dunja

How a concordance is a book that breaks down all the words of an author and lists them alphabetically, according to how many times they appear, where they appear. Shakespeare, for example, says natural x number of times. Milton says God x times and Satan x times. Imagine having your own concordance: all your words indexed. You could find out how many times you said love. Or yes. Or your name. And what it would be like to discover the concordance of whom you love left by your door one day in August. And what it would be like to hide it under your bed, afraid. And how long it took to look up your own name.

Ray Hsu (Concordance, in “Anthropy”)

***

(T.S.Eliot)

***

I’ve just seen the film It’s All About Love. Two people saving their lives from some other people. She is the world-famous ice skating star. They are about to divorce. She gets into some trouble since the mafia living from her fame wants to replace her with another girl and get rid of her.
So they get together again,trying now to run away.

LET us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky…

They visit a one-night cheap hotel. But not to find an overwhelming question. For there will be no time anymore.
People have started flying in Uganda. It’s snowing and it is July. A man on the radio is reminding everybody to empty the water from their glasses as the yearly phenomenon of all water turning into ice is about to happen again (so buy some antifreeze).

In the room the women come and go Talking of
Michelangelo.

The snow that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
Came in this soft July night,
To say good night but not to fall asleep.

For there will be no more time
For the white snow that slides along the street,
There’ll be no time, there’ll be no time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be no time to murder and create.
And look! There has never been the time
for all the works and days of hands
To lift and drop a question on your plate.

There is no time to wonder, “Do I dare?” for, I
dare.

We have disturbed the universe.
There is no more time
For a minute to reverse
decisions and revisions.

I won’t have to presume.
I’ll just say, I have gone at dusk through narrow
streets
And watched the snow in this July night
And was happy to be by your side.
Like a feather
Scuttling across the clouds in your eyes.

And the afternoon, the evening doesn’t sleep
peacefully.
And it’s not scary.
The tea and cakes and ices were enough
to force the moment to its crisis.

The moment of my greatness might soon flicker,
And the eternal Footman might hold my coat, and
snicker
And I’ll be afraid.
But not from him.

The cups, the marmalade, the tea,
this talk of you and me,
have squeezed the universe into a ball
It was worth it, after all…

And Lazarus came but was silent.

We have lingered in the chambers white and deep
By Snow-white and the seven dwarfs
Till our voices fade
And we fall asleep.

And how on earth can this film be so ubelievably misunderstood???!!!!! All the reviews do such an unjust to it, which is a shame for the world of art criticism…

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)