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Eliot poems:
THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK
RHAPSODY ON A WINDY NIGHT
life. In these poems, death is either absurd and violent in absolute solitude
or subdued in a dream-like state of exorbitant consciousness.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a poem not only establishes the
modern condition and the modern man, but the essence of the conflicting
modern mind. The lines in the epigraph are spoken by Count Guido de
Montefeltro, a damned soul in the Eighth Circle of Hell in Dantes Divine
Comedy (Inferno, Canto 27, lines 61 66). By presenting the epigraph in
Italian already achieves an obscured foreignness, as the title The Love
Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is already incongruent by the musicality and
lightness of a Love Song juxtaposed by the serious and formality of the
name J. Alfred Prufrock. Also, by using this intertextual extract from
Dante it establishes the poem with a Mock Heroic tone; Prufrock is
presumably a middle-aged man of working class, but pathetic and
indecisive. The city in which Prufrock is set is sterile and by using
enjambment, it further conveys the labyrinthine structure with sordid
images of the city; the sky etherised looming over the half-deserted
streets leading to one-night cheap hotels / And sawdust restaurants
that are of insidious intent. The romantic invitational opening Let us go
then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out against the sky is
undercut by the simile with a distinct modern tone Like a patient
etherised upon a table and is the first example of somnolence in the
poem. Etherised connotes the numbing of pain as well as artificial sleep,
suggesting not only does Prufrock perceive the sky to be sick, but the
modern condition to be diseased. This observation could also be
commenting about humanity being contaminated by industrialism and the
urbanised society as well as the results of the corruption by both World
Wars. The modern man is metaphorically sick and weary, and desires for
inactivity. The couplet In the room the women come and go / Talking of
Michelangelo is repeated twice and is considered as a disjointed scenario
as it is Prufrocks mental projection into the room, which is also his
destination. This sudden dislocation creates an effect showing a tension of
apprehension in Prufrocks mind. It also shows that his nature is
fragmented, and that fear is invading his tortured psyche.