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Assignments

On

Vision of Byzantium and its Underlying Meaning W. B. Yeats’ Byzantium Poems.

Prufrock and Geronation: A Comparative and Contrastive Analysis of the Two

Characters.

Borrowings, Adaptation and Articulation of A New Voice in T. S. Eliot’s “The Love

Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Geronation”.

Submitted by

Sanzana Islam

Batch: 44th

ID: 193-128-001

Eng-603

Submitted to

Prof. Suresh Ranjan Basak PhD

Dean

School of Humanities & Social Sciences

Department of English

Metropolitan University, Sylhet.

Date: 31 March 2020

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Vision of Byzantium and its Underlying Meaning in W. B. Yeats’ Byzantium Poems.

Byzantium is a symbolic poem that started life as a note in the diary of W.B.Yeats in

1930. He'd long been an admirer of Byzantine art and culture and wanted to combine this

passion with his belief in the spiritual journey of the artistic human soul.

'Describe Byzantium as it is in the system towards the end of the first Christian

millennium. A walking mummy. Flames at the street corners where the soul is

purified, birds of hammered gold singing in the golden trees, in the harbour dolphins

offering their backs to the waiting dead that they may carry them to Paradise.'

Yeats developed this initial scene into a five stanza dream-like drama that is packed with

symbols, allusion and visual strangeness. It has a sister poem 'Sailing to Byzantium' 

published earlier in 1925.

Although the reader is aware of being grounded in some sort of historic city -

Byzantium started life as a Greek colony before becoming Constantinople under the Romans

and is now modern Istanbul - the feeling persists that this could all be someone's exuberant

dream laid bare in the imagination of Yeats.

The narrative is both impersonal and personal; the speaker commentates from a

distance then comes closer to the reader with detailed first person description. There are

repeated words, ambiguous phrases, allusions to mythology, real experiences and unreal

experiences all kept under control by long and shorter, mostly iambic, rhyming lines.

It is known that Yeats had a great enthusiasm for the ancient culture of Byzantium. He

believed it represented an ideal, that the community who lived and worked there were

somehow united in spiritual and artistic purpose. Artistic achievement was proof of this

heightened awareness.

Yeats was also a restless questing individual who, although not conventionally

religious in a churchgoing sense, experimented with and actively pursued alternative spiritual
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goals. He became seriously involved with theosophy, the Cabbala, Hermeticism and

Spiritualism.

In his esoteric, philosophical work, A Vision, Yeats sets out his world view and how

humanity fits into a cosmic system of existence. For him, the cultural and artistic energies of

Byzantium were a perfect form, peaking at a special time in cyclic history. He wrote:

'I think if I could be given a month of Antiquity and leave to spend it where I chose, I

would spend it in Byzantium.....I think that in early Byzantium, maybe never before or

since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic and practical life were one, that

architect and artificers spoke to the multitude and the few alike.'

So what to make of this symbolic fantasy in rhyme? It combines art, history and esoteric

themes that Yeats studied and experimented with for most of his adult life. It weaves

mythology and symbolism in and out of scenes of spiritual transformation.

W. B. Yeats wrote his visionary poem, The Second Coming, in January 1919 when he

was 44 years old. Already established as a poet, theatre director, politician and esoteric

philosopher, this poem further enhanced his reputation as a leading cultural figure of the time.

In a 1936 letter to a friend, Yeats said that the poem was 'written some 16 or 17 years

ago and foretold what is happening', that is, Yeats poetically predicted the rise of a rough

beast that manifested as chaos and upheaval in the form of Nazism and Fascism, bringing

Europe to its knees.

Yeats had lived through tough times - World War 1 had seen unprecedented

slaughter; several Irish Nationalists had been executed in the struggle for freedom; the

Russian revolution had caused upheaval - and The Second Coming seemed to tap into the

zeitgeist.

'My horror at the cruelty of governments grows greater' he told a friend. His poem

seems to suggest that world affairs and spirituality must undergo transformation from time to
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time. Humankind has to experience darkness before the light can stream in again through the

cracks. Things might fall apart, systems collapse - spiritual refreshment can only be achieved

through the second coming: a Christian concept involving the return of Jesus Christ on Earth.

The cyclical structure of “Sailing to Byzantium” outlined above may be behind the

most often cited reactions to the poem. Yeats appears to have received this criticism on

“Sailing to Byzantium” from his friend T. Sturge Moore, which, ultimately, appears to have

led to the writing of “Byzantium.” Moore wrote: “[‘Sailing to Byzantium’] lets me down in

the fourth [stanza], as such a goldsmith’s bird is as much nature as a man’s body.”44 Indeed,

the element bird, as it bridges the natural and the eternal realms, is partly in nature. Moore’s

criticism, therefore – contrary to a widespread suggestion – might not have been seen by

Yeats as an observation that invalidated the structure of “Sailing to Byzantium.” It might

have merely meant, as Yeats himself wrote to Moore, that “the idea needed exposition.”

Finneran, along similar lines, suggests that “Moore had explicated the main idea of ‘Sailing

to Byzantium’ rather precisely – while thinking that the poem was attempting to say

something else.”

“Byzantium,” written in 1930, does reiterate many of the elements of “Sailing to

Byzantium”; moreover, its internal structure shares some characteristics with the other poem.

In “Byzantium,” the stanzas also seem to motivate separate images, but they are connected by

more than a temporal link and the recurrence of certain minims – connections that could also

be found in the earlier poem.

At the beginning of the first stanza, we find the element of the Emperor, whose

“soldiery are abed” (2). The description of dusk already contains a dual set-up of elements

reminiscent of the two contrary worlds of “Sailing to Byzantium.” On the one hand is “a

starlit or moonlit dome” (5) which “disdains” things placed on the other: man, complexities,

fury, mire, veins. These latter elements motivate a sub image of mortal life in the same
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manner as the first stanza of “Sailing to Byzantium” contains a description of life in nature.

Opposed to this image one finds celestial elements (star, moon) and an artificial, artistic

element serving as the exhibit of this portion of the text (dome), which may evoke the idea of

eternity as represented in/by undeceiving, seemingly timeless phenomena.

The analyses of the two Byzantium poems of W. B. Yeats have shown how a

common theme may be treated in essentially different ways. “Sailing to Byzantium” contrasts

the view of the ephemeral, worthless world with the vision of eternal art and Byzantium; its

structure is more linear, with the temporal dimension rooted in the interpretation, not in the

representation, as happens in “Byzantium.” In the latter poem, vision takes over, expelling

view, and becomes the view itself; the lyrical “I” is more suppressed; linearity, apart from

some vague hints at the passing of time, almost disappears.

At the same time “Byzantium,” especially because of the disappearance of the view,

is harder to interpret in itself. It is as if the poem relied on “Sailing to Byzantium” for a

context against which it becomes intelligible.

All of the differences between the poems listed above and taken from different layers

and levels point to the suggestion that “Byzantium” is an inherently symbolic text whereas

“Sailing to Byzantium” approximates that mode of writing without being entirely controlled

by it. This conclusion links and puts in a new light the various observations (regarding the

presence of the lyrical “I,” the use of rhetorical figures, etc.) made about the two Yeats texts,

and it also connects the arrival at symbolism with the arrival in the city of Byzantium, a place

constructed entirely out of a vision that appeared in front of the traveler.

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Prufrock and Geronation: A Comparative and Contrastive Analysis of the Two

Characters.

The 20thcentury, from its birth, marks cataclysm in all spheres of human life,

particularly through two World Wars, affecting the thoughts and activities of modern

generation. Such impacts and changes have been captured by the poets and writers, and they

are reflected in their works. Among them, T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)—a poet, philosopher and

critic of the century—observed keenly and presented the society successfully through his

poems. The poems, he composed, are apparently complicated and abstruse in nature for

versatile allusions and complex fragmentation, yet they sharply pinpoint the picture of

disjointed modern world. His poems reflect post-war generation, their deformities in forms of

psychological intricacies, spiritual drought, sexual barrenness, degeneration and even

dehumanization, and foreground a certain quest for redemption. This paper examines Eliot‘s

poems namely ―The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock‖ (1915),―Gerontion‖ (1920), The

Waste Land (1922)and ―The Hollow Men‖ (1925) in the light of Modernism. Though the

poems were written and published in different years in between 1920s and 1930s, each of

themholds strong applicability even after the Second World War, containinghomogeneity in

nature,content and implication.To have fuller grasp over modern life, the poems need

expansive reading and analysis. This paper also aims at highlighting the homogeneity of the

afore-mentioned poems in expounding indictment of post-war generation. Furthermore, the

concept of redemption suggested by Eliot has also been put to reassessment.

Eliot was a versatile genius—a poet, playwright, essayist, literary and social critic,

and a philosopher. The poet, an American by birth and a British by choice, called himself

―classicist in literature, royalist in politics and AngloCatholic in religion‖ (qtd. in Levinson

121). A voracious reader, he studied and mastered language, theology, history and

philosophy, and long before commencement of his literary career, he found tremendous
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impetus and interest in the French Symbolists—Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Mallarme, and

Laforgue—whom he first encountered in 1908, in a book by Arthur Symons called The

Symbolist Movement in Literature. Stephen Coote suggests, ―The French Symbolist poets

were of great importance to Eliot‘s development‖ (20). The year 1914 was a turning point for

Eliot as it was the year Eliot met Ezra Pound (1885-1972), his real mentor and a proponent of

imagism. Pound actually encouraged Eliot, helped him write and publish his early poem like

―The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock‖. Cootepoints out:

[Ezra] Pound was a brilliant sponsor of young literary talent, and Eliot was one of the

finest disciples among the London Literary figures. Pound set about grooming Eliot,

concerning himself generously in the material details of his life and borrowing money

for the publication of The Love Song of J .Alfred Prufrock and Other Observations.

(21)

Thus the French Symbolist poets and Pound paved the way for Eliot and a new literary trend

called Modernism. Besides, Pound appreciated Eliot‘s poems and style of Modernismand

praised Eliot as a modernist poet pronouncing that Eliot ― has actually trained himself and

modernized himself on his own‖ (qtd. in Eliot 7). The statement clarifies how Eliot has turned

out to be a self-made modernist.

Modernismis the concept used to imply a polygonal movement or revolutionary

practices especially in literature, arts, music, film, architectureand the visual.Though the term

is oftenplaced to mean a period of time approximately between 1910s and 1940s, it actually

emerged as a literary movement in the 1890s, reached its peak in the wake of World War I,

and remained influential to the late 1940s. The term cannot be taken as a singular consistent

movement; rather,it functioned as a multifaceted platform where a variety of movements,

artifacts, thinkers, artists, and cultural practices came together under an umbrella term called

‗Modernism‘. It shook the base of literature adopting diverse, distinguished and novel
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characteristics in contents and concepts, language and styles, expression and narration, and

structure of a literary work. Jeff Wallace declares Modernism as ―the moment at which art

stops making sense‖(3). The termis defined by J.A. Cuddon as ―A breaking away from

established rules, traditions and conventions, fresh ways of looking at man‘s position and

function in the universe, and many experiments in form and style‖ (516). Peter Barry

considers it an ―Earthquake in the arts which brought down much of the structure of

pretwentieth century practice in music, painting, literature and architecture‖ (78). Modernism

is therefore regarded as the herald of changes and experimentation because it has opened up

ways for diversity in literature.

T.S. Eliot’s earlier poems, published in two volumes titled Prufrock and Other

Observations (1917) and 1920 (initially named Ara Vos Prec) have been eclipsed by The

Waste Land (1921) and its extraordinarily rich, multifaceted reception. Yet most of the

poems contained in these first two books prefigure what was to come later: what explodes in

The Waste Land is as it were latent in the verses that preceded it. Although it may sound

paradoxical, we could even state that the poems written before 1921 complete the poem that

followed them. This impression is reinforced by the fact that most readers come to “The Love

Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” or “Gerontion” 1 after having read Eliot’s best-known poem,

even perhaps with some critical or historical knowledge about it.

The purpose of this essay is to analyse Eliot’s earlier production, in search of

consistencies with the later poems (especially The Waste Land) in terms of imagery, where

they are more obvious. A number of images will be discussed in the sections that follow;

together, they make up an imagery cluster or construct that could be labelled “the city,” or, as

suggested by the title, “the proto-wasteland,” since it contains, developed or in embryo, some

of the basic components of “the wasteland” construct, more complex in its range of images

and the meanings they convey.

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Middle aged perhaps around 40 (his head has grown slightly bald, and Eliot himself

said he had his age roughly in mind), socially awkward, living in a world he considers stifling

and unsatisfying, his own place in that world not clearly defined (he is not a prophet like John

the Baptist; nor he prince Hamlet, but “an attendant lord” or ‘the fool’ in other words, a bit

part actor rather than the starring role, even in his own life). He is perhaps slightly pretentious

and affected, given the styling of his name in the title as J. Alfred Prufrock (rather than for

instance, John Prufrock). He has perhaps been tempted to approach prostitutes (see the

reference to basre,braceleted arms in ‘ the lamplight’ suggesting women he encounters in the

street ,but how much experience his ever had with women is doubtful. Prufrock suffers from

his fear of rejection. He doesn’t pursue girls as his self doubt restrains him from making a

move. This fear was illustrated using the lines “ In the room the women come and go/

Talking of Michelangelo” . This allusion to Michelangelo shows that the women in the poem

are well cultured. The allusions in the poem also helped create a definite contrast of Prufrock

from other novel characters. T.S. Eliot’s another poem is “Geronation “ in this poem also a

dramatic monologue , of an old man who reminisces about his lost power to live and his last
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hope of spiritual rebirth which is a symbol of sterility and paralysis. Unlike “Prufrock”

Geronation is constructed out of echoes of literature, and Eliot has fitted these quotations

together like parts of a fishing rod. The suggestion of a voice, a character, a personal tragedy

is very strong. The old man in Geronation is neigher completely realistic character as

Prufrock and the lady were, nor does he symbolize a particular social class. He is an

allegorical figure who represents the shrunken stale of western religious tradition and the

morbid preoccupation of modern man with his own degradation. Geronation symbolizes a

civilization founded on money values and secular rationalism with no religious communion

or human sense of community, a nightmare world of isolation and instability of restless

nervous and intellectual activity, emotional stagnation and spiritual drought. The contrast that

is important is the contrast between the secular history western man and the promise of

salvation through Christ. The history of western man is paralleled by Geronation. While the

poem is a prelude to ‘The waste Land’ it is still a significant word in its own right it is

certainly an advance over Prufrock a poem in which the problem is personal so that it’s social

applicability has to be inferred . The poem is difficult, chiefly because of the fusions it

creates. Firstly there is a fusion of individual humans and humanity Gerontion is an old man

and any old man. Mr. Silvero and the other sinister sounding foreigners in that section are

specific representatives of the general decline of religion. Another is a fusion of present and

past. Geronations mind shifts continually between his present situation and his past

memories. His very mane recalls the ancient past ,as does the war reference to Thermopylae

but modern events are also past of history, hence the reference to present events at the end of

the first world War.

Overall , Eliot’s poems “The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock”and “ Geronation” he

was using both traditional and innovative poetic techniques an devices in his work. And he
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also using fragments in his poems. “Prufrock” ends with the hero assigning himself a role in

one of Shakespeare’s plays. And “Geronation” displayed by the World War II.
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Work Cited

“The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock study Guide”. Cummings study Guide,

cummingsstudyguides.net/ Guides3.html.

“The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot.” Genius, Genius .com.

Shrestha, Roma . “Gerontion by T.S. Eliot: critical Analysis.” Bachelorandmaster, 6

Oct.2017, bachelorandmaster. Com.

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Borrowings, Adaptation and Articulation of A New Voice in T. S. Eliot’s “The Love

Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Geronation”.

“The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in this poem is the earliest of Eliot’s major

works. One of the first true modern poems “The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a

shifting, repetitive monologue, the thoughts of a mature males as he searches for love and

meaning in an uncertain , twilight world. Eliot's poem caught the changes in consciousness

perfectly. At the time of writing, class systems that had been in place for centuries were under

pressure like never before society was changing, and a new order was forming. World War I

was on the horizon and the struggles for power were beginning to after the way people lived

and thought and loved. J Alfred Prufrock is a respectable character but has seen the seedier

side of life. He’s getting on in years and is acutely aware of what he’s become, measuring his

life in coffee spoons, losing his hair , turning this. He’s due for a refresh, a personal

revolution, but doesn’t know where to start. Prufrock is in a life or death situation, between

heaven and hell. The city is half deserted. T. S. Eliot was a great believer in using both

traditional and innovative poetic techniques and devices in his work and this poem reflects

this belief. In this shifting, repetitive poem is a parody of a love song it flows then stumbles

and hesitates its way through the life of a middle aged male who can’t decide where he stands

in the world. Will he venture out to find the love of his life?. Now is the time to visit that

room where the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo. But Prufrock, the tentative

male , envisages being ridiculed for having a bald patch. Time is running out or is it? The

reference to Andrew Marvell’s poem To His Coy Mistress, and Shakespeare’s play Twelfth

Night and Prince Hamlet.

“The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” Eliot also alludes to Biblical figures including

Lazarus and John the Baptist. The reference is Shakespeare's Hamlet. When the speaker

laments that “I am not prince Hamlet.” Although this is the most explicit allusion to
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Shakespeare, there is also an allusion to Shakespeare is Twelfth Night in the line about the

“dying fall.” Which alludes to Duke orsino’s famous words as he listens to music: “that strain

again, it had a dying fall.” Eliot also used French poet Jules Laforgue as inspiration for his

repeated women who come and go talking of Michelangelo. “Dans la pièce les Femmes Vont

et viennent/ Enparlant des maîtres de Sienne.” La Forgue was one of the innovators of the

interior monologue and Eliot certainly exploited this technique to the fullest in Prufrock.

There are fragments of images, gloomy cityscapes, reflective inner thoughts and an uneasy

questioning self that is the anti hero Prufrock. He is both dithere and dreamer ,a split

personality who procrastinates, who is caught between fantasy and reality. T.S.Eliots another

poem is “Geronation”in this poem is much indebted to the blank verse of Elizabethan and

Jocobean dramatists. However “The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” from Eliot’s previous

volume, “Geronation” is a dramatic monologue, spoken by an old man “Geronation means

“little old man” who in a decaying rented house, sits and waits for rain. He tells us that he has

not been in war service (“I was neither to Thermopylae literally, ‘hot gates’ a decisive battle

between the Greeks and Persians in 480BC). “Gerontion” begins With an epigraph from

measure for measure suggesting that neither youth nor age has any importance, since life is

essentially an illusion. The title signifies “a little old man: Again the contrast is that between

a human life in a framework of tradition and spiritual kinship with the past and bestial

existence governed solely by the needs of the moment. The old man is a prisoner in

contemporary society, a world obsessed with gain, ignorantly atheistic, and rotten from

within. The old man admits that he did not fight at Thermopylae (the ‘hot gates’) or any other

battles of ancient world against barbarism. “Geronation” is a response to the war .The war

can be glimpsed not only in those reference to battle in the poem first few lines, but also

elsewhere, for instance in the later talk of “ courage” and “heroism” in this poem considering

prevalent themes: religion one might approach “Gerontion” as a poem about religious belief .
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The Christian overtones include the reference to “Christ the tiger” (with the later

announcement that “The tiger springs in the new year; suggesting the second coming?) “ The

word within a word, unable to speak a word’ this is a slight misquotation of a Christmas

sermon by Lancelot Andrews, a seventeenth century bishop whose sermons Eliot much

admired; ‘the word’ refers to the infant Christ ,the word or message of God was found within

Christ ,but as Christ was an infant, he was unable to speak it. And then there are the lines

which tell that history ‘Gives to late/ what’s not believed ‘and go on to refer to ‘reconsidered

passion’ this talk of belief could refer to the difficulty of believing in a higher power in the

wake of the horrors of the first world War, and ‘passion; as well as referring to spirit or

enthusiasm, could also refer to the passion, or crucifixion of Christ.

Finally, Eliot’s poetry use of many poetic devices has brought musical quality hard to

find in such free verse poems. And he also used in many dialogue about personal experiences

in his poems.
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Works Cited.

Eliot, T.S “Hamlet and His problem.” Selected Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace &

World, 1965.

Eliot, T.S. “Prufrock” Essays on Elizabethan Drama. New York: Harcourt and Brace

company, 1966.

Heiney, Donald. “Recent American Literature 4.” Barron’s educational series, 1958.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. London: The Floating press, 2009.