Notes about R. Cotroneo's Se una Mattina d'Estate un Bambino (13/3/12)

The writer Roberto Cotroneo analysis the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by the Modernist poet T.S. Eliot in the chapeter La passione taken from his novel Se una mattina d'estate un bambino. The chapter is a monologue the writer holds addressing his little child.
At the very beginning of the chapter, the writer says that poetry does not only delight people, but it also helps people to understand the world.
Anlaysing the poem The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock, the reader understands that the poem deals with a man who has not the courage to do what he really wants. The main character is J. Alfred Prufrock and he does not act because he is afraid of the consequences of his actions.
After a presentation of the poem, Mr Cotroneo analyzes the epigraph Mr Eliot inserts here. It is taken from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, from the XXVII chapter. In this way Eliot shows a world that inherited Dante but at the same time he underlines the emptiness of the contemporary world. In the epigraph Count Guido da Montefeltro reveals Dante his secret because he thinks that no one will know it.

Mr Cotroneo goes on analysing the first stanza. He writes that the first lines are unemotional because they present a squalid city. Mr Prufrock is talking with his consciousness, that is also the most important theme of the poem. The images Mr Eliot uses to describe the evening are deeply unemotional: he compares the evening to an eteherized patient lyed on a table. The metaphor of a consciousness without memories because they have been deleted by many recovers is in contrast with the epighraph. Furthermore the metaphor is in opposition also with consciousness setting, that is an emotional and reassuring image, but that underlines immobility of the character and of the period, as J. Joyce underlined in his works.
The man is walking on a street: the streets represent an organized life. When the street finishes there is the reframe, that gives unity to the poem. In the reframe there are some women who are wlaking in a room talking of the Renaissance artist Michelangelo: the poet wants to show the emptiness of that period and also the decline of culture.
In the second stanza there is yellow smoke that moves like a cat: the world has got human or animal features and the writer uses a sensual language in describing fog and smoke. The atmosphere is the autumn one.
In this stanza Mr Prufrock says there is time to prepare his face before going out and it underlines that he is afraid of showing himself to other people. Time is another important theme: it flows and it is measured throughout every day rituals, like the tea in the afternoon. Moreover in the second stanza there is a sense of loss and the need of something new, that introduces the theme of quest: the protagonist checks everything and searches something new.
In the third stanza Mr Prufrock imagines the person to whom he wants to confess hi feelings. It is his secret and he can not tell it anybody, but only to his consciousness so the poem becomes an interior monologue. He is different from Guido da Montefeltro: he tells Dante his secret, but only because he thinks it will be not known by anoyone.
Mr Prufrock has no talent and Mr Eliot criticizes him because he does not act: it is better to act and make a mistake. Presenting Mr Prufrock the poet shows the insubstantiality of contemporary life. The protagonist of the poem has dreamt the action but he has not have the courage to do it. He does not decide anything in his life, but he knows that he would have done it. Mr Prufrock does not propose but he thinks about it every day: time flows throughout his ineptitude.
In the following stanza the character is presented also throughout people's point of view: he presents himself as the other expect.