I memorized this gorgeous poem to avoid boredom while on the treadmill. After about 1 year I am seeing new bits of it all the time. He's our early modern genius poet. Fine poetry becomes richer if memorized. A great experience.
This is the first modern poem by an English poet and expresses modern man's ennui . Hamlet was aware of the problem of existence when time for him was out of joint felt that he was born to set right . But he doubted his capacity and so brooded more than he should . Here the modern man is rather incapacitated and can do nothing but brood over his impotence . Eliot found the solution ,later on , in the Brihadaranyakopanishad . Our problems can be solved by the three principles of life . They are : datta ,dayadhvam and damyata . He referred to these three in section 5 ,What The Thunder Said in The Wasteland . It was a great pleasure to hear the poem by the great poet himself .
My Father , a professor of English Literature would read this to us , his children at ages 9-10 in his beautiful baritone voice. I am so grateful that he did, this poem has stuck with me decades later. The use of words in this poem is nothing short of divine.
This is one of the great poems of all time, and Eliot's reading is (to my mind) the definitive reading: precise to the point almost of preciousness; enervated; and filled with self-revulsion and despair. It is stunning that he wrote this poem, which captures so well the weary knowledge of aging, when he was such a young man.
So few geniuses spring from the relentless grind of bell-curvish human cultural reproduction. Almost all spring from being (rightly) perceived as a threat.
It's an outlandish experience listering to Eliot speaking out of the untouchable neverland his beautiful poem. I have never tried to "understand" Eliot. His poems "are" they do not "mean". The sounds, the echoes, the beauty, the rosonance of his words make me dream.
This is the beauty of art. Words are just words but how your emotions roll around those words creates your interpretation of the poem. I have gone back to this poem through my life ever since I was 15( 24 now) and I have heard it in multiple phases of my life. I’ve heard it when I craved a partner in this world. I heard it when I was with the most amazing girl I’ve ever met. And today I read it a broken man whose lost her and will forever love her as she sleeps more in love then she’s ever been in another mans arms. Every time it’s a different experience and though I stay here hurt and destroyed I also have to keep on fighting this life so that I can hear it again on another day maybe even a better one.
I studied this poem in school over 20 years ago as it was part of the Irish curriculum. I struggled to understand the feeling in this poem back then as I was too young. Now its overwhelming.
Perhaps, years ago as now, you actually picked up on the emotional tone of this poem: It's a melange of complex feelings that are hard for Prufrock himself to understand, and at the end of the day he's overwhelmed - romantically and sexually, philosophically and spiritually.
Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized 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 with 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. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. 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. 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? 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? 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. And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers, 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 platter, 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 hold 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 towards some overwhelming question, To say: “I am Lazarus, 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.” 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 threw 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.” 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 meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; 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. 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. 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.
Thank you so much for including the words to this classic. My Mother had it committed to memory. I, as an adult now, see the value in it. I’m striving to memorize it so I can honor my Mommy who is in the afterlife. No matter how old we get, we always need our Mothers and Fathers. I miss you both Ma and Dad. We all love and miss you. I hope you’re shining on us and that you’re proud of all of us. For those of you who have strained relationships with your parents (save for abusive relationships- in which I’d recommend therapy) please reach out to them and make amends. We never know when it will be our time or theirs. When it’s time to have your ticket punched, it gets punched.
Beautiful reading of one of the great poems of the 20th Century. "There will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet." It's like a knife to the heart.
Over the last 15 years, I have lost track of how many times I have come back to different extracts of this poem. Even today, in the midst of the global crisis we are going through, I can hear humankind saying: "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."
This is perhaps my favorite poem of all-time, and one to which I relate strongly. The weariness, introspection, and melancholy are apparent in the tone and tempo as well as the words. Simply brilliant.
'I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas' - simply one of the most haunting and poignant lines in all of Western literature capturing what true loneliness and isolation from your fellow man feels like.
If you’re interested, I read somewhere that it’s a reference to Hamlet Act II scene 2, when Hamlet tells Polonius, “you yourself, sir, should be as old as I am-if, like a crab, you could go backward.” I’m not sure where I read it, and it’s not in the footnotes that I have. But it makes sense to me, given all the other Hamlet references in the poem. :)
I ve had it for years and years - and I thought it would never go away. I actually thought Jesus said to me to drink alchohol as that could perfectly ease it. And life went on and drunkenly I would sing my song. I survived. No one understands how crippling it is. Just live. When you find yourself well - which you will, if youre still young, dont leave that place or take it for granted.
It does, doesn't it? I can never go to the beach without thinking of this poem, for one thing. Just lines from it always pop up in my head. Same with some of his other poems..."Hidden, oh hidden;" "Come out from under the shadow of this red rock;" "Hurry up, it's time." Eliot might have measured out his life in coffee spoons, but my own life seems to be measured out by Eliot's lines.
:-) Why thank you sir. I was telling someone the next day, it was so ironic, because as I was listening to this, my jeans were actually rolled up, lol! So I KNOW I'm getting old! (and I am.)
what a treasure. what a pleasure on this saturday morning to hear this voice with these words which I have loved and quoted for years. thanks for making it available here. angry birds shades of grey? who cares? they fade and fall away. this remains.
Someone made the comment here that poems like this aren't meant to be voiced. Yes they are. Of course they are. This is a dramatic monologue. And Eliot was acutely aware and entranced by the sounds of words. He thought the rhyme and the rhythm of poetry was more important than the actual meaning of the words themselves. He felt the sound was what evoked a primal emotional response in the listener, the words being almost secondary.
"Till human voices wake us and we drown..." how it feels to be jolted out of a beautiful daydream by someone talking at the top of their lungs on public transit.
How snobbish. Head phones exist. I love to hear people sounding happy. You re the sort that makes my mother and father self consious - and why? When we all see each other we dont often have the chance. I am not going to sit in silence because of people like YOU.
Then wiki is wrong (again). His own biographer, and his own notes, make it clear he BEGAN writing it when he was still an undergrad at Harvard, so, about 20?
Yes, but later in his life, TSE discovered true life in Christ through his embrace of the ancient, traditional Anglican faith. Still a good pathway today!
Awesome! Your reciting made me captivated.So I never pass a day without listening to this captivating poem.Your voice is still vivid like you are in front of me. Thanks a million.
how is it that 37 people dislike this? even if his poetry is not for you.... perhaps passing judgment on a mind of this caliber says much more about judger than the judged...
bao s if tory means he is conservative, that's not what first springs to mind, but yeah, that also. i find his work nowhere near flawless, but of course i respect it and all....the more i read the modernist poets, the more i get the feeling that with them it's often a case of success through failure. maybe it's really true they are late-comers, in the bloomian sense...anyways, that sums up my feeling of the waste land, not this, i like this fine :) and it's better for me to stop haha, cheers :D
The safest way to eat a peach is standing naked, in the bath. I don't know why he was so worried about the whole peach thing. I've done it many times. Lock yourself in the bathroom, remove all your clothing, get into the bath, eat the peach, have a bath, re- robe. What's the fuss about?
@@tomsdottir laugh out loud! My favorite way to eat a peach is barefoot, in the grass. Kneeling or sitting, as the juice drips down my chin, down the edge of my hand, down to my elbow.
@@tomsdottir Perhaps I am explaining something to you you already know but this line refers to ageing and the difficulty of eating a peach with dentures or decaying teeth. The fear of ageing and realization of ageing is a underlying theme to the poem.
Aaah, I'm very happy that people like TS Eliot exist, to be so articulate, to allude to the ineffable, and to perpetuate the chase toward its articulation so tactfully (he knows better, you see, than to try to name the thing, to squeeze the world into a ball and to roll it toward that overwhelming question... What if that wasn't it after all?) I admire the warmth in this thread btw, especially compared to most youtube threads.
+Dylan nalyd And yet...he is not SURE he should not have done so anyway. Should he have overcome that fear, of rejection, of misunderstanding? He seems to have some regret, but unsure if he should feel that regret...
A poem I have loved for over 50 years, but hearing Eliot read it I am now more aware of the striking plaiting together of sensuality, banal social observation and philosophy.
I couldn't agree more. I first heard this poem in 1960 as a young man and it has been etched in my mind since that time. I probably read it through at least 5 times a year.
My favorite line 'Let us go then, you and I/while the evening is spread out across the sky/like a patient etherized upon a table' staggering, modern, brilliance. He was so ahead of his time. Morbid but real.
It's the poem that we quote lines from to ourselves as philosophical little pointers from time to time - unforgettable images, refreshing and enriching in their concrete directness, beautifully real, yet quite lateral, a bit surreally juxtaposed and haunting - always reminding us of a nostalgic rite of passage of an older man who we can relate to, as a love song perhaps to his wife or girlfriend, with whom he is facing some kind of big step he feels he doesn't want to "disturb the universe" by initiating a big change - modest, wry, yet dramatic and rather self-effacing. Such enjoyable rhymes and rhythms, and spoken by the poet with the perfect air of unponderous reflection . I probably quote to myself weekly lines like "No I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be" and "And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin.....Then how should I begin/To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?'" And everyone recalls the mermaids stanzas, such a resonance of the fanciful tides of mortality....
oh cellardoor93, i was born in 91, i appreciate your use of such delightful word and know whence it comes, and wish i was two years younger to find myself again the lovely mist of living my 19th year of life. love, great minds think alike. listen to love, love, love by the organ
Why does this poem speak to me so deeply? Why is it TS Eliot? That poet I'm named after but know nothing about? How did I find this? Why am I here? The lemons don't taste of anything anymore.
+Ezra Thompson I would interpret it as measuring life not in achievements or things actually happening, but as an endless repetition of boring days, waking up, getting coffee, doing your job, go to bed, wake up, get some coffee, do your job, think about asking big questions but not actually asking them, go to bed, wake up, make coffee, think about whether you should roll up your trousers (Imagine that, your pants may get wet on the beach, oh boy), think about eating a peach but deciding not to because it might get on your clothes (wet clothes seem to be a phobia of his), going to sleep without having eaten that peach, get up, get some coffee, go to sleep get up go to sleep this is the way the world ends this is the way the world ends this is the way the world ends not with a bang but a whimper
I posted a reading of this myself recently -- such a lovely poem. There's nothing quite like hearing its own progenitor reciting it aloud, though; he really seems to savor each word as it rolls off his tongue. What a treat this is! Thank you for posting it
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock is one of the most beautiful, compelling, enigmatic poems of the 20th century. Many of us, I'm sure, have come back time and time again to this poem, wondering what additional glimmer of insight may illuminate it and move us - as I have, and been moved. So here's my take. First of all, it is a love song. So while it may be a stream of consciousness, it is a structured one - e.g. note the repetitions - albeit a complicated structure. Indeed, Prufrock is in love, painfully so. He longs deeply for a particular woman, whom he refers to in "If one, settling a pillow by her head..." Some have argued that Prufrock is terribly indecisive and passive. Similar to Hamlet, he seems to agonize and obsess over what to do, in relation to her, and and may indeed paralyze himself into saying nothing or doing nothing. Instead, I would argue that he has approached this woman, spent a lot of time with her, and gone to bed with her! He is neither indecisive nor passive. But alas Prufrock is a dour, anxiety-riddled man who, in bed with his love, sometimes goes soft on her - his erection fails him. It is so deeply embarrassing that he dies on the spot. That death is figurative of course, but it figures prominently throughout the poem: Shame so discombobulating to and disintegrating of his psyche, i.e. self esteem, that it paralyzes him, it demoralizes him, and it makes him wonder "Would it have been worth it..." To my argument about his increasing impotence, reference the following lines: 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 platter, 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 hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid. Poor Prufrock wonders, after a dissatisfying turn in bed with his love, if he should have at it again next time. Of course, he does, because he's in love with her! Besides being a love song, Eliot's masterpiece is a highly erotic one. More specifically I argue that it is a brothel that he frequents, and sex is literally everywhere around him. Prufrock is a proper gentleman, as evidenced by his attire: My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin... But the opening two main stanzas speak to the route he has to walk and the air he has to breathe - it's all a bit macabre ("Like a patient etherized upon a table") and seedy ("pools that stand in drains" and "soot that falls from chimneys"). But more metaphorically, Eliot's vivid description of the surroundings tells the tale of how Prufrock experiences his love and lust for a woman and what he has to go through psychologically to be with her. It makes me think of another famous Shakespearean character - Prince Hal - who, long before he became King Henry V, frequented the taverns and cavorted with the common people, much to the chagrin of his royal father. For Prufrock it is his gentlemanly sensibility that finds the longing, lustful side of himself despicable. The repeated lines: In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo... are the ladies in the brothel. In general, he's enamored with them: 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? I doubt that they, in turn, are enamored with him, but over time they've become used to him and some of them may even find him endearing. But notice that he doesn't refer to them as whole people, but as body parts - arms and eyes. I argue that this is a manifestation of his obsessive, psychologically compartmentalized nature and also his haughty demeanor. He looks down on these women: After all what do they know about Michelangelo, he may wonder; and they shouldn't be talking about the great artist in passing anyway, he may silently scoff. Back to his love affair with one of those women: Prufrock is an awkward gentleman, not just in his manners but also in his speech: "It is impossible to say just what I mean!" So we can imagine his conversations with her as having a fair amount of misunderstanding. He hopes to win her love, and maybe even believes at times that she does. Alas, however, having sex with him is only a job for her! She may like him, but it doesn't seem that she truly loves him at all. So his repeated love overtures only come across to her as repeated misunderstandings: “That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.” Moreover, it kills Prufrock every time his woman has sex with another client: I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. We can imagine him sitting in one of the rooms in the brothel, time and time again having coffee by himself, waiting for this woman and her client to finish their business. The sound of sex surrounds him, and the owner knows that it's best to have some music to drown it out. But Prufrock knows this woman's voice, and perhaps her clients' voices, too, and he hears them - oh, he hears them - and it's utterly painful and deflating! The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock is a profound philosophical treatise, similar, I'd argue, to The Myth of Sisyphus. Beyond the brothel setting and Prufrock's love affair, Eliot may be speaking to the Zeitgeist of the time when he wrote it - the advent of World War I. While Camus argued that Sisyphus was happy, despite having to repeatedly push a boulder up a hill, it is a life of existential absurdity and tedium. Love and life, work and sex had perhaps become that absurd and tedious for scores of people as well, at least according to Eliot. So in light of this world that Eliot created in The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, what does he do in the end? He elevates that brothel, its ladies, and its business to mythic levels: I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. 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. Just as Camus can argue with Sisyphus, so too Eliot can argue with Prufrock: i.e. that in the end he is happy. My sense is that he beds other women in the brothel, and because there isn't that anxiety and disenchantment of his unrequited love, getting hard and getting his rocks off aren't an issue: Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach [i.e. have oral sex]? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach [i.e. put on a condom, and have intercourse]. At the end of it all, he is satisfied. We ought not take "we drown" as literal, though. In Shakespeare, the notion of dying is a metaphor for having an orgasm. There is that sharp, guttural sound from man and woman as they approach climax (i.e. "human voices") and there is that pleasurable death (wink, wink) among those "sea-girls." Finally, what is that "overwhelming question" that is also a pervasive theme in The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, which he can hardly acknowledge even to himself? It is this, I'd argue: He wants to ask this one woman "Do you love me?" Surely, he knows that it's only a job for her, but he wonders if she has any feelings for him and whether she truly cares about him. He can tolerate the other ladies seeing him as nothing more than a skinny man with a bald spot on his head. But with this one woman, his love is of mythic proportions and his lust fills him with existential pain.
@Elias Langer (STUDENT) I'm pretty sure it is as well, I find Ron's explanation to be too wild of a diversion, so much so that I cannot believe that poetry can't be so misinterpreted. But perhaps that is just my mind being too objective about the subject matter.
I heard a BBC report the other day that helped me to understand the line in the poem about "the yellow fog that rubs its back upom the window-panes." Before the clean air act, the smog in London was yellow, at its worst, even black. In late 1952 it was so bad that transportation was totally halted for days and over 4,000 people died from inhaling the polluted air. It even crept into their houses. A woman reported a story of the day her father died from heart trouble exacerbated by the smog.
I loved the musical cats as a kid and still love it today. We had the poems that the musical was based on and I decided to read a few of TS' poems and short plays myself including this and the waste land. Very ominous poet
Hearing him like this, it's really hard to imagine he was born in Missouri. I wonder what he sounded like when he first wrote this, and whether it would make a difference in the way he read it aloud.
THIS IS THE KIND OF POETRY THAT BECOMES LEGEND,it somehow,someway reaches at least my deep heart,another "intimations on immortality,wordsworth,occult,visionary men who blow our minds to this day,i may also suggest '''CONFESSIONS OF A ENGLISH OPIUM EATER",thomas dequincy,the most profound book,and STEPPENWOLF,by hermann hesse,also goes beyond all time and space
It's a beautiful poem and one of my favorites but as a love song it's tragic. I read that it's mostly agreed that the overwhelming question is likely a marriage proposal, or to put it a little blandly, 'Do you love me too? Do you love me back?'. Prufrock, mute observer more than participant, is taking measures continually and habitually not to disturb the universe with his presence, let alone to ask for love. It's very sad in its way. He has depth but winds up drowning inside himself--the woman he wants is not mythical or at the bottom of the sea in his own imaginings but at the top of the stairs he descends, reversing his decisiom--beyond a door he never dares to knock on. Sensuality scares him. Do I dare? He is not Lazerous, really, because he hasn't died. Rather, like Freud says about the feelings we refuse--they are not killed--they are always buried alive. So is Prufrock. Meanwhile, day by day his routine and his measured (but unreal) manner deposit a correct amount of coffee--routines and habits that begin to define not just a past but a predictable future (should he not break with routine). I grow old. Beyond speechless he is pinned in a formulated phrase. Other's correctly characterize or mischaracterize him probably either being equally painful--he's skewered like a well-mannered mute who cannot answer for his own silence. I think this is simply a loving, emotional, intelligent and sensitive person shut inside himself by something like victorianism and respectable diffidence--imprisoned by a habitual manner that does not permit a personality or a life. If the form of the poem triumphantly breaks out of an old mode of inhibited expression the person in the poem does not. He doesn't escape. Something's missed in seeing it as a modern triumph. The straight jacket Prufrock wears predates the poem, I suspect. The one thing that is absent from the poem is love.
Truly represents the struggle of living in a superficial and secular society. He thought it was bad back in his time, boy if he saw today's world he would have a heart attack.
I used to hate this poem, because I had the wrong attitude towards it. But then I changed my mind. In the room the women come and go\Talking of MICHELANGELO, this is me at the hairdresser’s - This is absolutely one of the most powerful images of the poem!
This poem hits different when you're barely 20 but have an autoimmune disease and various chronic illnesses. I haven't even gone outside since March, the beginning of Quarantine. "Do I dare?" I'm already disgustingly frail and thin as is, I do not think I could afford to contract the virus. A couple years ago I barely made it out of Influenza A followed by Norovirus. I shouldnt compare myself to others, but I am disgusting. My mouth is dry, my teeth decaying, my eyesight dimming, medication keeping me alive but slowly taking things from me. And I am only 19. I hope for a miracle but I honestly expect to die quite young. The medications only slow the decline, they don't prevent it. I'm lucky that I was diagnosed at 18. I dont know how much longer it will be until my liver or kidneys finally decide to self-destruct. Am I really living? Is this really it? I've tried to end it all in the past, failing miserably. I dont want to try again, I have things to do. Things I care about. I try to keep my mind occupied on the present. But there are nights like tonight where I'll find myself reflecting. The nausea from the doxycyclene reminds me of how utterly weak I am. I foolishly take great care of my outward appearance, knowing that inwards I am far beyond my age. I dont want to look sick, malnourished, or weathered when I die; I want to at least look young. Such a pathetic thing to hope for, this body will decay anyways. Needless to say, these months of isolation only remind me of my brushes with death. Missing out on pivotal moments. Never experiencing youth like my friends have. This is very self depreciating, and very melodramatic. But so was Eliot, so at least I say this in an appropriate setting.
Thank you for sharing your experience. You are in the right place according to the modern poet J.Suskin, 'The Poem Store': I was reminded in her book 'Everyday is a Poem', that poetry is where we can turn when all is failing. Poetry is one of the Graces, one of our graces- if we hang around poetry it is always capable of returning us to life.
quite very good, 1915. a modernised poeta docta et laureato...thx for the upload. did not know that there are such audio-gems, from a century earlier..avail-able.
The first time I ever heard of T.S. Eliot was oddly in my 12th grade technology class. This is still my favorite poem of all time! Of course Dylan Thomas and E.E. Cummings are definitely up there!
Desde que Octavio Paz lo mencionó aquí en México quise saber algo de él. Con esta poesía se revela su naturaleza tímida y a la vez una inteligencia sensible para describir los sentimientos, conocimientos, estado de ánimo, filosofía,etc. T.S.Eliot y su poesía de los pájaros también es bonita.
I'll be honest, I only came here for my homework that had to do with this poem. However I hope everyone enjoyed this piece of art from the 20th Century.
Mermaids as one end of a continuum-with the endless chatter of middle-aged ladies at the other end. The mermaids represent True freedom, and not living one's own imagined life gives me shivers indeed; by far the scariest mortal gut-wrencher..that one did not wake to one's own life.
I have been reading the ‘Love Song’ for over a year. I can’t get past the first verse, when I reach the fourth line, my brain gets a massive Shot of Dopamine and I go into Priapic Ecstasy.
I memorized this gorgeous poem to avoid boredom while on the treadmill. After about 1 year I am seeing new bits of it all the time. He's our early modern genius poet. Fine poetry becomes richer if memorized. A great experience.
+Jane Burton - Brava!
This is the first modern poem by an English poet and expresses modern man's ennui . Hamlet was aware of the problem of existence when time for him was out of joint felt that he was born to set right . But he doubted his capacity and so brooded more than he should . Here the modern man is rather incapacitated and can do nothing but brood over his impotence . Eliot found the solution ,later on , in the Brihadaranyakopanishad . Our problems can be solved by the three principles of life . They are : datta ,dayadhvam and damyata . He referred to these three in section 5 ,What The Thunder Said in The Wasteland . It was a great pleasure to hear the poem by the great poet himself .
Goals 2020.
this is the first english poem that touches me in depths previously attainable only to my native language; perhaps I should memorize it too 😊
Great, just great!
for the past 10 years or so, I've been coming back to this video every time I've had too much to take. I listen to it till I fall asleep.
Me too
Oh my God, you too?
My Father , a professor of English Literature would read this to us , his children at ages 9-10 in his beautiful baritone voice.
I am so grateful that he did, this poem has stuck with me decades later. The use of words in this poem is nothing short of divine.
This is one of the great poems of all time, and Eliot's reading is (to my mind) the definitive reading: precise to the point almost of preciousness; enervated; and filled with self-revulsion and despair. It is stunning that he wrote this poem, which captures so well the weary knowledge of aging, when he was such a young man.
He was so much older then, he’s younger than that now.
So few geniuses spring from the relentless grind of bell-curvish human cultural reproduction. Almost all spring from being (rightly) perceived as a threat.
👍🏼♥️⭐️
OMG. I have read and heard this love song since I was a teenager. I am 52 now. It's so beautiful. This is art, literature at its best.
It's an outlandish experience listering to Eliot speaking out of the untouchable neverland his beautiful poem. I have never tried to "understand" Eliot. His poems "are" they do not "mean". The sounds, the echoes, the beauty, the rosonance of his words make me dream.
This is the beauty of art. Words are just words but how your emotions roll around those words creates your interpretation of the poem. I have gone back to this poem through my life ever since I was 15( 24 now) and I have heard it in multiple phases of my life. I’ve heard it when I craved a partner in this world. I heard it when I was with the most amazing girl I’ve ever met. And today I read it a broken man whose lost her and will forever love her as she sleeps more in love then she’s ever been in another mans arms. Every time it’s a different experience and though I stay here hurt and destroyed I also have to keep on fighting this life so that I can hear it again on another day maybe even a better one.
I studied this poem in school over 20 years ago as it was part of the Irish curriculum. I struggled to understand the feeling in this poem back then as I was too young. Now its overwhelming.
Perhaps, years ago as now, you actually picked up on the emotional tone of this poem: It's a melange of complex feelings that are hard for Prufrock himself to understand, and at the end of the day he's overwhelmed - romantically and sexually, philosophically and spiritually.
Who needs drugs or alcohol? I am enchanted by a little coffee and a scintillating recitation of a brilliant poem. Thanks for the upload.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized 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 with 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.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
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.
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?
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?
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.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
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 platter,
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 hold 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 towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, 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.”
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 threw 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.”
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 meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
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.
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.
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.
Underrated comment
❤️😊
Thank you so much for including the words to this classic. My Mother had it committed to memory. I, as an adult now, see the value in it. I’m striving to memorize it so I can honor my Mommy who is in the afterlife. No matter how old we get, we always need our Mothers and Fathers. I miss you both Ma and Dad. We all love and miss you. I hope you’re shining on us and that you’re proud of all of us.
For those of you who have strained relationships with your parents (save for abusive relationships- in which I’d recommend therapy) please reach out to them and make amends. We never know when it will be our time or theirs. When it’s time to have your ticket punched, it gets punched.
Beautiful reading of one of the great poems of the 20th Century. "There will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet." It's like a knife to the heart.
One of the great lines!
Yes!
When ever i settle a pillow to sleep i think of this
The vast majority of peole on this earth have had thoughts like that. But Eliot wrote it.
That is just English in all its beauty. This is the first T.S Elliot poem I've listened to in all its glory and I am not disappointed!
By a guy from the lovely British hamlet of St. Louis, Missouri :-)
It actually made my stomach sick.I'm trembling.I loved the poem eversince I first read it but listening E reading it gave it a new sense.It's perfect.
I was taught Eliot in college - 1984- till date this poem gives me pleasurable goose bumps.
Over the last 15 years, I have lost track of how many times I have come back to different extracts of this poem. Even today, in the midst of the global crisis we are going through, I can hear humankind saying:
"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."
This is perhaps my favorite poem of all-time, and one to which I relate strongly. The weariness, introspection, and melancholy are apparent in the tone and tempo as well as the words. Simply brilliant.
'I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas' - simply one of the most haunting and poignant lines in all of Western literature capturing what true loneliness and isolation from your fellow man feels like.
jcalli66 I couldn't have said it better if I tried!
always gets me there...
That line shocked me when I first read it. That and the last stanza.
If you’re interested, I read somewhere that it’s a reference to Hamlet Act II scene 2, when Hamlet tells Polonius, “you yourself, sir, should be as old as I am-if, like a crab, you could go backward.”
I’m not sure where I read it, and it’s not in the footnotes that I have. But it makes sense to me, given all the other Hamlet references in the poem. :)
Struggled through heroically by Dennis Hopper's character in Apocalypse Now!
I know this is so much more than about just social anxiety but as someone with severe social anxiety...it makes me feel at home.
th-cam.com/video/FFJWmwIsljo/w-d-xo.html
I ve had it for years and years - and I thought it would never go away. I actually thought Jesus said to me to drink alchohol as that could perfectly ease it. And life went on and drunkenly I would sing my song. I survived. No one understands how crippling it is. Just live. When you find yourself well - which you will, if youre still young, dont leave that place or take it for granted.
I feel this poem follows me through my life
It does, doesn't it? I can never go to the beach without thinking of this poem, for one thing. Just lines from it always pop up in my head. Same with some of his other poems..."Hidden, oh hidden;" "Come out from under the shadow of this red rock;" "Hurry up, it's time." Eliot might have measured out his life in coffee spoons, but my own life seems to be measured out by Eliot's lines.
Le Tinh Song Great Comment! ‘I have measured out my life in Eliot poems’. Love it!!That is a fantastic quote itself!!
:-) Why thank you sir. I was telling someone the next day, it was so ironic, because as I was listening to this, my jeans were actually rolled up, lol! So I KNOW I'm getting old! (and I am.)
what a treasure. what a pleasure on this saturday morning to hear this voice with these words which I have loved and quoted for years. thanks for making it available here.
angry birds shades of grey? who cares? they fade and fall away.
this remains.
Someone made the comment here that poems like this aren't meant to be voiced. Yes they are. Of course they are. This is a dramatic monologue. And Eliot was acutely aware and entranced by the sounds of words. He thought the rhyme and the rhythm of poetry was more important than the actual meaning of the words themselves. He felt the sound was what evoked a primal emotional response in the listener, the words being almost secondary.
"Till human voices wake us and we drown..." how it feels to be jolted out of a beautiful daydream by someone talking at the top of their lungs on public transit.
How snobbish. Head phones exist. I love to hear people sounding happy. You re the sort that makes my mother and father self consious - and why? When we all see each other we dont often have the chance. I am not going to sit in silence because of people like YOU.
As i have lived my life since 1942
Observing and Dreaming
Absolutely brilliant. I've listened to this so many times. Hearing the artist read their work is a beautiful, insightful gift. Pristine piece.
my dude finna go platinum
💣💣💣 bomb 💣💣💣
He kind of has in a way already. Definitely he deserves it 🙌👐👍🤟
nothing but love for the meanest poet of the modernist era.
@Cindi Thomas what? it's a joke
Hahahahaha
He wrote this when he was 22-years-old.
susiemac2u greatest for a reason.
27 according to Wiki
Then wiki is wrong (again). His own biographer, and his own notes, make it clear he BEGAN writing it when he was still an undergrad at Harvard, so, about 20?
I had imagined him in late middle age, the bald spot...
It is true.
"Till human voices wake us, and we drown" the way I read this is that the entire poem is a dream - escaping from the harsh realities of life
"I have seen the moment of my greatness filcker" ... a terrifying line.
Yes, but later in his life, TSE discovered true life in Christ through his embrace of the ancient, traditional Anglican faith. Still a good pathway today!
@@Borzoi86 I took that as he saw a glimpse of how great he could be
@@warrengraham7461 everyone wants to be greater than they are
Not everyone
Awesome! Your reciting made me captivated.So I never pass a day without listening to this captivating poem.Your voice is still vivid like you are in front of me. Thanks a million.
It always astounded me how well this served as a "first" Eliot poem. It's such a natural starting point.
how is it that 37 people dislike this? even if his poetry is not for you.... perhaps passing judgment on a mind of this caliber says much more about judger than the judged...
bao s well, there should be no holy cows, don't you agree? regardless of his 'caliber', i can imagine a hundred reasons why one could dislike eliot...
sure he is a tory fool, but his work speaks for itself... still you are right, no one is beyond reproach ...
bao s if tory means he is conservative, that's not what first springs to mind, but yeah, that also. i find his work nowhere near flawless, but of course i respect it and all....the more i read the modernist poets, the more i get the feeling that with them it's often a case of success through failure. maybe it's really true they are late-comers, in the bloomian sense...anyways, that sums up my feeling of the waste land, not this, i like this fine :) and it's better for me to stop haha, cheers :D
whose work would you describe as being closer to being "flawless" ?
yeah the wasteland really captured my imagination when i was a young man, now it is purely prufrock for me =)
There will be time to prepare a face for the faces that you'll meet. Still one of the realist things ever written.
I read this poem about 40 years ago....till date I get goosebumps. My favorite poem and poet of all time.
So pleased to find Eliot reading this poem. Nobody reads it like him!
!!!!!!!!!
A really really great poem by a brilliant poet ! Do save this treasure of ours !....
Everyone has a favorite line from this great work. I have many. One is, of course, "Do I dare to eat a peach?"
The safest way to eat a peach is standing naked, in the bath. I don't know why he was so worried about the whole peach thing. I've done it many times. Lock yourself in the bathroom, remove all your clothing, get into the bath, eat the peach, have a bath, re- robe. What's the fuss about?
@@tomsdottir laugh out loud! My favorite way to eat a peach is barefoot, in the grass. Kneeling or sitting, as the juice drips down my chin, down the edge of my hand, down to my elbow.
@@tomsdottir Perhaps I am explaining something to you you already know but this line refers to ageing and the difficulty of eating a peach with dentures or decaying teeth. The fear of ageing and realization of ageing is a underlying theme to the poem.
@@tomsdottir ha... the perfect solution to a peach of a problem.... naked in the bath.... Love it...
yes!! Elliot recalled.
Aaah, I'm very happy that people like TS Eliot exist, to be so articulate, to allude to the ineffable, and to perpetuate the chase toward its articulation so tactfully (he knows better, you see, than to try to name the thing, to squeeze the world into a ball and to roll it toward that overwhelming question... What if that wasn't it after all?)
I admire the warmth in this thread btw, especially compared to most youtube threads.
+Dylan nalyd And yet...he is not SURE he should not have done so anyway. Should he have overcome that fear, of rejection, of misunderstanding? He seems to have some regret, but unsure if he should feel that regret...
Well said
Poetry, to be heard and not read.Amazing insight from such a young man.Love it.
A poem I have loved for over 50 years, but hearing Eliot read it I am now more aware of the striking plaiting together of sensuality, banal social observation and philosophy.
I couldn't agree more. I first heard this poem in 1960 as a young man and it has been etched in my mind since that time. I probably read it through at least 5 times a year.
"(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)"
I keep coming back to that verse...
My favorite line 'Let us go then, you and I/while the evening is spread out across the sky/like a patient etherized upon a table' staggering, modern, brilliance. He was so ahead of his time. Morbid but real.
one of (if not the - ) best poems of the 20th century. Absolutely beautiful.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
You should
That's one for the Magic 8 Ball 🎱
@@rainyday7517 Spend some time thinking that over. It is not a question to blurt out an answer to.
@@HipsterEatinShark I certainly have thought about it.
It's the poem that we quote lines from to ourselves as philosophical little pointers from time to time - unforgettable images, refreshing and enriching in their concrete directness, beautifully real, yet quite lateral, a bit surreally juxtaposed and haunting - always reminding us of a nostalgic rite of passage of an older man who we can relate to, as a love song perhaps to his wife or girlfriend, with whom he is facing some kind of big step he feels he doesn't want to "disturb the universe" by initiating a big change - modest, wry, yet dramatic and rather self-effacing. Such enjoyable rhymes and rhythms, and spoken by the poet with the perfect air of unponderous reflection . I probably quote to myself weekly lines like "No I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be" and "And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin.....Then how should I begin/To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?'" And everyone recalls the mermaids stanzas, such a resonance of the fanciful tides of mortality....
Wow! I feel privileged to be able to listen to this... what else would you wish for? And the recording is very well for 1947!!!
oh cellardoor93, i was born in 91, i appreciate your use of such delightful word and know whence it comes, and wish i was two years younger to find myself again the lovely mist of living my 19th year of life. love, great minds think alike. listen to love, love, love by the organ
What a ******* poem. I don't even really like poetry but goodness gracious this is genius.
Why does this poem speak to me so deeply?
Why is it TS Eliot? That poet I'm named after but know nothing about?
How did I find this? Why am I here?
The lemons don't taste of anything anymore.
You would be interested to know in St. Louis just who was the name in the title?
There will be time, there will be time . . .
Acts17Apologetics there will be time...for things to repeat themselves.
Dude, I love your channel! I did not expect to find you here lol
Dr David Woods, Should have known you were a poet. Your interpretation of the "passion" of Van Gogh was profound.
David Wood was the last person I expected to find here.
lmao i love that you're here
And I fell asleep listening to it last night. I've been searching for this recording, thank you so much for posting!
What a fantastic lugubrious delivery. Perfect. And yet so young when he wrote it.
The poem that always hunts me❤️
It's so beautifully written 😍..
i've never heard the poem fully read aloud before. this, to me, seems exactly how it should sound.
katherine m Anthony Hopkins reads it, and I like the way he handles it. You can find it on youtube also...
If you can hear a poem read by its author, I recommend it.
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons...
It's a seriously depressing line. I don't get why people love it so much. Yes, it is beautiful, but it doesn't mean what most people think.
***** How do you interpret it?
+Cass Payne
Yes please??
+Ezra Thompson I would interpret it as measuring life not in achievements or things actually happening, but as an endless repetition of boring days, waking up, getting coffee, doing your job, go to bed, wake up, get some coffee, do your job, think about asking big questions but not actually asking them, go to bed, wake up, make coffee, think about whether you should roll up your trousers (Imagine that, your pants may get wet on the beach, oh boy), think about eating a peach but deciding not to because it might get on your clothes (wet clothes seem to be a phobia of his), going to sleep without having eaten that peach, get up, get some coffee, go to sleep get up go to sleep this is the way the world ends this is the way the world ends this is the way the world ends not with a bang but a whimper
+Jip W
I find "I do not think that they will sing to me." to be even sadder. Heartbreaking, even.
I posted a reading of this myself recently -- such a lovely poem. There's nothing quite like hearing its own progenitor reciting it aloud, though; he really seems to savor each word as it rolls off his tongue. What a treat this is! Thank you for posting it
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock is one of the most beautiful, compelling, enigmatic poems of the 20th century. Many of us, I'm sure, have come back time and time again to this poem, wondering what additional glimmer of insight may illuminate it and move us - as I have, and been moved. So here's my take.
First of all, it is a love song. So while it may be a stream of consciousness, it is a structured one - e.g. note the repetitions - albeit a complicated structure. Indeed, Prufrock is in love, painfully so. He longs deeply for a particular woman, whom he refers to in "If one, settling a pillow by her head..."
Some have argued that Prufrock is terribly indecisive and passive. Similar to Hamlet, he seems to agonize and obsess over what to do, in relation to her, and and may indeed paralyze himself into saying nothing or doing nothing. Instead, I would argue that he has approached this woman, spent a lot of time with her, and gone to bed with her! He is neither indecisive nor passive.
But alas Prufrock is a dour, anxiety-riddled man who, in bed with his love, sometimes goes soft on her - his erection fails him. It is so deeply embarrassing that he dies on the spot. That death is figurative of course, but it figures prominently throughout the poem: Shame so discombobulating to and disintegrating of his psyche, i.e. self esteem, that it paralyzes him, it demoralizes him, and it makes him wonder "Would it have been worth it..."
To my argument about his increasing impotence, reference the following lines:
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 platter,
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 hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
Poor Prufrock wonders, after a dissatisfying turn in bed with his love, if he should have at it again next time. Of course, he does, because he's in love with her!
Besides being a love song, Eliot's masterpiece is a highly erotic one. More specifically I argue that it is a brothel that he frequents, and sex is literally everywhere around him. Prufrock is a proper gentleman, as evidenced by his attire:
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin...
But the opening two main stanzas speak to the route he has to walk and the air he has to breathe - it's all a bit macabre ("Like a patient etherized upon a table") and seedy ("pools that stand in drains" and "soot that falls from chimneys"). But more metaphorically, Eliot's vivid description of the surroundings tells the tale of how Prufrock experiences his love and lust for a woman and what he has to go through psychologically to be with her. It makes me think of another famous Shakespearean character - Prince Hal - who, long before he became King Henry V, frequented the taverns and cavorted with the common people, much to the chagrin of his royal father. For Prufrock it is his gentlemanly sensibility that finds the longing, lustful side of himself despicable.
The repeated lines:
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo...
are the ladies in the brothel. In general, he's enamored with them:
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?
I doubt that they, in turn, are enamored with him, but over time they've become used to him and some of them may even find him endearing. But notice that he doesn't refer to them as whole people, but as body parts - arms and eyes. I argue that this is a manifestation of his obsessive, psychologically compartmentalized nature and also his haughty demeanor. He looks down on these women: After all what do they know about Michelangelo, he may wonder; and they shouldn't be talking about the great artist in passing anyway, he may silently scoff.
Back to his love affair with one of those women: Prufrock is an awkward gentleman, not just in his manners but also in his speech: "It is impossible to say just what I mean!" So we can imagine his conversations with her as having a fair amount of misunderstanding. He hopes to win her love, and maybe even believes at times that she does. Alas, however, having sex with him is only a job for her! She may like him, but it doesn't seem that she truly loves him at all. So his repeated love overtures only come across to her as repeated misunderstandings:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
Moreover, it kills Prufrock every time his woman has sex with another client:
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
We can imagine him sitting in one of the rooms in the brothel, time and time again having coffee by himself, waiting for this woman and her client to finish their business. The sound of sex surrounds him, and the owner knows that it's best to have some music to drown it out. But Prufrock knows this woman's voice, and perhaps her clients' voices, too, and he hears them - oh, he hears them - and it's utterly painful and deflating!
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock is a profound philosophical treatise, similar, I'd argue, to The Myth of Sisyphus. Beyond the brothel setting and Prufrock's love affair, Eliot may be speaking to the Zeitgeist of the time when he wrote it - the advent of World War I. While Camus argued that Sisyphus was happy, despite having to repeatedly push a boulder up a hill, it is a life of existential absurdity and tedium. Love and life, work and sex had perhaps become that absurd and tedious for scores of people as well, at least according to Eliot.
So in light of this world that Eliot created in The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, what does he do in the end? He elevates that brothel, its ladies, and its business to mythic levels:
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
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.
Just as Camus can argue with Sisyphus, so too Eliot can argue with Prufrock: i.e. that in the end he is happy. My sense is that he beds other women in the brothel, and because there isn't that anxiety and disenchantment of his unrequited love, getting hard and getting his rocks off aren't an issue:
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach [i.e. have oral sex]?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach [i.e. put on a condom, and have intercourse].
At the end of it all, he is satisfied. We ought not take "we drown" as literal, though. In Shakespeare, the notion of dying is a metaphor for having an orgasm. There is that sharp, guttural sound from man and woman as they approach climax (i.e. "human voices") and there is that pleasurable death (wink, wink) among those "sea-girls."
Finally, what is that "overwhelming question" that is also a pervasive theme in The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, which he can hardly acknowledge even to himself? It is this, I'd argue: He wants to ask this one woman "Do you love me?" Surely, he knows that it's only a job for her, but he wonders if she has any feelings for him and whether she truly cares about him. He can tolerate the other ladies seeing him as nothing more than a skinny man with a bald spot on his head. But with this one woman, his love is of mythic proportions and his lust fills him with existential pain.
Ron Villejo it's not a love poem at all
interesting take
I read this twice alone and was completely lost for a while in between thanks for elaborating!!
I'm almost positive it is a poem about aging, and the loss,regret, and fear that comes with advanced age in both ambitions, love, and existence itself
@Elias Langer (STUDENT) I'm pretty sure it is as well, I find Ron's explanation to be too wild of a diversion, so much so that I cannot believe that poetry can't be so misinterpreted. But perhaps that is just my mind being too objective about the subject matter.
I have known this since 1957
Human Voices Wake us
And Then We Drown
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.
that is such a spooky comment
@@concars1234 it's from the poem
@@LaFlaneuse0 what poem?
Oh, haven't we all felt that? Robin Witting
@@concars1234 the one being read in the video. *The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock*
I heard a BBC report the other day that helped me to understand the line in the poem about "the yellow fog that rubs its back upom the window-panes." Before the clean air act, the smog in London was yellow, at its worst, even black. In late 1952 it was so bad that transportation was totally halted for days and over 4,000 people died from inhaling the polluted air. It even crept into their houses. A woman reported a story of the day her father died from heart trouble exacerbated by the smog.
It would be interesting as it was for me to read a book called London fog I recommend it
"Smoke that rises from lonely men in shirtsleeves"...could be almost anytime, anywhere. An eloquent capture.
They roll their shorts and he rolls his trousers
The greatest poem of all time read by the author himself. Made me cry
love songs these days, just as beautiful guys
A sublime poem that defies analysis therein lies lts enduring beauty.
And yet, myriads still try to analyze it! I think poetry analysis is what makes some people hate poetry, lol!
And I have seen the eternal footman hold my coat, and snicker.
And in short I was afraid.
T.S.Eliot is the man
My absolute favorite poem 😌
A most perfect poem--expressing our basic humanity.
I loved the musical cats as a kid and still love it today. We had the poems that the musical was based on and I decided to read a few of TS' poems and short plays myself including this and the waste land. Very ominous poet
Hearing him like this, it's really hard to imagine he was born in Missouri. I wonder what he sounded like when he first wrote this, and whether it would make a difference in the way he read it aloud.
i love this poem. i always have.
THIS IS THE KIND OF POETRY THAT BECOMES LEGEND,it somehow,someway reaches at least my deep heart,another "intimations on immortality,wordsworth,occult,visionary men who blow our minds to this day,i may also suggest '''CONFESSIONS OF A ENGLISH OPIUM EATER",thomas dequincy,the most profound book,and STEPPENWOLF,by hermann hesse,also goes beyond all time and space
It's a beautiful poem and one of my favorites but as a love song it's tragic. I read that it's mostly agreed that the overwhelming question is likely a marriage proposal, or to put it a little blandly, 'Do you love me too? Do you love me back?'. Prufrock, mute observer more than participant, is taking measures continually and habitually not to disturb the universe with his presence, let alone to ask for love. It's very sad in its way. He has depth but winds up drowning inside himself--the woman he wants is not mythical or at the bottom of the sea in his own imaginings but at the top of the stairs he descends, reversing his decisiom--beyond a door he never dares to knock on. Sensuality scares him. Do I dare? He is not Lazerous, really, because he hasn't died. Rather, like Freud says about the feelings we refuse--they are not killed--they are always buried alive. So is Prufrock. Meanwhile, day by day his routine and his measured (but unreal) manner deposit a correct amount of coffee--routines and habits that begin to define not just a past but a predictable future (should he not break with routine). I grow old. Beyond speechless he is pinned in a formulated phrase. Other's correctly characterize or mischaracterize him probably either being equally painful--he's skewered like a well-mannered mute who cannot answer for his own silence.
I think this is simply a loving, emotional, intelligent and sensitive person shut inside himself by something like victorianism and respectable diffidence--imprisoned by a habitual manner that does not permit a personality or a life. If the form of the poem triumphantly breaks out of an old mode of inhibited expression the person in the poem does not. He doesn't escape.
Something's missed in seeing it as a modern triumph. The straight jacket Prufrock wears predates the poem, I suspect. The one thing that is absent from the poem is love.
Truly represents the struggle of living in a superficial and secular society. He thought it was bad back in his time, boy if he saw today's world he would have a heart attack.
I used to hate this poem, because I had the wrong attitude towards it. But then I changed my mind. In the room the women come and go\Talking of MICHELANGELO, this is me at the hairdresser’s - This is absolutely one of the most powerful images of the poem!
Thanks writer
This poem hits different when you're barely 20 but have an autoimmune disease and various chronic illnesses. I haven't even gone outside since March, the beginning of Quarantine.
"Do I dare?"
I'm already disgustingly frail and thin as is, I do not think I could afford to contract the virus. A couple years ago I barely made it out of Influenza A followed by Norovirus.
I shouldnt compare myself to others, but I am disgusting. My mouth is dry, my teeth decaying, my eyesight dimming, medication keeping me alive but slowly taking things from me. And I am only 19. I hope for a miracle but I honestly expect to die quite young. The medications only slow the decline, they don't prevent it. I'm lucky that I was diagnosed at 18. I dont know how much longer it will be until my liver or kidneys finally decide to self-destruct. Am I really living? Is this really it?
I've tried to end it all in the past, failing miserably. I dont want to try again, I have things to do. Things I care about. I try to keep my mind occupied on the present. But there are nights like tonight where I'll find myself reflecting. The nausea from the doxycyclene reminds me of how utterly weak I am. I foolishly take great care of my outward appearance, knowing that inwards I am far beyond my age. I dont want to look sick, malnourished, or weathered when I die; I want to at least look young. Such a pathetic thing to hope for, this body will decay anyways. Needless to say, these months of isolation only remind me of my brushes with death. Missing out on pivotal moments. Never experiencing youth like my friends have.
This is very self depreciating, and very melodramatic. But so was Eliot, so at least I say this in an appropriate setting.
thank you
may i talk to you?
Thank you for sharing your experience. You are in the right place according to the modern poet J.Suskin, 'The Poem Store': I was reminded in her book 'Everyday is a Poem', that poetry is where we can turn when all is failing. Poetry is one of the Graces, one of our graces- if we hang around poetry it is always capable of returning us to life.
You alright friend? Hope you're making it thru
I've listened to this obsessively for the past 48 hours, and now am on my (probably) 20th time around.
It's so good. And his voice!
quite very good, 1915. a modernised poeta docta et laureato...thx for the upload. did not know that there are such audio-gems, from a century earlier..avail-able.
There will be time stanza is my favourite. Wonderful poem. It needs thinking about it.
this is so beautiful, i fell asleep listening to this last night. it is music.
Had to comeback here cause I heard this in Cyberpunk 2077!
Exactly
I love this poem
I'm obsessed with this poem.
Me too!
The first time I ever heard of T.S. Eliot was oddly in my 12th grade technology class. This is still my favorite poem of all time! Of course Dylan Thomas and E.E. Cummings are definitely up there!
Great reading. Haunting and melancholy.
Desde que Octavio Paz lo mencionó aquí en México quise saber algo de él. Con esta poesía se revela su naturaleza tímida y a la vez una inteligencia sensible para describir los sentimientos, conocimientos, estado de ánimo, filosofía,etc. T.S.Eliot y su poesía de los pájaros también es bonita.
Octavio Paz is my second-favorite poet, after Eliot. Have loved them both for decades, since my college days.
I love this. I think this will change the way I'll read the poem, forever.
I'll be honest, I only came here for my homework that had to do with this poem. However I hope everyone enjoyed this piece of art from the 20th Century.
it's all about what you do with that "homework" ... bravo! to this teacher who sent you here!
Hypnotic. Greatness.
I love hearing Eliot read his own work. I used to have a recording of his reading out the Waste Land.
I just cried. I hate life. And it's all there is
This great poem has had massive cultural impact, even outside poetry and beyond, and it gets 5,000 listens. Makes you think. Robin Witting England
"That is not it at all/That is not what I meant at all" The creed, I think, of every writer who must also live life!
The part about the mermaids not singing to him has always cut me deep. Such is the fear of most all men.
Indeed.
Mermaids as one end of a continuum-with the endless chatter of middle-aged ladies at the other end. The mermaids represent True freedom, and not living one's own imagined life gives me shivers indeed; by far the scariest mortal gut-wrencher..that one did not wake to one's own life.
@@heidiankers108 How do you even understand the meaning of this poetry?
I have been reading the ‘Love Song’ for over a year.
I can’t get past the first verse, when I reach the fourth line, my brain gets a massive
Shot of Dopamine and I go into Priapic Ecstasy.
Love songs used to be so beautiful.
beautiful poem read beautifully
th-cam.com/video/FFJWmwIsljo/w-d-xo.html
A summary of my mid twenties.
Jamick98Geass a summary of my first 30 years, and a summary of my second 30 years.
Exactly
One of my favourites ever! Thanks for this contribution.
He is still the greatest English speaking poet of the last 100 years