How is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Different from Other Love Poems?
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is one of the greatest poems ever written in English language. Ascribed to Modernism, this poem was written in 1910 and first published in 1915 by American-British writer and poet T. S. Eliot. The title gives the reader the idea that this poem is a love song; but The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock has actually become so important int he history of English Literature due to the fact that it is not.
The poem does not revolve around a love story (as opposed to the title); it mostly concentrates on the narrator’s character, who is a lonely man, obsessed with getting old, bored with life and its elements and values. At the beginning of the poem, he invites the woman he loves to take a walk with him in the “half-deserted streets” of his city. The way he describes nature is completely at odds with nature descriptions in 19th century English poems and especially love poems. Prufrock condemns every element he encounters on his way: the hotels, the restaurants and mostly the people, who admire art but have forgotten humanity. It is an odd way of beginning a love poem, as the narrator invites his beloved woman to walk with him through the city, but everything he shows her is either dirty or ugly to look at. He even compares the evening to a patient etherized on the bed. This sort of opening does not happen in a regular love poem. For example in William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 40, the poem begins as follow:
Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all:
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call—
All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.
In the first stanza of Shakespeare’s sonnet, the speaker starts confessing his everlasting love to his lover and the word “love” is repeated several times. Another poem, Love is More Thicker Than Forget by E. E. Cummings, starts with these lines:
love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
Cummings starts the first stanza telling the reader what love really is in his opinion. Neither the description of love nor confessions about feelings happens in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
Several times the narrator mentions the fact that he has tried to said something to someone (probably the woman he loves) which is very important, but he has not done it yet. It seems like he presumes that even if he gathered his courage to confess to his love, the woman would reject him. The sentence “there will be times” is repeated several times throughout the poem. This state of inaction and uncertainty is one of the key characteristics of modern texts. Nowhere in the poem is he reader directly told about Prufrock’s issues in his love life; there are only hints and clues. This is one of the most important elements that makes this poem different from any other love poems ever written.
Another irregular feature of this “love song” is the title. Throughout the history of English Literature there has never been a love poem in whose title the full name (which is also a facial name) of the speaker is mentioned.
The “hero” of this love song does not actually qualify for being a hero. He is not young, handsome or strong. He is an insecure middle-aged balding man with thin arms and legs. Most of the traditional love poems are told by young strong men who have the power and are willing to do anything possible to get the girl. Prufrock is so fearful and uncertain that he always asks himself the question “Do I dare?”, plus he convinces himself that “there is time” to justify his own immobility and lack of action.
In sonnet 27, Shakespeare starts describing the physical features of his mistress:
Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
In The love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock we never get to see who the woman is and what she looks like. More oddly, the reader can never be sure wether or not there is any woman.
In conclusion, the number elements of a love poem are so little in Elliot’s masterpiece that it is not right to categorize it as a love poem. The fact that the title suggests so, is a satirical tool. The whole poem is a satire on all love poems in which speakers posit that the most important thing in life is to unite with the person they love. The fact that this poem has been written after the Words War I - among all the depression and lack of hope about the future - gives weight to the idea that the whole idea behind it reflects the poet’s despair and hopelessness in humanity. Elliot has hidden behind his own claim that “this is a love poem” to express how he feels about more important issues like people’s lack of action, indecision, uncertainty and generally, the failure of humanity,
Works Cited
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. ed. M. H. Abrams New York, London: Norton, 1993.
"Summary" Masterpieces of World Literature, Critical Edition Ed. Steven G. Kellman. eNotes.com, Inc. 2009 eNotes.com 27 Nov, 2014 <http://www.enotes.com/topics/love-song#summary-the-work-2>
Shmoop Editorial Team. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 27 Nov. 2014.
"Summary" Society and Self, Critical Representations in Literature Ed. David Peck. eNotes.com, Inc. 1997 eNotes.com 27 Nov, 2014 <http://www.enotes.com/topics/love-song#summary-the-work-1>
