraphy which is taken from Dante’s Inferno. The voice is talking about itself and it speaks only because it knows that we do not tell anybody.

Starting reading the poem the reader can see that the song doesn’t follow the traditional scheme but it is composed by free verse and it is made up by juxtapositions of scene with creates dramatic effect.

In the first stanza “Let us go” is an invitation to do to desert streets when evening comes, while “you and I” are the two own nature of Prufrock. There are not many people in the streets follow "like a tedious argument" which has the aim to lead to an oppressive question. The speaking voice invites who reads to not ask what is the question.

The first scene is followed by a sort of refrain that is repeated through the whole song “ in the room the women come and go” while they are talking about Michelangelo who becomes a speech at a low cost.

In the second scene Eliot speaks about the yellow fog which strokes their back on the “window-panes” and so does also the yellow smoke which rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, which licks its tongue "into the corners of the evening".

In the third and fourth scenes the time seems to be forever for a series of actions and thoughts; there is time to “preparing a face to meet other people” and there is time to “murder and create” and there is time for “works  and days of hands"; there is time “for me”. Also there will be time to wonder about if he should dare, to change and “to come down the stair”. There is the refrain between the two sequences.

Following, the attention of the interlocutor and the reader is shifted on the Prufrock’s physically apparence. He is old now.

He makes another question because he wonders to know if he would disturb the universe and he adds that in a very short time: there is time for “decisions and revisions”. 

In the following scene the speaking voice gives an explanation about why he should not dare: he has known all the evenings, mornings, afternoons and he has quantified his life with coffee spoons, he has known voices which are dying with a fall at death's door.