Author: T.S. Eliot
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.1
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized2 upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants 3with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
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In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo4.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
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Translation: If I thought my answer were to one who could return to the world, I would not reply, but as none ever did return alive from this depth,
without fear of infamy I answer thee. The words are spoken by Count Guido da Montefeltro, a damned soul in the Eighth Circle of Hell in Dante's Divine
Comedy (Inferno, Canto 27, lines 61-66.)
Translator and Quotation Source: G.B. Harrison et al., eds. Major British Writers. Shorter ed. New York: Harcourt. 1967, page 1015.
Comment: Eliot opens "The Love Song" with this quotation from Dante's epic poem to suggest that Prufrock, like Count Guido, is in hell. But Prufrock is in a
hell on earth—a hell in the form of a modern, impersonal city with smoky skies. The quotation also points out that Prufrock, again like Count Guido, can
present his feelings "without fear of infamy." (http://cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides3/Prufrock.html)
2
Etherize: to put under the influence of ether; anesthetize. (dictionary.com)
3
Sawdust restaurants: Cheap restaurants. They put sawdust on their floors to catch bits of food.
4
Michelangelo: widely regarded as the most famous artist of the Italian Renaissance. (Biography.com)
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;
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 create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
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And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
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Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
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And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers5,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter6,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman 7hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus8, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”
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Malingers: pretends to be ill.
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“head brought in upon a platter”: This is a reference to Mark 6:14-29. Salome, a guest of King Herod’s, requests the head of John the Baptist brought to
her on a platter. Herod complies.
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“eternal Footman”: Death or, possibly, time.
Lazarus: In John 11, Christ raises Lazarus from the dead.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern 9threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
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No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous10;
Full of high sentence11, but a bit obtuse12;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
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Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
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I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
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Magic lantern: a simple form of image projector used for showing photographic slides. (Dictionary.com)
very careful about doing something in an extremely accurate and exact wa y (Merriam-Webster.com)
11
“Full of high sentence”: speaking in a fancy manner, giving advice. This is an allusion to Polonius, the pompous Lord Chamberlain in Shakespeare’s
Hamlet.
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Obtuse: stupid or unintelligent : not able to think clearly or to understand what is obvious or simpl e (Merriam-Webster.com).
[Obtuse is not sharp, right?}
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COMMENTARY
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“Love Song” is a dramatic monologue. A dramatic monologue, also known as a persona poem, shares
many characteristics with a theatrical monologue: an audience is implied; there is no dialogue; and the
poet speaks through an assumed voice—a character, a fictional identity, or a persona. (www.poets.org)
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“[The] poem…explores the narrator’s stream of consciousness as he relates, in fragmented fashion, his
seemingly random thoughts that are unified by the structure of the poem.
One key to this song of misprized, reluctant, hesitant love is in the epigraph from Dante’s Inferno (XXVII)
in which the speaker, Guido, reluctantly reveals the reason he is in Hell. While Prufrock finds it difficult
to say what he means, he relates his thought as Guido had to Dante, without fear that his secret will be
revealed to the living….The reader immediately enters what the critic Hugh Kenner has called a “zone of
consciousness,” not a realistic setting, and listens to a story that is not sequential: One is invited to share
a dream with disturbing overtones.
The often perplexed reader needs to make numerous decisions about the teller and the tale. Is Prufrock
actually addressing the reader, as Guido did Dante, or is he talking to himself? Is he any or all of the selfcaricatures he contemplates—ragged claws, John the Baptist, Lazarus, Polonius? Is he bound on an
erotic mission, a visit of social obligation, or merely an imaginary prowl through half-deserted streets;
does he move at all from the spot where he begins his narrative, or is all animation suspended and all
action only contemplated or remembered? Readers must negotiate these and similar questions, open to
a variety of answers, to determine the speaker’s identity and judge the situation in which they find
themselves with Prufrock.
Similarly important are the sensory images that the voice projects, from the etherized patient to the
ragged claws to the mermaids and one’s own death by drowning, which involves all the senses until
consciousness is extinguished. As the voices—Prufrock’s, the women’s, the woman’s, the mermaids’,
Lazarus’s, John’s—must be heard, so the images must be seen, the yellow fog and the seawater smelled
and tasted, the motion of walking and the pressure of reclining felt along the nerves. Like many of Eliot’s
dramatic poems, this drama calls for total sensory involvement as the reader observes with the mind’s
eye the many scenes to which Prufrock refers.” (enotes.com)