When I finished reading this poem, the first question that popped into my head was, "Why is this a love song?" But I think the term "love song" is being used loosely and in a somewhat different context than we're used to.
The poem begins with J. Alfred Prufrock walking to meet a woman for tea, and as we are drawn into his thoughts along the way, we see that he is compelled to ask her an "overwhelming question" (10). These first ten lines set a solid tone for the rest of the poem as we enter in the feelings and thoughts of this persona. But what begins as an expected confession of love turns into a poem composed to Pruforck's own neurotic associations.
The reflections and thoughts of Prufrock turn from that of a woman to that of time. Beginning in line 23, we begin to hear the lonely perceptions of a man who stuck, held back by the reality of the clock. It as if he is imprisoned in his own subjective space--is all his experience imaginary? He imagines himself going through the streets, ascending the lady's stair, and telling her "all."
In this light, we see references to Dante in that there is no resurrection from the death which has undone him. Time disappears, and space must be exterior to the self if movement through it is to be more than the following of a tedious argument in the mind. But time, like space, has only a subjective existence for Prufrock. We get the sense that he is paralyzed in space and time, as he speaks of past, present and future being equally immediate: "I grow old...I grow old.../I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled" (120-121).
We know at the end of the poem that he Prufrock still has yet to visit the lady he mentioned in the beginning and wishes he could have been able to do so. "It would have been worth it, after all/Would it have been worth while" (99-100). Just as the women talking of Michelangelo in the beginning of the poem, he realizes he is stuck in this eternal present, a frozen time in which everything might possibly happen to him is as if it had already happened: "For I know I have known them all already, known them all" (49).
Prufrock recognizes this state of mind where the world is stagnate. He is worn down, disappointed, but accepting of it. Although he says he has "heard the mermaids singing, each to each" (124), he sadly concludes that, "I do not think that they will sing to me" (125).
I had the same question when I first read through the poem - Why is this considered a love song? Usually we think of love songs having a happy and exciting feel - this on the other hand is somewhat depressing. The author speaks of growing old and what comes along with that and then says, "I do not think that they will sing to me" referring to the mermaids, but really to the women he has missed out on during his lifetime. Because the 'mermaids' have never sung to him, he will go through life without love. I believe this poem was written to express the author's desire for love and realization that he may never have it.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting perspective to take the poem apart in sections like this, and I find it helpful for methodically processing through this poem, which to me didn't make a large amount of sense. I guess the title prepared me for something else, like it did for Jessa. I'm still trying to work out what "overwhelming question" he had to ask, and how the drowning and mermaids fit into it!
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