JHON DONNE, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

Title:

The poet uses an imperative to ban someone’s tears due to a leaving. So the reader aspects a courting poem in order to persuade someone in being strong even if his/her sorrows will be huge.

Analysis:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->The poet prompts his love to melt without a noise production, and to behave virtuously.  Indeed another kind of behavior would degrade their feelings. He even use “profanation” to express desecration, so a loss of its superhuman qualities which link it to divine. Therefore their love would become “laity”, that is common. In defining something sacred, they emphasize its elitariety: not all people are able to feel it.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->It’s not unusual the analogy with earth’s movement: these create sorrows and fears rather than the innocence which comes from the spheres. So, it comes out two kind of love:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->1)    <!--[endif]-->Dull lovers: defining them sublunary, that is hold to an imperfect world (another negative connotation linked to dull, so people with intellect’s loss). They can’t stand separation because it’d cause their ephemeral love’s end 

<!--[if !supportLists]-->2)    <!--[endif]-->Us: a so refined love (deep and detailed, unsuperficial and focus on the essence) that even the lovers, proving it in their skin, aren’t able to understand it. This because humans are finite but this feeling is so aulic to tend to the infinite, to the divine. So powerful to be a more mental involvement, rather than a physical’s one. Indeed it involves the mind but not the eyes, the hands and the lips, the primarily love’s contact points: first the vision by the eyes, further more a touch by the hands and finally the lips contact in a kiss. But concerning the mind, the two lovers’ souls have become one. Therefore, they won’t suffer because they won’t be divided: they will just move away broadening.

The similitude of gold stresses their love’s preciosity: it is compared with the most rare and expensive mineral.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->But obviously physically they are two different pieces. So they’re like a compass: each of them are one of the two poles, together but one is able to move, widening itself, and the other one is firm. But this one is moving too together the other, in order to permit a circle’s drawing. Indeed it is the centre when the other is turning, it bends and extends towards the latter, and finally is straight in the rejoining. At this moment the mover pole comes back home.

This is the way the two lovers have to follow: together but each one supporting the other’s needs, always prospecting a rejoining. The love’s firmness will create a perfect circle, in which the end is the beginning.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->As regards the imagines, the most of them are natural: tear-floods, sigh-tempests move, earth, spheres and gold. These are all linked to sublunary lovers, that is the pure love is over the nature too.

T.S. ELIOT, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Title:

Starting from the title we can hypothesize that the poem will consist in a love song, sang by Alfred Prufrock. His name is composed by the words “Pruf”(which reminds the word “proof”, that is linked to the idea of challenge) and the word “Rock”(which gives us the idea of stillness and inability to do something,  supposedly the “Proof”).

Analysis:

The structure is unusual: there are no regular rhymes and stanzas don’t follow a pattern.

            Apart from the refrain(which gives us the idea of the song), the reader is lost, for Eliot decides to make the character speak to his consciousness(which for definition doesn’t follow a regular path). The tool to decode such choice is the quotation from Dante: the confession of Guido Monferrati, which is sure that his words will remain private because he’s speaking to his consciousness.  At the same way, Prufrock reflects on his fear to do something hoping that his confession will remain private.  Such choice achieves the effect of making the reader see exactly what Prufrock sees.

J. Alfred Prufrock is afraid and suffering, but  he pretends to be self assured but his condition is the inability to reveal his love to the beloved. And the rhythm and metaphors gives us the idea of sufferance(e.g. the anesthetized patient).

In the first stanza Prufrock starts his walk not with the reader, but with his consciousness: the evening is like an anesthetized patient, the places he sees are dirty and squalid, but he doesn’t stop anywhere, he just keeps walking.

Moving on, the fog covers the city, compared to a cat rubbing on a window.

The fourth stanza is a continuous repetition of the word “time” in order to emphasize both its long duration and its flow unceasingly.  Indeed hearing “time” for eight times the reader thinks about the clock’s movement, that is the hours’ sticking.

Furthermore, the time’s flowing is augmented deeply by the rhetorical questions (Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”) and the inversion (Do I dare).

The rhetorical question “Disturb the universe?”  let the reader understand that Prufrock’s love is the one which brings both lover’ soul and physic. Indeed his failure possibility to be unpaid, could disturb not just himself or the nature, but the universe itself. So it’s the most powerful love.

Moving on he makes a list of all his known topics, and it makes the reader know that he has really lived a life. But until now, he lived without one of the best satisfactions: love.

The choice of comparing his days with butt-ends emphasizes Prufrock’s feeling. His days are like a cigarette’s worst part: the end that makes even burning a little bit your lips. So it produce sorrows.

Therefore it comes out Prufrock’s mental devastation: continuous carrying on  hoping for a good future, which will never become true. His fear to be unpaid  prevents him from trying, and waiting. But time went on and is still going on, consuming him, and preventing his joy.

The use of the dramatic monologue gives the poem a universal value: Prufrock(the dramatis personae) speaks to himself, but by means of this, he reveals the reader a universal truth: the awareness that heroes exist no more, we are only humans which will never act(heroes take action). However, the tragedy in Prufrock’s consciousness does not change something, we are condemned not to act because of our humanity. But it’s a suggestion too: waiting doesn’t bring you to anything apart from suffering, so we should express our feelings and thoughts in order to live better. Human are no longer heroes, because no one would like to die for his/her values. Saying that, you don’t have to forget that heroes are in the middle between human and gods. So they’re more than human. Therefore, why don’t die for your own values and being a hero? Because of a fear. But if you do not win your fears, you will never be happy, and you’ll go on living like all the others.