Summary:
t.s. eliot and modernist poetry
The historic place of English Modernist poetry is so easy to come by. It first emerged in of the Imagist poets of the 20th century such as T.E. Hulme and F.S. Flint, and it had it roots in the works of some earlier writers such as Walt Withman who approached a kind of free verse and the prose poetry of Oscar Wilde. In the other hand because writers who have written in this school, each have written in a different style; it is hard to point out the internal characteristics of a modernist work. But obviously, there are significant features that are common in the works of all these Modernist poets.
Carrying these features in mind, I am going to consider The Love Song of J. Alfred. Prufrock and argue how it works as the most famous example of early Modernist poetry.
No matter where you search on Modernism, whether on internet or in a library; T.S. Eliot is one of the first names that appear on the screen or in a book. And there is always a chapter on The Love Song of J. Alfred. Prufrock. What is it that makes locates this poem on the top of Modernist poetry manifesto.
The first element that shows up in the poem as a modern object is Mr. Prufrock himself. Shy, cultivated, oversensitive, sexually retarded, and isolated he is a typical modern man indeed. This speaker of Modernist poems is often suffering from feeling alienated from the world around him and he is desperately incapable of decisive action.
The second element of Modernism in this poem is the landscape. Modernists did not look at the landscape in a quest for the beauty of daffodils or swallows as the Romantics used to do. They were searching for a deeper meaning in it and the urban description in the opening lines of Prufrock have achieved this goal. This lines(1-22) convey the bleak mood of the poem. And considering them more accurately deeper meanings could be found in them. For example the metaphor in line 3(like a patient etherized upon a table) could convey the paralysis of Prufrock which is mentioned several times in the poem later.
The other feature of this poem that appears often in the poetry of Modernist era is Intellectualism. The writings of this era are more cerebral than emotional and works are posing questions more than answering. Prufrock obviously is not an easy poem to be read by the people in the streets. Almost each stanza of this poem contains Metaphors or images addressing philosophical ideas, historic places and stories, or other pieces of works by the other artists. And most of these references can not be identified as easy as Hamlet or Lazarus. For instance, in lines 13-14 Eliot is addressing a poem by lafourge, the French symbolist poet(In the room that women come and go/talking of the masters of since schools) .Or consider the "works and days of hands" in line 29. It is directly addressing a Hesiod(8th B.C Greek poet) about the farming year, "Works and Days."
Another key feature that the Modernist poets pioneered was Fragmentation. The Modernists felt that their poetry should mirror their chaotic world. Fragmentation seems to imply a disordered lack of meaning. The Modernists but suggested that meaning could be made out of the ruins. Eliot himself says in his famous poem The Waste Land: "these fragments I have shored against my ruins." This obviously implies this technique.
Eliot achives Fragmentation in prufrock mostly through Imagery. Images and delusions but are not the only fragmented features. The rhymes of the lines are also deliberately fragmented. Even the city that prufrock is living in is fragmented itself.
The other reason that makes prufrock an easy poem to be identified in the category of Modernism is the matter of time and space. Time and space are clearly collapsed in this poem. This could be off course discussed in the last paragraph about fragmentation but, this collapse of time and space is so significant in this poem that deserve to be considered in independently.
One of the puzzles of the poem is the question that whether Prufrock ever leaves his room during the poem. It seems that he does not. In fact he seems to be unable to go anywhere however hard he tries. In another sense, It seems impossible to distinguish between actual
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