17 December 2002
“That is not what I meant at all”:Advice, Irony, and Other Minds in T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
By Jason Preu
T. S. Eliot’s character J. Alfred Prufrock is richly written and painted in authentic, human contradiction. Upon first reading, one may develop a definite feel for what seems to be going on in Prufrock’s mind. Prufrock seems paralyzed by self-criticism as well as a myriad of imagined, possible outcomes to various encounters between himself and others. Eliot presents Prufrock as a developed, yet pathetic character. This simple reading of Prufrock, however, may be undermined by the poem’s epigraph. The quote from Dante’s Inferno that Eliot uses to preface the body of the poem might give a reader pause in looking at Prufrock as only an exemplar of dourness. The epigraph might be just the thing that cast’s Prufrock’s character into an entirely different light as well as providing cause for the reader to question his/her own relationship with the world.
A brief reading through of the poem without close scrutiny of the epigraph should allow for a viable sketch to be made of Prufrock. The first stanza begins, as the last stanza ends, on a seemingly bleak note. The evening at hand is compared to “a patient etherised upon a table” (3). Images such as this crop up again and again throughout the poem and seem to serve as indicators to Prufrock’s perception of the world as a drab, soot-covered, harbinger of alienation. A question that any reader should at this point ask is, “Who is Prufrock’s audience?” “Let us go then, you and I” (1) begs the question of who this “you” is. Is it a person external to Prufrock and perhaps referenced elsewhere in the poem? Is it an audience of people, a readership? Or is it Prufrock talking to himself? Perhaps the “you” is a combination of all the above possibilities? Whatever the answer may ultimately be, I think it safe to assume that on some level an audience (real or imaginary) is intended. This assumption will be revisited once the epigraph is considered in relation to the poem’s body.
The poem’s third stanza provides a look at one of Prufrock’s many contradictive character traits. The lines, “To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; / There will be time to murder and create, / And time for all the works and days of hands” (27-30) are Prufrock’s critique of social pretensions and machinations. At first glance he appears to not have much regard for those who concern themselves with acclimating to social trends. Yet, in the following stanza, he allows that he himself is more than a little concerned with how others view him. Prufrock appears to desire his own face to meet the faces, especially in those lines wherein his love is hinted.
The stanza beginning with line 75 seems designed specifically to generate a significant amount of pathos. Prufrock says, “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, / And I have seen the eternal footman hold my coat, and snicker, / And in short, I was afraid” (84-86). Epigraph aside, this sentiment could possibly be taken by a reader as the main insight into Prufrock’s character – he was afraid. We understand that and, accordingly, we can understand Prufrock’s inaction. His fears of miscommunication, aging, and indecisiveness are all too human fears. The audience is persuaded to sympathy by Prufrock’s confessions of fear. We are made to see ourselves in him.
Now comes the point in which to begin looking in detail at the poem’s epigraph and using those details to look for other insights into Prufrock’s situation. As the epigraph’s footnote relates, the quote is taken from Dante’s Inferno. One implication of this epigraph upon the body of the poem may be the possibility for comparisons to be drawn between Dante’s Hell and Prufrock’s solipsism. Da Montefeltro thinks that since no one escapes from Hell, he may openly speak to Dante about his past transgressions. Comparatively, it may be said that Prufrock speaks to his audience so freely because he thinks that there exists no possibility for one’s escape from one’s bubble of subjective experience. For Prufrock, there is only “time for you and time for me” (31). Time exists for each of us individually and separately. This is no time for you and me, no hope for escape into a time together.
Prufrock’s seeming discontent with his situation allows for another possible comparison with Hell to be drawn as it seems impossible to imagine that the eternal torments of Hell allow for a state of contentment. At any rate, it would be simple to carry on in this vein, highlighting various instances of Prufrock’s subjective prison – from the continued use of the first person singular to his self-constructed, future failures. There are, however, more interesting dynamics of the epigraph at work upon the poem’s body. For instance, what are we to make of the epigraph’s assumption that no one gets out of Hell vs. Prufrock’s allusion to Lazarus? How should a reader/Prufrock’s audience understand what it is that he has come back to tell of? Does Prufrock’s allusion suggest that the text might best be read as a literary “how-not-to-be”? For no matter whether Lazarus’s tale is taken from either Luke or John’s telling this allusion seems to hint that Prufrock’s words contain advice of some sort.
In the book of Luke, the wealthy man who shuns Lazarus on earth is shown to burn in Hell while Lazarus ultimately prospers in Heaven. The rich man then asks that Lazarus pay a visit to his (the rich man’s) brothers so that they might be given an opportunity to repent. Is Prufrock therefore this instance of Lazarus, “come from the dead” to remind us all of our obligations to the less fortunate among us? The poem does seem, at times, to contain a subtle critique of class discrepancies. Or is this Prufrock the Lazarus of John, raised from the dead by his steadfast faith in Christ? One may replace the name of Christ with the more abstract “Other” and then the similarities between the two Lazarus’s manifests, along with what may be taken for Prufrock’s advice: Ultimately, to escape Hell there must be a recognition of something outside of one’s own interests. Whether taking time to acknowledge and help with the plights of the less fortunate or having faith in some transcendental singularity from whence one originated, the result is the sublimation of self, a bursting of the subjective bubble.
Prufrock presents himself as a case study for absolute solipsism. He speaks freely on his failings, worries, and fears for the reader’s benefit. And, for the savvy reader/listener, he even warns against the extreme opposite of solipsism, the sense of self’s dissolution into the sea of Other: “We have lingered in the chambers of the sea / By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown / Til human voices wake us, and we drown” (129-131). I imagine the mermaids referred to in these lines to be representative of the Other incarnate. Prufrock seems, at this point, to imagine a sense of connections made and the first person plural of the final stanza seems to reflect that. Do note, however, that despite all our revelry under the sea it is human voices that bring us back to an attentive state – where we find ourselves drowning. The implication seems to be that abandoning human beings and all their self-interested ways leaves a person no better off than does isolating oneself from them. Might not Prufrock be advising an occasional dip in the ocean of connections but always a return to the shore of self?
There is still an element of the epigraph that has not yet been examined and which might contain the ultimate irony of the poem. As previously stated, for the poem’s sake I take the character of da Montefeltro to be synonymous with the character of Prufrock. Unfortunately, to read the two as synonymous may prove fatal to any generalized reading of the piece as advice column. The reader must remember that da Montefeltro is a sentenced sinner. He has been judged guilty as a false counselor, a convicted liar. He has deigned to speak the “truth” to Dante, but what cause does Dante have to believe da Montefeltro words? Because da Montefeltro tells him they are true? Similarly, if Prufrock is indeed being compared to a false counselor in Hell, by virtue of what should a reader have faith in any advice he might bestow? (Incidentally, the epigraph remains outside of the poem’s setting so Prufrock’s audience wouldn’t be privy to any comparison made to da Montefeltro.) In other words, if, before being initially introduced to someone you were told that person is a certified liar, how much sincerity would you place upon his or her words?
It seems that Eliot’s use of this particular quote as an opening statement might be the author’s way of highlighting Prufrock’s problem – his inability to get out of his own head – as a problem facing each of us. By comparing Prufrock to a convicted liar before the reader is even introduced to Prufrock, Eliot seems to want to immediately cast doubt upon the reader’s relationship to Prufrock and, in turn, cast doubt upon the possibility of our ability to relate to or understand others. All the reader knows of Prufrock and his situation is what Prufrock tells that reader. So, ultimately, by presenting Prufrock as a possible liar and requiring that a reader reconsider Prufrock’s words of advice to seek connections, the reader is forced to recognize that what Prufrock shows (yet doesn’t tell) is that while such advice may be valuable, it may not be possible act on it as Prufrock himself never seems to make such connections. As readers, we can never know whether to feel sorry for Prufrock if he’s being honest about his situation or feel manipulated by him if all his talk amounts to artful hyperbole. As humans, we can never know to what extent a person’s words match up with what that person is truly thinking. We always run the risk of misinterpretation and subsequent miscommunication. Such is the nature of being self-aware creatures with an imaginative capacity. We all, to varying degrees, suffer from Prufrock’s subjective dilemma.
Works Cited
Abrams, M.H., gen. ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Seventh Edition. Volume 2. New York: Norton, 2000. All quotations from Eliot’s work are taken from this edition.