MCorte - T.S.Eliot's Output and Metaphysical Poetry - The Love Song of John Alfred Prufrock

 

The love song of John Alfred Prufrock is a poem composed by Thomas Stern Eliot in 1910. In the title Eliot immediately explains the main points of the poem: in the poem he takes the traditional poem which is the love poem but in his case it will be adapted to the modern condition. In fact the poem is not referred to the poet himself, apparently, but to the private experiences of a normal man who reports by his speaking voice. The character, John Alfred Prufrock, makes the contrast between the traditional love song and the loves ong of this man. This "love song" doesn't contain any sentimentical contents but it expresses the condition of the modern man, using John Alfred Prufrock.
The poem is introduced by a quotation from the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, a poet very appreciated by Eliot. In the quotation it is reported the meeting between Dante and Guido da Montefeltro in the eight circle of the Hell: the second one accepts to talk to Dante because he thinks no one will ever know what he said. This quotation is chosen by Eliot because it refers to the same situation of the protagonist of the poem: as Guido, Proufrock exposes his sentimental situation because he thinks no one will hear his discourse. In this way Eliot refers also to the narrative technique he adopted that is dramatic monologue
Eliot makes structure to remind of a theatre representation. In fact according to him, theatre is the most ideal way to express drama or dramatic situation, and this is Eliot's aim. The structure is also based on the mechanical repetitions of daily life that insists on Prufrock's life. Moreover it is not an unique poem because the structure seems as an arrangement of more poems. In this way, Eliot expresses the continous succession of life driving to oldness and death.
This poem is an example of Modernist poem. The main character is not a hero but an anti-hero as Leopold Bloom in "Ulysses by James Joyce: he is an unstable character, in fact he is trying to make a research but he can't find a balance of his life. For that reason he is an emotional character, not able to manage and process his feelings, but he is most at all afraid. He is a Modernist character, because he is total awareness to do something. The immobility of his condition may be read in the surname of the character, Prufrock: in fact it alludes to "rock", symbol of immobility. Moreover the paralyze of the character reminds still of James Joyce's poetry, especially to Dubliners, where Joyce described the paralyzed life of some characters. This is another relationship of Eliot with the Modernist literature.
In the poem, Eliot uses technique of dramatic monologue. This technique was born in the Victorian Age and it was first adopted by Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson(his name reminds of the name of the protagonist of Eliot's poem, named as Alfred). It is a technique inspired by Shakespeare's monologues: it was used in the famous monologue of Hamlet. But Modernist poets makes more darker his message. The main character is used as a mask for the poet, a sort of dramatis persona, narrating his experiences in first person: it is a technique used to confess his own emotional outbursts. In the Eliot's poem but also in the Modernist literature the context is more dramatic and full of disorders. Prufrock admits not to be Prince Hamlet, and in this way Eliot admits also his distance from the previous age and express his pain of living: using the device of John Alfred Prufrock, it rends tragedy of nature of people's unconsciousness(fears, weakness, inability to choice). Moreover, Eliot writes compact images to rend perceptible to the reader the life of Prufrock. It also describes his ritualistic life suggesting mechanical repetition that makes express insecurity.
Concluding the analyse of the poem, Love song of John Alfred Prufrock is not a common love song because it wants to report condition of Modernist man, unable to make a balance of his life. The protagonist reflects typical Modernist man because he is an unsure character, fixed in his common and boring daily life.
Passing to my opinion, Thomas Stern Eliot is an interestining author and is also quite enjoying to read his poetry. In fact this poem was enjoyable to read and also to discuss, and also analysing was quite interesting. I cannot say the reason why because I don't often find any specific reasons when I judge a poem.