“RHAPSODY ON A WINDY NIGHT”,

THE DISINCHANTEMENT OF THE MODERN MAN

ABSTRACT

The aim of this work is to establish to what extent there is the presence of elements

of the imagery and poetic work of the French poet Jules Laforgue in the poetic work by T.S.

Eliot, especially in the “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”. Due to the many connections between

these two poetic worlds we can get to establish the similarities between these two poets. To

create his text, T.S Eliot elaborates a sequence of images aiming at illustrating his vision of

modern world.

In most biographical material about the poet we read about the crucial discovery he

made with the book by Arthur Symons, The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899; 1919

revised and enlarged). Thanks to it, he discovered many French writers like Jules Laforgue

(Hamlet ou les suites de la piété filiale). The adoration Laforgue profeses for the moon

(L’imitation de Nôtre Dame la Lune) and the ironic character depicted in his relaboration of

Hamlet are possible intertext we can traced in the work by T.S. Eliot.

In “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” the image of a small kid appears thanks to the

memory of the narrator and that image is also transmitted in the whole work by Laforgue

when trying to return to his remote country of origin (Uruguay) and his childhood. The both

Eliot’s narrator and Laforgue’s poetic voice want to return to the primitive time, their

childhood, when there where no consciousness of the modern man. The sequence of
 Jules Laforgue 12th March 2019

images works to reinforce the heavy atmosphere the poetic voice wants to run away from,

in his sleep, not even moon is a consolation from this dreary life on modern earth.

William Montilla Narváez 2