“… No sense in asking it “Where do you come from?”. It’s getting lost but never being lost. No, it’s not scary, it’s being astonished, having big eyes, forgetting the question “How did I come here”. It’s so senseless when you were always there. Memorial of the present.” (Christian)
“Only in dreams, in poetry, in play do we sometimes arrive at what we were before we were this thing that, who knows, we are.” (Cortazar)
The short story The playboy of Glenageary by Joseph O’Connor (an extract from Synge: A Celebration, edited by Colm Tóibín), inspired by real events in the life of JM Synge, speaks of the playwright in first person.
I find this story an ironic testimony of the playwright about himself. Himself and his dried out life. He’s writing in future tense, like everything is determined. He knows everything, not only about himself – he knows everything even about the one he loves. Is there anything more boring from pure determination, especially after it is known, uncovered… But
he is aware of this boredom, and narcistically in love with it. In love with himself, his lack of vividness, his “oldness” (with 36!?!), his lack of daring, lack of fighting for himself. He keeps it as the most unchangeable physical law. He alone is the gravity itself. And all the other things are just mare planets turning around in a predetermined way. He is everything to those he cares for (the mother, the lover). He is always behind: behind the stage, behind her life, even behind his own life. Married only to himself and his mother. And after finding all this out, he can only expose it in half content, half ironic way. The most interesting combination, I’d say!
It might seem that there is a big similarity between the storyteller of this story and Prufrock (both are ironic and both in a way narcistic), but while Prufrock wonders if he should dare, while he thinks, reflects about it, this storyteller is far away from any sort of wondering. For him, it’s all set forth,
like a drama play. For Prufrock, on the other hand, the universe is too big to be squeezed into a ball.
I can’t accept that Prufrock is striking against the lust (which would be, in this case, going against the life itself); the whole poem is so full of passion, and to give Prufrock a role of a “moral teacher” or of the “voice of conscience” would do the unjust to the poem. The lines that make me say this, are first those where he says “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.” Now, I don’t think this negation is simply something that Prufrock expects as a potential answer to his “disturbing of the universe”; it is also what he himself agrees with – that all these possible “warnings” cannot simply “squeeze the universe into a ball”, as “that is not it at all”.
I think lust is one of those things belonging to “this world”, the world of everyday life, and it falls under the things Prufrock would like not to criticize, but to subject to the burden of time. When he says that there will be time to wonder “Do I dare?”, he tells us two things:
1) we all the time stand in front of the point which, if crossed, we start daring (that’s why the second reflective questions “and, ‘Do I dare?’” – dare to act against this everyday life, to put questions, to question the time itself and the entire meaning of life;
2) the question of daring shows that Prufrock isn’t afraid of lust (to dare is, in a way, a lustful action, it’s a way of stepping over the borders of what is simply given).
Prufrock knows there’s something wrong with this usual, unreflected living, but he is, on the other hand, uncertain if questioning it would make any
sense, if it would bring anything or just miss the point. He knows in the end he wouldn’t be satisfied (”And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.” – afraid of not knowing the sense of everything, of life, of love, of lust, of time, of finiteness, of death).
Although it might seem that motives of Lazarus and John the Baptist are directly referring to lust and sin, lust and sin are here more symbols for something mortal, human, which cannot be understood by a simple reflection, cause “this is not it at all”.
As for the mermaids, maybe we should remember Ulysses at this point: Prufrock maybe wants to say that he’s too far in his thoughts in order to be able to hear the song of enchantment; he can see them and hear them, but he remains outside of their game. He has been among them, has played the games of love and passion, until human voices – our thoughts, reflections – wake him and he drowns.
In any case, I don’t think it is possible to put such a poem in the frame of only one interpretation. But it is wonderful to discuss its possible meanings!
Hmm, maybe I’m just too influenced by the “interpretation”of the poem offered in the film Till Human Voices Wake Us, as it speaks of love captured within the particular timeframe, which suddenly comes back again in an almost super-natural way; but maybe, on the other side, this is why this film is so great – since in this seeing of the poem – time and finiteness – the poem tuches such a strong and shaking topic.
I can’t accept that Prufrock is suffering from the lack of love, I don’t think his confusion comes from there at all. I think it comes from the finiteness of our (human) being, where something eternal and infinite like love has to fit in.
Maybe i’m completely wrong, but I see Prufrock suffering from the time and finiteness which are streched over love so that in the end there appears the question of its sense: what is the sense of anything if it is condemned to be finite? (-> an overwhelming question). And then, what is the sense of asking this in the unreflected world, completely drawn in time, not aware of its finitness? (-> “this is not it at all…”) When Prufrock speaks of an overwhelming question, it is the time he asks about; when he speaks of squeezing the universe into a ball, it is the problem of understanding our finiteness he has in mind (how can a finite being like ourselves, understand something infinite like a universe?); the same goes for “disturbing the universewhe”; when he speaks of daring – it is the trial to make something infinite inspite of this destiny, to love, simply to love; when he speaks of Lazarus, it is the perspective of someone from the other world, someone out of time who can judge, see and understand our finiteness; when he ironically speaks of wearing his trousers rolled, he brings in the idea of fighting with time, getting younger; when he mentiones mermaids, he speaks of forgeting, forgeting the time (-> Ulysses); when he speaks of “human voices”, he refers to the reflection of finiteness that wakes us up from our unreflective life “among the mermaids”.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
According to some interpretations, the poem speaks of a man who is afraid to approach the loved one, or who wants to strike against the lustful, sinful life, or who is simply in love and now moans and wipes…
As every great poem, this one offers the possibility to be interpreted in thousand different way, and I can only say what it meant to me.
In my opinion, it is about the love of two humans, but seen in the light of “an overwhelming question”. What is this overwhelming question, what does bother Prufrock so much, what makes him think if he should dare?
Let us remember the following lines:
There will be time, there will be time
…
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair
…
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will
reverse.
…
For I have known them all already, known them all:–
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
…
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so
peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
… and so on (maybe i didn’t do the justice to the poem by cutting it in pieces) – isn’t this poem so much about time and and its (metaphysical) weight? About being so powerless in front of the overwhelming question of our existence-in-time, of its untouchable being, which is nonetheless familiar, even too familiar, but which is impossible to capture in
words, as “this is not it at all”…?
The Love Song of Alfred Jay Prufrock by T.S. Eliot is one of the most intriguing poems I have ever read. The first time I read it, it sucked me in, and I couldn’t stop reading it over and over again. There is something so intime about it, that it comes close to be described as scary. I’ll try in what follows to give some thoughts on this poem. The aspect of the poem I’d like to develop is the time and finiteness.
I’d like to thank to CR Mittal, dialogues with whom helped me see and formulate my points. His comments and ideas have been of so much help!
(The portrait of T. S. Eliot by Wyndham Lewis was taken from TodayInLiterature)
