Learning Paths » 5B Interacting
SE UNA MATTINA D'ESTATE MIO FIGLIO
LETTERA A MIO FIGLIO SULLA PASSIONE PER I LIBRI
by Roberto Crotoneo
cap 4: La passione
People need poetry to comprehend the world. The book is a letter R: Crotoneo has written to his son of three years. In "La Passione", the writer writes about a T. S. Eliot's famous poem: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a T. S. Eliot's poem, contained in the collection Prufrock and Other Observations. The long and strange title reflects the complex nature of J. Alfred Prufrock, who lives an inner conflict: he would do something but he isn't able to do it, he's paralyzed (the same concept of J. Joyce) because he's afraid about his action consequences.
All the poem is a monologue where Prufrock talks to himself. It begins with an epigraph which reports some line of Dante's Divina Commedia (Inferno, canto XXVII).
Eliot's poem lines are cold because it deals with a city.
J. A. Prufrock's stream of consciousness is the core, the essence of the poetry.
The fog is personified ; in the "Love Song" everything is immaterial and immobile, there is the presence of the paralysis (Joyce).
The concept of time is central: the stream of time is marked by everyday gestures.
In the poem there is a sense of lack, of loss. Prufrock is in love with his neighbor but he's afraid of reveal himself. In Eliot's opinion is better to act and to mistake then to not act. Prufrock, instead, thinks to declare his love for the woman every day, but then he doesn't act and meanwhile time passes and he grows old.