Chapter 8 The Twentieth Century
8.6 T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
PLEASE NOTE: This book is currently in draft form; material is not final.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Identify elements of Modernism in T. S. Eliot's poetry.
2. Compare the imagery of Eliot's poetry to the metaphysical conceits of
John Donne or other metaphysical poets of the 17th century.
3. Identify religious imagery in “East Coker” and determine its purpose.
4, Determine what the choice of images reveals about the speaker's
character in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”.
Anthologies of American literature as well as British literature contain T.S. Eliot's
work, Because Eliot is one of the great modernist poets, both countries are eager to
claim him.
Biography
T.S. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri and attended
Harvard University. After an additional year of
education in Paris, he went to Oxford University and
then back to Harvard. In 1914, he moved to and settled
in England, marrying an English woman and working as
ateacher and a banker. Here he met the American
modernist poet Ezra Pound who encouraged Eliot's
writing. Eliot's first publication, “The Love Song of
Alfred Prufrock” established him as an important
‘modernist poet. Fliot began working at Faber and Faber
publishing company, eventually becoming a director. He *Y Lady Ottoline Marvell 1934
became a naturalized British citizen in 1927.
75 Blot.
551Chapter 8 The Twentieth Century
Eliot admired and helped foster a renewed interest in
the 17th-century Metaphysical poets such as John
Donne. Modernist poets appreciated their metaphysical
conceits, striving to achieve hard images in their own
writing, images that were clear and sharp due to
precise, concise language.
Eliot also wrote verse dramas. Murder in the Cathedral
recounts the martyrdom of Becket at Canterbury
Cathedral in 1170, The work was first performed in the
Chapter House at Canterbury Cathedral, only steps from
where Becket’s murder took place
Chapter House at Canterbury
Cathedral
In 1948, Eliot received the Nobel Prize for literature. He
remarried later in life, and on his death in 1965, his
second wife worked to compile and edit his papers and
manuscript drafts of his work.
Eliot's ashes are interred at East Coker Church, a small
village in southwest England that was home to his
ancestors.
He also is honored with a commemorative stone in Poets
Corner, Westminster Abbey.
Texts
+ Four Quartets. available through
subscription database Chadwyck-Healey
Literature Collection. Eliot, 7. . (Thomas
Stearns), 1888-1965 [from Collected Poems
1909-1962 (1974)] , Faber and Faber.
+ “Prufrock and Other Observations.” Project
Gutenberg.
+ “TS, Eliot: The Love Song of |. Alfred
Prufrock (1919).” Prof. Paul Brians,
Washington State University.
+ “The Waste Land,” Project Gutenberg.
8.6 T'S. Eliot (1888-1965) 552Chapter 8 The Twentieth Century
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
‘Analyses of Eliot's “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” often consist of as many
questions as statements. The poem uses the modernist stream of consciousness
technique, an effort to demonstrate the workings of the human mind. Knowing we
are, in a sense, listening to an individual’s thoughts, leaves questions because we
are not presented a consciously constructed narrative.
The title itself seems paradoxical with the pairing of the idea of a love song with a
name as prosaic as J. Alfred Prufrock, a name Tliot suggested he may have
remembered from the name of a furniture company in his native St. Louis.
The epigraph to “Prufrock” is from Dante’s Inferno. The epigraph’s speaker states
that if his listener were returning to earth and therefore could repeat his story to
others, he would not speak; however, since no one can return from Hell, he can
speak his words. The epigraph leads readers of “Prufrock” to wonder if they are
reading a dramatic monologue, in which the speaker addresses a specific listener,
whether the readers are the auditors, or whether we are overhearing the workings
of a human mind of which we ordinarily would not be aware. Are these words, like
the epigraph speaker's words, that are not meant to be heard by others?
This dilemma calls into question the reality of all the events of the poem. Is the
speaker actually walking somewhere, or is he only rehearsing this possibility
‘mentally? Is he imagining something that will happen, remembering something
that has happened, or actually experiencing the event?
Brief Excerpts from “The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock”
Let us go then, you and 1,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
The first three lines of the poem provide the type of unusual, unexpected
comparison reminiscent of metaphysical conceits. In this love song, with the
8.6 T'S. Eliot (1888-1965) 553Chapter 8 The Twentieth Century
picture of a couple walking in the evening, the scene is compared to a patient under
sedation upon an operating table, hardly a romantic image. The meter also
emphasizes the incongruity of the simile: the first two lines are regular in meter,
but the smooth rhythm stumbles with line 3.
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and creat
In lines 26-28, the speaker talks of preparing a face to meet other faces, of assuming
amask, a facade, to meet other people who are just as artificial, as counterfeit, as
the speaker.
‘The references to the taking of toast and tea in a room where “women come and go
/ Talking of Michelangelo” suggest that the speaker is on his way to an afternoon
tea attended by insincere people talking about topics intended to impress others.
Here, too, however, we are left with the uncertainly of whether we are experiencing
the events as the speaker does or whether the speaker is recalling or anticipating
the occurrence.
tthe speaker imagines the crowd whispering about his inadequacies from his bald
spot to his thinness until he feels like a bug specimen pinned under a scientist’s
microscope. And all the time he wonders if he dares to “disturb the universe” by
breaking out of the pattern of expected behavior.
| should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
In lines 73 and 74, the speaker states he should have been a pair of claws, a crab, on
the floor of the sea, silent and far away from the world, from the critical eyes, living
strictly by instinct with none of the angst resulting from his current situation.
8.6 T'S. Eliot (1888-1965) 554Chapter 8 The Twentieth Century
8.6 T'S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Lines 75 through 110 present the speaker wondering how things might have been,
or might be in the future, different if he had the courage to force the moment from
the triviality of everyday life to the important questions. At the same time, he
knows he did not, oF will not, have the courage to speak his convictions or to
pronounce the ideas which are important to him. The following lines provide the
reason:
‘And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
He is too afraid to step out from behind the mask he prepared, the face he shows
the world, the facade of conformity that makes him act like the rest of society safely
behind their masks. The meaningless ritual in which he and those around him
indulge characterizes the modernist view of life. Having realized that he will never
address the important questions, the speaker rationalizes his behavior with the
thought that in life's drama he does not play a leading part, such as Hamlet, but
only a bit part.
With the realization that he will never address the important issues of life, the
speaker begins to imagine the rest of his life, sinking into an ever-more-powerless
cold age. The speaker claims in lines 124-126 he has heard mermaids singing.
Thave heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
1do not think that they will sing to me.
Ihave seen them riding seaward on the wave
In British folklore, mermaids are often evil omens, sirens luring sailors to their
deaths. In this context, the mermaids seem to represent something beautiful denied
to the speaker. On the other hand, the following lines picture the speaker at the
bottom of the sea with the mermaids, again, as when he pictures himself as a crab,
isolated from human contact. The sound of human voices drowns him.
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