I had to read this in high school and it was analysed by the teacher and us. I was so mesmermized by this poem that I memorized the first half and now know what it is about. I was just enthralled by the poetry.
I'm revisiting LSoJAP after decades. What a blessing and joy to come to your explanatory gift here. TS was the world's first, most prolific, supremely crust-breaking HSP, Highly Sensitive Person, espousing in genius meter the jagged personal tour of his momentary and expansively claustrophobic geographic psychescape. An echo chamber of profoundly WW I generational and after resonance. Rarely has an artist bled in such condensed literal anguish to academic and popular acclaim. TS built the platform that Alanis Morrissette created song from nearly 100 years later. Thank you! Thanks to All. Love 'n Light best & cheers, Sean
0:37 Dante’s Inferno - Embarassment, Secrets 2:06 Inviting the reader in 4:00 - Tedious, Bleak, Going nowhere (or not getting anywhere) 5:17 Women going by, talking about art 8:13 Facial preparation (persona) 30:00 Fear of being misunderstood. Hamlet and Polonius 33:46 “Do I dare Eat a peach” 🍑? 35:27 Sea seaweed, linger, drown
This is a wonderful explanation! Made me appreciate this poem so much more. I feel like every time I read Eliot's work, I find something new to analyze. Thank you!
Brava! You deserve kudos for the relatively gentle and painless way of inviting your audience to engage with the poem, holding their hands on their first cycle around the hermeneutic circle--or perhaps I should say the hermeneutic spiral. .
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.
Oh, thank you, Rebecca. Thank you as well for your patient walk through of the poem. Your interpretation, as well as others' on TH-cam, have helped clarify my thoughts over the past several months. While we may all have different perspectives, we share a common love for this poem! And isn't that what masterful poetry is all about :)
There doesn't seem to be much room for ambiguity in your interpretation. Good poems tend to work at several levels. That surely is the point. Otherwise why bother?
I am an adjunct instructor and have decided to include this poem in my upcoming course on World Literature After 1660. I confess it has always baffled me. I didn't have thorough instruction on it while in school, and that was part of the problem. The language always put me off a bit as well. I'm much more comfortable with Medieval and Renaissance works. However, I felt that it was important to include "Prufrock" in my course, though I was completely mystified as to how to approach teaching a work I didn't understand myself. You have enlightened me tremendously! I can't tell you how much I appreciate your mini-lecture on this. Simply fabulous! Thank you!
Well, wow! You're so welcome. I avoided teaching this poem for a while myself. I finally decided to dig in and try to figure it out. I heard a lecture on it back in the 90's by Agah Shahid Ali, a 20th century poet. That helped. Some of it still challenges me. Good luck with your course!
I enjoyed joining you on our journey through this magnificent, powerful poem. Years ago when I was working, to pass the time during my drive to work I memorized Prufrock and would recite it on my way. It always saddened me. Perhaps there were times in my life when I felt just like Prufrock, a scuttling crab. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us readers and listeners.
Thank you for posting this. I haven’t heard it since college but the images have stuck with me for 4 decades. I walked to the coffee shop this morning to buy and read my favorite newspaper. Inside, a girl sat at a sunny table behind a black tripod, staring wide eyed at me. The paper hadn’t yet been delivered. As I walked out empty handed, no paper, no coffee, I realized she was “influencing” into her phone. The jingle of the opening door had spoiled her line and she’d have to say it over again. I let my hip hit a metal chair and it scraped on the tile. I think Eliot’s Prufrock wanted to ask a young peach on a date but believed he had nothing but indecision and coffee spoons to offer her.
Thank you for your time and effort, i really appreciate what you are doing for learners and to explain beautiful poems for us. I have been watching you for 4 years now ❤️
Thank you, thank you, thank you! You explained this poem in such a way that left me informed of your great ideas, but also allowed me to form my own opinions of the life of Prufrock. You were enjoyable to listen to as well. :)
How many many times I have felt what TS Eliot is here describing.What a horrible feeling and thinking process. Again Rebecca thank for the elucidation... I can listen and listen to you till the time of End...
I think he asks 'Do I dare to eat a peach?' in part because eating a peach is a bit messy, with the juice dripping down the chin - not something to do in polite society, which is his own milieu.
He knew ... and still knows but doesn't know for sure! The overwhelming question (O do not ask what is it) has many answers all of which are wrong ... even the question is wrong ... what is it? Question the question!
+Mick Maphari Both of your interpretations were revelations to me, so thanks. I'm new to Eliot, I've always found him intimidating. Doesn't help that I started a long time ago with Ash Wednesday.
This was more than awesome. i am preparing for my final exam in university and missed my class lecture for this poem....and i must say you've helped me out.. I've got this poem so well now. tysm mam. keep uploading more. God bless ya :)
This is a 'love song' and therefore presumably addressed to a woman he is in love with. We have an expression 'to pop the question' meaning to ask the woman you are in love with to marry you. This surely provides the conceptual frame within which the 'events' of the poem take place. It could perhaps be fruitfully compared with Philip Larkin's poems on a similar theme, notably The Whitsun Weddings. Is Prufrock in fact old? Or does he just see himself as old? Or is he seeing himself as he might be in the future if he never marries? (Hamlet also is uncertain of what to do with himself. As well as having his father's death to avenge there is also the question of what to do about Ophelia, Polonius's daughter!)
@Phil Dodd (HistoriaAntiqua.ORG) : 'Should I be married? Should I be good? / Marry the girl next door, with velvet suit and Faustus hood?' is Gregory Corso's version of this poem. Though of course phrased in terms of a much less highly refined and erudite sensibility. Eliot wrote many Personae which might be compared with the Dramatic Monologues of Browning. Except that Eliot's Personae are always thinly disguised versions of himself. Therefore I think it more instructive to read the poem in the light of his own biography. The evidence is not that Eliot felt that he was unattractive to women and would therefore fail to find a woman at all but that he felt most women were far too shallow and vapid - he was a terrible snob and extremely conceited and came from the American equivalent of an aristocratic family - and that he would get involved with the wrong woman. A woman who would bore him - or even worse - destroy him. The main point at issue between us is whether Eliot's protagonist is more afraid of rejection or of acceptance. I maintain that it is acceptance he is terrified of. You rejection. I suspect that in the light of Eliot's other poems on a similar theme it is I who am right. Though the argument you put up is extremely plausible. Eliot was a man with a very finely developed sensibility. A man of highly educated tastes and about as aesthetically refined as one could get. He was certainly an aesthete. He was also a genius. He would have been aware of that. He was in himself a highly wrought and extremely delicate work of art. His education was extremely elaborate and very expensive. The last thing he would have wanted to do was throw himself away on the wrong woman. And not only he but his family would have felt the same. They had extremely strong views on the subject and great difficulty with the woman he did finally choose - Vivian. To me the repeated couplet about the women coming and going and talking of Michelangelo demonstrates not a fear of being rejected by women but a demonstration of his own distaste for vapid women. He is in many ways a misogynist. He is as terrified of involvement with empty-headed women as of a lonely bachelorhood. Both are a terrifying prospects for him. He is weighing up the pros and cons. Both prospects are equally appalling. 'But since, up from those depths, no one has yet returned alive ... ' is surely the central point of the epigraph. I think you should reread 'Conversation Galante'. Surely it supports my reading of this present poem better than yours. 'Hysteria' is another case in point. 'La Figlia Che Piange' is not a poem written by a man who thinks he is fundamentally unattractive to women. Or one who thinks that women are fundamentally unattractive. On the contrary the right woman is extremely important to him. And that is precisely the point. Eliot was a perfectionist. And a perfectionist in everything. And from a very strong Calvinist tradition. Hence all his difficulties. And our difficulties with him. 'Perfection is terrible:/it cannot have children,' complained Sylvia Plath. And indeed Eliot never fathered children. Either at the physical level. Or at the spiritual. Just admirers. Who then went away and did something different. Then there is the problem of precisely why Eliot would want to write a poem about a fundamentally unattractive man. As I say there is no evidence that Eliot felt himself to be unattractive vis-à-vis other men. He may have felt that the human animal was unattractive in itself. And in many ways it is. After all physically what are we but a more or less attractively packaged bag of shit and piss and snot and vomit and blood and pus and guts? And Eliot was too deep and too religious a man to be taken in by the superficial appearance of anything. In short I think you neglect Eliot's complexity and oversimplify him. Yours is but one reading among many. And ignores too many aspects not just of this work but of the rest of his oeuvre.
Dead on that this is about love. Elliot is sharing feelings of rejection by the women he encounters. Prufrock is a middle aged man, facing his mortality and lost opportunities. Elliot, however, is a man in his early 20’s. He is projecting his feelings as a young man struggling through his romantic life onto a man like him after 30 years of these struggles. A professor of mine at Berkeley had met Elliot. They were at dinner, and Elliot was reading the menu. He said, “Oh, do I dare to get a lobster?” My professor laughed uncontrollably, and answered, “…do you dare to eat a peach?”😂
Sounds like the guy is in a mid-life crisis. Anyway, thank you so much for posting this! This poem has easily become one of my favorites. Thank you again
I've always found it interesting that so much of this poem reads as if it was written by a middle aged (or older?) man. Yet, I believe T.S. Eliot was only 23 (and still in college?) when he wrote it.
Amazing. I adore your warm, insightful approach to teaching poetry and prose. Makes me think about these works in an entirely different way. Thank you!
My guess in connection with: "To drop a question on your plate", refers to "What's the meaning of Work?" What does all the convoluted interaction between human beings truly mean? Is it shallow or deep? Are we living in a Hollow Space, or a space filled? These are deep subconscious and fearfully conscious questions. Also, the smoke represents the free part of your soul. The non-material part of you, that's left adrift, without being noticed. Thanks for putting yourself out there. It's truly a beautiful gesture.
OMG thank you so much! I was really having a hard time grasping the concept of this poem when I read it for school but now that I have listened to this video, I really get it now and it is really cool! Plus I loved listening to you talk, you have a nice voice. But anyway, great video!
OMG! Thank you so much for that video! I need this poem for a final exam, and I read it twice in english, then I read it in bulgarian (i'm bilingual) I read summary, notes etc. and I still felt like an idiot not getting what this is really about, and then I found your video and now It opened my eyes :D i already know much more for 38 minutes than from 3 hour researching :D
Thank you so much!! I was told to write about the modernism in this poem and did even fully understand what the poem was about at first but now I have a better understand of what is going on.
He seems to be daydreaming; imagining him self with life in conversations, but is woken by human voices/ reality; the women, not the mermaids and is once again drowning in conversation.
I think, on surface level, by "overwhelming question" he means Prufrock wants to propose the woman he loves, like, 'Will you be mine, or will you marry me?'. On other levels, this question may be something higher philosophical question regarding the nothingness of human existence (notice the tone of hopelessness all through the poem). Again, the question overwhelms him because he does not know the answer... The burden of his dual personality (you and I) makes him wonder about insignificant things. It's connected to the mental drama going inside, rather than any practical or physical action. That's what I think!
That's what I always thought, until I learned about his life with his wife. I think he wants to ask for a divorce and is debating the consequences of growing old alone, will anyone else want him when she's gone.
"And time for all the works and days of hands" (line 29), might refer to Works and Days (Érga kai hemérai, ca 700 BC) by Hesiod. The farmer in that poem emphasises the importance of living your life in the manner that the Gods have seen fit. This could be compared to Prufrocks difficulties in breaking free from his trivial life due to fear of rejection and/or other consequences. Just a thought. You've highlighted some stuff I didn't think about in my paper on the subject. Nice video. Greetings from Norway!
Thank you for your thoughts. I had to go back an finish. Fun, giant steps to ponder! I trusted your credit by your appreciation, modesty, and disarming sincerity. When I see someone allowing themselves to be as they feel.. as they are...I am inspired. " I can do that! And not give a..."
I stumbled onto this site and I'm so glad I did. What a great teacher you are, I really enjoyed listening to you. I can't wait to listen to the rest of your videos. Thank you, made my day.
missed the prufrock lecture in my lit class while i was a senior in high school and it’s been on my mind ever since. thank you for analyzing this incredible poem ☺️
I am so thankful for these videos. I stumble upon some poems that I love but don’t quite understand; only to come here and begin to understand. Thank you so much. I love this channel. Been watching videos here for years now.
Amazing video. Loved the way you broke down every sentence of this poem. By far one of the best explanations i have heard or read. After watching this video i understood the poem in its entirety. I am recommending your videos for others in my class to see! Keep up the good work!
Thank-you so much, Rebecca! Extremely pleasant to listen to ! Such an empathetic and unpretentious discussion of one of my very favourite poems that I recite lines of to myself frequently. It's lovely how you sort of harmonise and move along a little journey with the poem, treating the listener to generous quotes, and gentle queries about the connections. So refreshing and appreciative, rather than steam -rollering the poem with alienating analysis that almost disgards it and infers it's not enough in itself. I'm not sure about the Dante mention at the beginning. Perhaps Alfred J. is likeable partly due tp his humility and yet sad but in a creative way due to his somewhat distanced observor stance musings, yet showing a touch of appealing wit. Perhaps he asks himself if he dares to eat a peach, concerned about dribbling the peach juice, whereas, as you say, he might have totally relished it when younger. That's an interesting interpretation of "Am an attendant lord..." - as not using the I pronoun certainly fits the role, as maybe a depletion in ego - also, the assonance of "am" scans nicely. Yet the touch of graceful melancholy is very life-romantic IMO - despite the final "and we drown" phrase, where I think he's inviting the reader to empathise rather than literally drown. I'm still wondering what the "crisis" is tho, that he doesn't feel able to provoke - perhaps the mystery adds a metaphysical touch! Thank-you again, best of wishes, Anne Seagull - songs on www.anneseagull.com
Thank you sooooo much. I have to do a presentation on this poem, and I didn't understand it at all until watching your video. You made everything make a lot more sense!
the toast and tea line, @ 10:45 reminds me of being in hospital post operation. Its toast and tea that is brought to you first by the nurses. As you recover you have certainly lots of time, lying in bed to think about your life
Could the 'overwhelming question' that is referred to throughout the poem be; the overwhelming 'QUESTION'? As in, the existence of the question. The ability to question. As he uses the terms 'do I dare', often. He is questioning himself. So could it be he is noting the overwhelming existence of 'the question'. I am sorry I dont know how to explain what I am thinking more clearly. The question, as the potential for all possible questions all possible times, and the abstract idea of the question at all and to begin with. The overwhelming nature of being able to question oneself. Ok well, an edit here, now listening further, with more context, and yes I have listened to the poem; Perhaps the overwhelming question is the one of 'right and wrong', what is right and wrong, is this right is this wrong? Or a more literal approach, a foggy night, wandering around the streets, you eventually arrive at some question 'what am I doing, what do I want, where am I going, which way should I turn, am I hungry, what time is it, am I to tired to walk more'... I dont know... Could be, the amount a person questions himself, it appears the entire poem is discussing his indecision, another concept and term which may relate is; confidence, a person who has pure, ultra confidence apparently, truthfully, or seemingly does not question themselves, if he just knew exactly what to do, or accepted himself and his surroundings, he would have nothing of his actions to question, for they would all be acceptable, but because he believes himself to be inadequate in his own eyes and potentially the eyes of others, he is questioning his apperance and ability to function with others in an even socially valueable manner. This poem is pretty much a window into the mind of someone with social anxiety disorder, every single action of theirs under a microscope, being hard on himself over every little thing, every potential a pandoras box of questions, where as, it may be technically possible for him to ask none of them, and this would then be, whose to say, false or worthy confidence. 'do I dare to eat a peach', followed by the mermaids, makes me think of what you were saying about him at this party persuing the love of a woman, 'the love song'. The question may be, is he confident or worthy enough to attempt to pick up a woman at this event. The mermaids being juxtaposed to the harshness of the city and such, might be his vision of the purity and pedastooling of woman, and him observing them like mythical creatures talking amongst themselves, who might also be therefore intimidating to approach. But holy crap, I have listened to the reading of this poem on youtube maybe 20 times, and have not come anywhere near to comprehending the linearality and flow and narrative of it like this at all. Maybe last few lines, about lingering in sea chambers and seaweed glad girls, is him lingering in his fantasy, his true desires and wants, and ideal life and interaction with the mythical creature that is the woman, until the very human reality set in, interrupting his fantasy and ideals, and showed him, via his lack of confidence, that his wishes to 'claim' a woman, seem unlikely.
+Imafungi123 That was very good, but I've always thought the question Elliot was afraid to ask was about sex, about deepening his relationship with a woman to include physical intimacy. Maybe this is wrong, but it also fits with pretty much everything in the poem.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. This poem is so important to me even if it never truly opened up to me until now. I study English lit and I love poetry, however, I'm still intimidated by poems more often than not... But this video certainly helped me get started with this particular poem, and I think it also gave me more confidence for the future. So thank you again, and keep on doing these videos! :)
+Laura Jalkanen You're so welcome! Keep enjoying poems and reading. I felt the same way about poems -- that they were intimidating and "smarter" than me -- but I kept reading and learning. Rewarding! Thanks for commenting. Good luck with everything!
This was incredibly helpful. I come out of this knowing and appreciating the poem so much more. Thank you very much. I hope you continue to do this for a very long time.
I think the best way to interpret the poem is to imagine it as having been written by Prufrock himself to try and woo a woman. In this sense, a lot of the poem can be seen as him thinking out loud as to how best to write this love song. The epigraph, about embarrassment of telling the audience his story, is similar to the embarrassment a poet feels in sharing their early work (Elliot would have related. He said that, although he wrote his first poems at around 14, he destroyed them cause they apparently were "gloomy and despairing"). The title "The Love Song of ..." is quite simplistic, and makes sense as a working title for someone writing a poem but hasn't come up with a proper title. Prufrock says later on that he is "Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse". That would explain some of the melodic yet seemingly tautologous lines, like "To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet" and "I know the voices dying with a dying fall". They're tautologous because they were written by Prufrock himself.
Very nice. The older I get the better this poem sounds to me. It reminded me to read "To His Coy Mistress" again. The older I get the stronger the images. the eternal foot man, the moments of my glory etc..,
I was really lucky to have found this video. This was so perfectly splendid, so profoundly explained. I enjoyed your explanation thorough out and I really thank you for doing such an amazing job !
“The ‘you’ of the first line seems to be the reader at first, but ‘you and I’ could be two aspects of Prufrock- his thinking self addressing his public personality- though the final ‘we’ that drowns may not be only the whole Prufrock, but a universaling touch.”
I think the reason the smoke refers to yellow cat is the way smog is seen to move between yellow car lights, neon and industrial lights...very smooth like a cat.Thank you for ur analysis waiting for more to come!!!
I stumbled upon this analysis and I am very glad I did. I'm currently reading "The Lovesong of Miss Queenie Hennessy" by Rachel Joyce, which is the follow-up to "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry". It is never overtly stated in the book, but the phrase, "let us go then, you and I" struck something in my mind and after googling it, I rediscovered "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" which I studied a long time ago for A-level. I then realised there are quite a few references in the book to this poem by T.S. Eliot. And inevitably, it reignited my desire to rediscover T.S. Eliot. Thank you, Six Minute Scholar for inspiring me towards a further interest in poetry and literature which I hope to explore further!
What if the mermaids at the end of the poem are the women he would be having tea; he hears them singing/ talking. But they do not sing for him/ talk to him. He imagines himself with them when in that depth, alive with conversation.
Prufrock is a royal doctor and Jack the Ripper. That is his obsession with women, what he cannot show and his impulse with death but this is him in a social gathering despite his true character. It fits the medical allusions, Dante's foreward and his neurotic narcissism.That is how I've always felt about this poem. I questioned it at the start of this video but with age and over the years the feeling becomes stronger. Not to mention I've always got vibes from Poe's Tell-tale Heart from this.
Thank you so much! I'm so happy I found this! I'm an Italian student,and I am trying to study Eliot alone,but it's so hard! But anyway with your lesson I was able to understand a little bit more about this poem! Thank you so much! Now i will watch all your videos! Thank you!
Thank you soo much for sharing your knowledge this helps us to make our studies easier please keep uploading like this wish to see more of your vedios. Good luck
This was a great discussion of this poem, and quite nicely detailed I must say. Thanks！Also, what I think is another purpose of the little refrain “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michaelangelo” is to emphasize that Michaelangelo is the type of man that women talks about, at least according to the speaker, and he does not think himself to be any Michaelangelo which in turn makes him doubt himself more and refuses to dare to disturb the universe by going forward and confessing to a woman.
Not analyzing this for a class, just found the video thought I should read the poem. After I read it I watched the video in it's entirety and found myself thinking some of the same things you were saying. Glad to know I'm not too far off the path as I plan to teach English sometime in the near future. Thanks for keeping me confident, despite Prufrock's views on life. =]
Jason Beech I sincerely did not mean to come across as pedantic; but I am certain that we here are either poets, students of poetry, or at the very least English majors. I did enjoy the lecture, but correct grammar in a lecture of this nature is the least we should expect... Charis
Thanks Rebecca, I found your analysis of Prufrock very informative and would make the following observations. I feel that Prufrock is 'talking to himself' the Poem is him reflecting on his inadequacies, like you might do when you beat yourself up when looking in the bathroom mirror? So there is no companion nor is it addressed to the reader. I also feel that this isn't a particular social gathering phobia. It is a whole life-time of disappointment in his indecisiveness, not being able to express what he really felt, clamming up, procrastinating over yet another cup of coffee and now he is getting old and probably never will show anyone the real Prufrock. A hopeless romantic, but a loner, who sees/feels emotions everywhere in life from the dirty streets, the lonely men, the beautiful women and the beach. But he was fearful that he was not eloquent enough to fully express the passions he has, and had he tried he would have been misunderstood anyway. Instead he quietly if not awkwardly played the supporting role throughout his life. The only time he felt at ease was in his dreams, imagination, inside his head and then life pulls him back to reality and he drowns. 100 years old this month, here is my attempt to express it th-cam.com/video/ONOFaEMFGVQ/w-d-xo.html
Thank you so much. I like the way you went smoothly in this reading. However my question is why you didn't try read the poem title. It starts with the "love"! What love? Why it doesn't appear in this love song? Did he (a) love song not (the) love song?! The sense of hopelessness is very clear in the poem so what love is it that can make a thin hared man dress up and attempt to eat a peach. This metaphor I think refers to his sexual "inability". I love poetry and although English is not my language I feel this poem has touched me very deeply. Thanks again
I'm so glad you explained so well . Thank you so much,I nearly omit the poem.I wasnt going to prepare this for tomorrow's exam cuz I found it so tough.But u did so easily n I got many points out of it ...U are so good ♡
Thank you. I've always loved this poem. I love it more now. And I identify with it deeply. Hesitation, self doubt, being stuck in indecisiveness. Wow! My life writ large. Have you studied or analyzed the myth of the fisher king, the fool and the holy grail? The only thing the film has to do, at the right moment, is to submit to his innate instinct and ask his question. Just that action of realizing outwardly who he is inwardly, will save the wounded king and by extension, the kingdom. There a parallels here, I think, between Parcival and Prufrock.
Very enjoyable explication. Prufrock is a man who has missed a lot in life and comes to realize this more and more as he ages. In the 100 times that I have read this poem, I have come to believe that he misses the close company of a lover but cannot get up the courage to court one of the women in a rooming house where they all share time together. That may be the “question” he cannot address. Also, he will need to roll up his pant legs because he is shrinking in height as he ages.
Thank you for this. I had already started to have an idea formed for the analysis for this poem and was looking for a reading of it because I thought it "sounded" aesthetically pleasing in my head (if that makes sense?) But your analysis of the poem helped me to form the ideas into more solid concepts and now I have a working interpretation of the narrator as an extremely gifted person, creatively, but also an extreme introvert with a bit of social anxiety. I found myself wishing, though out your analysis, that I had had you for my "intro to lit" class, because you made it accessible where as my teacher just said read it and write a page about it.
Wow! I've been in love with Eliot's Waste land since high school but I never quite got this one. Now that I understand it I think I like it even more than the Waste land. Thanks! :)
SixMinuteScholar I noticed you didn't mention the line "Do I dare disturb the universe?", which, for me personally, is the line in the poem that resonates the most deeply inside of me. Any take on that one?
I love the videos you make! Your videos really help me understand and appreciate the work so much more. As opposed to just being confused and dragging through English 2. Thanks so much for your work!
Tea & toast is breakfast in England (marmalade as well). So I don't think the poem is quite so logical and chronological. 'A dying fall' could be a first Shakespeare reference - Orsino's speech (If music be the food of love....) 'That strain again, it had a dying fall' Dante/Lazeras both returning. I found the recent book - about the young Eliot really revealing. Also his friendship with Ezra Pound. The old man 'angst' is challenging for a women, I think, you're very brave! One trap of 'academia' is that we need to know what to write to pass exams (or as one English teacher said, words to the effect that 'I've got to teach this damn poem! Eliot, for me, is the struggle with profundity verses the banality of everyday life and makes a rendezvous with my own life's quest. I love your patience and understanding with the people who wrote comments
I see many parallels between Prufrock and the man in Notes from Underground by Dostoyevsky. They seem to both live in this subterranean realm but have experienced said realm in different ways. Anyway, thank you for the explanation!
Awesome, I will love researching this. There are so many hidden allusions in Prufrock that we could spend years analyzing it. Not that there is a right or wrong answer as to how it is perceived. That is the joy of reading Eliot. To say Eliot was a well read man would be an understatement. There are many parallels from the multitude of authors he has read. I guess my point is, we have to read more in order to appreciate what he was trying to convey.
I thank you so much for opening my eyes to this. I have been timid to read works of authors such as Dostoevsky. I have not seen any other reference to Dostoevsky. The majority point out the obvious Biblical, Shakespearean, Mythological similes as Eliot points it out. I hope others will see your comment and research this as well. Thank you again
Kris Yallowega I’m glad it’s inspired you to branch out in your reading! I highly recommend Notes from underground (it’s my favorite book) and Crime and Punishment. I was hesitant to read such authors myself at some point but I’m glad I gave them a chance.
@@VictoriaAntonetti Hello Victoria, I have been waiting for more of your analysis and realized that I am the one who stopped the chatter. Over time I have been leaning toward J. Alfred Prufrock was not a bachelor but a married man wanting to leave his wife. He had money at one time but may have lost it. I am also wondering how long before people turn away from Eliot. The biblical allusions throughout his prose, not just Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. I look forward to your reply and hope all is well with you in this time of concern.
I had to read this in high school and it was analysed by the teacher and us.
I was so mesmermized by this poem that I memorized the first half and now know what it is about. I was just enthralled by the poetry.
I'm revisiting LSoJAP after decades. What a blessing and joy to come to your explanatory gift here. TS was the world's first, most prolific, supremely crust-breaking HSP, Highly Sensitive Person, espousing in genius meter the jagged personal tour of his momentary and expansively claustrophobic geographic psychescape. An echo chamber of profoundly WW I generational and after resonance. Rarely has an artist bled in such condensed literal anguish to academic and popular acclaim. TS built the platform that Alanis Morrissette created song from nearly 100 years later. Thank you! Thanks to All. Love 'n Light best & cheers, Sean
0:37 Dante’s Inferno
- Embarassment, Secrets
2:06 Inviting the reader in
4:00
- Tedious, Bleak, Going nowhere (or not getting anywhere)
5:17 Women going by, talking about art
8:13 Facial preparation (persona)
30:00 Fear of being misunderstood. Hamlet and Polonius
33:46 “Do I dare Eat a peach” 🍑?
35:27 Sea seaweed, linger, drown
This is a wonderful explanation! Made me appreciate this poem so much more. I feel like every time I read Eliot's work, I find something new to analyze. Thank you!
You have a lovely voice.
Adrian Grant
simp
Simp
I think that "you and I" refers to the writer's private and public self. The private- when he is alone and the public- the mask he puts when going out
Yes, that makes sense. I like it!
yeah, you are right. definitely it can not be the reader ::
+SixMinuteScholar ... It's a 'love song' addressed to himself?
Angie Valerius nice way of teaching
its a love song, you is a referring for a woman.
Brava! You deserve kudos for the relatively gentle and painless way of inviting your audience to engage with the poem, holding their hands on their first cycle around the hermeneutic circle--or perhaps I should say the hermeneutic spiral. .
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 Wow, this is great! I follow your reasoning easily. This hangs together well. Thank you for a stimulating essay on the poem!
Oh, thank you, Rebecca. Thank you as well for your patient walk through of the poem. Your interpretation, as well as others' on TH-cam, have helped clarify my thoughts over the past several months. While we may all have different perspectives, we share a common love for this poem! And isn't that what masterful poetry is all about :)
There doesn't seem to be much room for ambiguity in your interpretation. Good poems tend to work at several levels. That surely is the point. Otherwise why bother?
Interesting take and strangely enough, I just so happened to pick up Sisyphus today for the first time.
@@johnmartin2813 Isn't literature supposed to be open to interpretation? I think his interpretation is great.
I am an adjunct instructor and have decided to include this poem in my upcoming course on World Literature After 1660. I confess it has always baffled me. I didn't have thorough instruction on it while in school, and that was part of the problem. The language always put me off a bit as well. I'm much more comfortable with Medieval and Renaissance works. However, I felt that it was important to include "Prufrock" in my course, though I was completely mystified as to how to approach teaching a work I didn't understand myself. You have enlightened me tremendously! I can't tell you how much I appreciate your mini-lecture on this. Simply fabulous! Thank you!
Well, wow! You're so welcome. I avoided teaching this poem for a while myself. I finally decided to dig in and try to figure it out. I heard a lecture on it back in the 90's by Agah Shahid Ali, a 20th century poet. That helped. Some of it still challenges me. Good luck with your course!
A WONDERFUL EXPLICATION OF A POEM THAT HAS ELUDED ME FOR MANY YEARS.
I enjoyed joining you on our journey through this magnificent, powerful poem. Years ago when I was working, to pass the time during my drive to work I memorized Prufrock and would recite it on my way. It always saddened me. Perhaps there were times in my life when I felt just like Prufrock, a scuttling crab. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us readers and listeners.
I like this lady a lot. I already graduated but i come back to her all the time, she makes me so relaxed with her voice
Thank you for posting this. I haven’t heard it since college but the images have stuck with me for 4 decades.
I walked to the coffee shop this morning to buy and read my favorite newspaper. Inside, a girl sat at a sunny table behind a black tripod, staring wide eyed at me.
The paper hadn’t yet been delivered.
As I walked out empty handed, no paper, no coffee, I realized she was “influencing” into her phone. The jingle of the opening door had spoiled her line and she’d have to say it over again. I let my hip hit a metal chair and it scraped on the tile.
I think Eliot’s Prufrock wanted to ask a young peach on a date but believed he had nothing but indecision and coffee spoons to offer her.
Thank you for your time and effort, i really appreciate what you are doing for learners and to explain beautiful poems for us. I have been watching you for 4 years now ❤️
Thank you, thank you, thank you! You explained this poem in such a way that left me informed of your great ideas, but also allowed me to form my own opinions of the life of Prufrock. You were enjoyable to listen to as well. :)
I'm so glad! Thanks. :-)
How many many times I have felt what TS Eliot is here describing.What a horrible feeling and thinking process.
Again Rebecca thank for the elucidation...
I can listen and listen to you till the time of End...
I think he asks 'Do I dare to eat a peach?' in part because eating a peach is a bit messy, with the juice dripping down the chin - not something to do in polite society, which is his own milieu.
+Mick Maphari Also obvious sexual innuendo
Obviously sex is a messy business!
Mick Maphari Who knew? :D
He knew ... and still knows but doesn't know for sure! The overwhelming question (O do not ask what is it) has many answers all of which are wrong ... even the question is wrong ... what is it? Question the question!
+Mick Maphari Both of your interpretations were revelations to me, so thanks. I'm new to Eliot, I've always found him intimidating. Doesn't help that I started a long time ago with Ash Wednesday.
Such a hauntingly beautiful work, so many lines that keep you thinking! Wonderful analysis, thank you so much!
This was more than awesome. i am preparing for my final exam in university and missed my class lecture for this poem....and i must say you've helped me out.. I've got this poem so well now. tysm mam. keep uploading more. God bless ya :)
Aishwarya Sahdev I'm in the same position.
that's not what I meant at all - ts eliot
And one day you will be too. Let that sink in.
Ha ha!
It's not just ambiguity that distinguishes poetry from prose. Both are filled with yellow fog if they are good at all.
That is exactly what I thought as I listened to this superficial, societal focused analysis.
@@kylepatrick4996 Yo, 2020 was crazy. You around?
This is a 'love song' and therefore presumably addressed to a woman he is in love with. We have an expression 'to pop the question' meaning to ask the woman you are in love with to marry you. This surely provides the conceptual frame within which the 'events' of the poem take place. It could perhaps be fruitfully compared with Philip Larkin's poems on a similar theme, notably The Whitsun Weddings. Is Prufrock in fact old? Or does he just see himself as old? Or is he seeing himself as he might be in the future if he never marries? (Hamlet also is uncertain of what to do with himself. As well as having his father's death to avenge there is also the question of what to do about Ophelia, Polonius's daughter!)
Yes, good points! Thank you for adding a scholarly comment!
@Phil Dodd (HistoriaAntiqua.ORG) : 'Should I be married? Should I be good? / Marry the girl next door, with velvet suit and Faustus hood?' is Gregory Corso's version of this poem. Though of course phrased in terms of a much less highly refined and erudite sensibility.
Eliot wrote many Personae which might be compared with the Dramatic Monologues of Browning. Except that Eliot's Personae are always thinly disguised versions of himself. Therefore I think it more instructive to read the poem in the light of his own biography. The evidence is not that Eliot felt that he was unattractive to women and would therefore fail to find a woman at all but that he felt most women were far too shallow and vapid - he was a terrible snob and extremely conceited and came from the American equivalent of an aristocratic family - and that he would get involved with the wrong woman. A woman who would bore him - or even worse - destroy him.
The main point at issue between us is whether Eliot's protagonist is more afraid of rejection or of acceptance. I maintain that it is acceptance he is terrified of. You rejection. I suspect that in the light of Eliot's other poems on a similar theme it is I who am right. Though the argument you put up is extremely plausible. Eliot was a man with a very finely developed sensibility. A man of highly educated tastes and about as aesthetically refined as one could get. He was certainly an aesthete. He was also a genius. He would have been aware of that. He was in himself a highly wrought and extremely delicate work of art. His education was extremely elaborate and very expensive. The last thing he would have wanted to do was throw himself away on the wrong woman. And not only he but his family would have felt the same. They had extremely strong views on the subject and great difficulty with the woman he did finally choose - Vivian.
To me the repeated couplet about the women coming and going and talking of Michelangelo demonstrates not a fear of being rejected by women but a demonstration of his own distaste for vapid women. He is in many ways a misogynist. He is as terrified of involvement with empty-headed women as of a lonely bachelorhood. Both are a terrifying prospects for him. He is weighing up the pros and cons. Both prospects are equally appalling.
'But since, up from those depths, no one has yet
returned alive ... '
is surely the central point of the epigraph.
I think you should reread 'Conversation Galante'. Surely it supports my reading of this present poem better than yours. 'Hysteria' is another case in point. 'La Figlia Che Piange' is not a poem written by a man who thinks he is fundamentally unattractive to women. Or one who thinks that women are fundamentally unattractive. On the contrary the right woman is extremely important to him. And that is precisely the point.
Eliot was a perfectionist. And a perfectionist in everything. And from a very strong Calvinist tradition. Hence all his difficulties. And our difficulties with him. 'Perfection is terrible:/it cannot have children,' complained Sylvia Plath. And indeed Eliot never fathered children. Either at the physical level. Or at the spiritual. Just admirers. Who then went away and did something different.
Then there is the problem of precisely why Eliot would want to write a poem about a fundamentally unattractive man. As I say there is no evidence that Eliot felt himself to be unattractive vis-à-vis other men. He may have felt that the human animal was unattractive in itself. And in many ways it is. After all physically what are we but a more or less attractively packaged bag of shit and piss and snot and vomit and blood and pus and guts? And Eliot was too deep and too religious a man to be taken in by the superficial appearance of anything.
In short I think you neglect Eliot's complexity and oversimplify him. Yours is but one reading among many. And ignores too many aspects not just of this work but of the rest of his oeuvre.
Dead on that this is about love. Elliot is sharing feelings of rejection by the women he encounters. Prufrock is a middle aged man, facing his mortality and lost opportunities. Elliot, however, is a man in his early 20’s. He is projecting his feelings as a young man struggling through his romantic life onto a man like him after 30 years of these struggles.
A professor of mine at Berkeley had met Elliot. They were at dinner, and Elliot was reading the menu. He said, “Oh, do I dare to get a lobster?” My professor laughed uncontrollably, and answered, “…do you dare to eat a peach?”😂
I think the woman is much younger than he.
Thank you so much. I loved this interpretation -not too out there or over my head. Made me enjoy the poem so much more.
I read the poem earlier and i had absolutely no idea what was going on. Thank you, i understand everything now and i can even relate to poor Alfred.
You're welcome!
Sounds like the guy is in a mid-life crisis. Anyway, thank you so much for posting this! This poem has easily become one of my favorites. Thank you again
I've always found it interesting that so much of this poem reads as if it was written by a middle aged (or older?) man. Yet, I believe T.S. Eliot was only 23 (and still in college?) when he wrote it.
Amazing. I adore your warm, insightful approach to teaching poetry and prose. Makes me think about these works in an entirely different way. Thank you!
love this explanation. after reading the poem twice I found myself still having questions. this truly helped thank you.
Wish I had you for a teacher when I was in college.
My guess in connection with: "To drop a question on your plate", refers to "What's the meaning of Work?" What does all the convoluted interaction between human beings truly mean? Is it shallow or deep? Are we living in a Hollow Space, or a space filled? These are deep subconscious and fearfully conscious questions. Also, the smoke represents the free part of your soul. The non-material part of you, that's left adrift, without being noticed. Thanks for putting yourself out there. It's truly a beautiful gesture.
OMG thank you so much! I was really having a hard time grasping the concept of this poem when I read it for school but now that I have listened to this video, I really get it now and it is really cool! Plus I loved listening to you talk, you have a nice voice. But anyway, great video!
I'm glad this helped! That makes my day. :-)
OMG! Thank you so much for that video! I need this poem for a final exam, and I read it twice in english, then I read it in bulgarian (i'm bilingual) I read summary, notes etc. and I still felt like an idiot not getting what this is really about, and then I found your video and now It opened my eyes :D i already know much more for 38 minutes than from 3 hour researching :D
Thank you so much!! I was told to write about the modernism in this poem and did even fully understand what the poem was about at first but now I have a better understand of what is going on.
He seems to be daydreaming; imagining him self with life in conversations, but is woken by human voices/ reality; the women, not the mermaids and is once again drowning in conversation.
I think, on surface level, by "overwhelming question" he means Prufrock wants to propose the woman he loves, like, 'Will you be mine, or will you marry me?'. On other levels, this question may be something higher philosophical question regarding the nothingness of human existence (notice the tone of hopelessness all through the poem). Again, the question overwhelms him because he does not know the answer... The burden of his dual personality (you and I) makes him wonder about insignificant things. It's connected to the mental drama going inside, rather than any practical or physical action.
That's what I think!
That's what I always thought, until I learned about his life with his wife. I think he wants to ask for a divorce and is debating the consequences of growing old alone, will anyone else want him when she's gone.
i have been in love with this poem for more than 10 years.... and your commentary is thoroughly awesome... you have my sincerest gratitude!
The Lone Wolf Creations Many thanks! Your kind words made my day!
SixMinuteScholar you are most cordially welcome!
you are literally a LIFE SAVER for my online literature class. thank you.
"And time for all the works and days of hands" (line 29), might refer to Works and Days (Érga kai hemérai, ca 700 BC) by Hesiod. The farmer in that poem emphasises the importance of living your life in the manner that the Gods have seen fit. This could be compared to Prufrocks difficulties in breaking free from his trivial life due to fear of rejection and/or other consequences.
Just a thought. You've highlighted some stuff I didn't think about in my paper on the subject. Nice video. Greetings from Norway!
Good idea! Thanks for giving me something to think about!
I accidentally stumbled upon this while looking for Anthony Hopkins' recording of the poem, and boy am I glad I did. Thank you.
Well, cool! Me, too. :-)
Thank you for your thoughts. I had to go back an finish. Fun, giant steps to ponder! I trusted your credit by your appreciation, modesty, and disarming sincerity. When I see someone allowing themselves to be as they feel.. as they are...I am inspired. " I can do that!
And not give a..."
I love your energy around this poem!
I stumbled onto this site and I'm so glad I did. What a great teacher you are, I really enjoyed listening to you. I can't wait to listen to the rest of your videos. Thank you, made my day.
missed the prufrock lecture in my lit class while i was a senior in high school and it’s been on my mind ever since. thank you for analyzing this incredible poem ☺️
I am so thankful for these videos. I stumble upon some poems that I love but don’t quite understand; only to come here and begin to understand. Thank you so much. I love this channel. Been watching videos here for years now.
Amazing video. Loved the way you broke down every sentence of this poem. By far one of the best explanations i have heard or read. After watching this video i understood the poem in its entirety. I am recommending your videos for others in my class to see! Keep up the good work!
Thank-you so much, Rebecca! Extremely pleasant to listen to ! Such an empathetic and unpretentious discussion of one of my very favourite poems that I recite lines of to myself frequently. It's lovely how you sort of harmonise and move along a little journey with the poem, treating the listener to generous quotes, and gentle queries about the connections. So refreshing and appreciative, rather than steam -rollering the poem with alienating analysis that almost disgards it and infers it's not enough in itself. I'm not sure about the Dante mention at the beginning. Perhaps Alfred J. is likeable partly due tp his humility and yet sad but in a creative way due to his somewhat distanced observor stance musings, yet showing a touch of appealing wit. Perhaps he asks himself if he dares to eat a peach, concerned about dribbling the peach juice, whereas, as you say, he might have totally relished it when younger. That's an interesting interpretation of "Am an attendant lord..." - as not using the I pronoun certainly fits the role, as maybe a depletion in ego - also, the assonance of "am" scans nicely. Yet the touch of graceful melancholy is very life-romantic IMO - despite the final "and we drown" phrase, where I think he's inviting the reader to empathise rather than literally drown. I'm still wondering what the "crisis" is tho, that he doesn't feel able to provoke - perhaps the mystery adds a metaphysical touch! Thank-you again, best of wishes, Anne Seagull - songs on www.anneseagull.com
mam hii...r u a professor
This really helped me with my finals exams thank you so much, you have a very soothing voice and an interesting take on things.
Lillian Lockett Thanks! Good luck with your education!
My name is Prufrock and I approve this explication.
Thank you sooooo much. I have to do a presentation on this poem, and I didn't understand it at all until watching your video. You made everything make a lot more sense!
Good! Glad to hear it. Good luck with your presentation!
Thanks, Rebecca! Great job. And enjoyable half hour that will stick in my mind.
the toast and tea line, @ 10:45 reminds me of being in hospital post operation. Its toast and tea that is brought to you first by the nurses. As you recover you have certainly lots of time, lying in bed to think about your life
Could the 'overwhelming question' that is referred to throughout the poem be; the overwhelming 'QUESTION'? As in, the existence of the question. The ability to question. As he uses the terms 'do I dare', often. He is questioning himself. So could it be he is noting the overwhelming existence of 'the question'. I am sorry I dont know how to explain what I am thinking more clearly. The question, as the potential for all possible questions all possible times, and the abstract idea of the question at all and to begin with. The overwhelming nature of being able to question oneself. Ok well, an edit here, now listening further, with more context, and yes I have listened to the poem; Perhaps the overwhelming question is the one of 'right and wrong', what is right and wrong, is this right is this wrong? Or a more literal approach, a foggy night, wandering around the streets, you eventually arrive at some question 'what am I doing, what do I want, where am I going, which way should I turn, am I hungry, what time is it, am I to tired to walk more'... I dont know... Could be, the amount a person questions himself, it appears the entire poem is discussing his indecision, another concept and term which may relate is; confidence, a person who has pure, ultra confidence apparently, truthfully, or seemingly does not question themselves, if he just knew exactly what to do, or accepted himself and his surroundings, he would have nothing of his actions to question, for they would all be acceptable, but because he believes himself to be inadequate in his own eyes and potentially the eyes of others, he is questioning his apperance and ability to function with others in an even socially valueable manner. This poem is pretty much a window into the mind of someone with social anxiety disorder, every single action of theirs under a microscope, being hard on himself over every little thing, every potential a pandoras box of questions, where as, it may be technically possible for him to ask none of them, and this would then be, whose to say, false or worthy confidence. 'do I dare to eat a peach', followed by the mermaids, makes me think of what you were saying about him at this party persuing the love of a woman, 'the love song'. The question may be, is he confident or worthy enough to attempt to pick up a woman at this event. The mermaids being juxtaposed to the harshness of the city and such, might be his vision of the purity and pedastooling of woman, and him observing them like mythical creatures talking amongst themselves, who might also be therefore intimidating to approach. But holy crap, I have listened to the reading of this poem on youtube maybe 20 times, and have not come anywhere near to comprehending the linearality and flow and narrative of it like this at all. Maybe last few lines, about lingering in sea chambers and seaweed glad girls, is him lingering in his fantasy, his true desires and wants, and ideal life and interaction with the mythical creature that is the woman, until the very human reality set in, interrupting his fantasy and ideals, and showed him, via his lack of confidence, that his wishes to 'claim' a woman, seem unlikely.
Yes, yes. So many good ideas here! Thank you.
+Imafungi123 very good insight. Thanks
+Imafungi123
That was very good, but I've always thought the question Elliot was afraid to ask was about sex, about deepening his relationship with a woman to include physical intimacy. Maybe this is wrong, but it also fits with pretty much everything in the poem.
i had absolutely no idea what this poem was about the first time I read. thanks for helping me understand!
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. This poem is so important to me even if it never truly opened up to me until now. I study English lit and I love poetry, however, I'm still intimidated by poems more often than not... But this video certainly helped me get started with this particular poem, and I think it also gave me more confidence for the future.
So thank you again, and keep on doing these videos! :)
+Laura Jalkanen You're so welcome! Keep enjoying poems and reading. I felt the same way about poems -- that they were intimidating and "smarter" than me -- but I kept reading and learning. Rewarding! Thanks for commenting. Good luck with everything!
This was incredibly helpful. I come out of this knowing and appreciating the poem so much more. Thank you very much. I hope you continue to do this for a very long time.
It’s amazing how differently I interpreted each part and the poem as a whole.
Thank you for helping me with most of my college courses as an English literature student
I'm listening to it right know ,I need to be prepared for my exam after few hours 🙃
I think the best way to interpret the poem is to imagine it as having been written by Prufrock himself to try and woo a woman. In this sense, a lot of the poem can be seen as him thinking out loud as to how best to write this love song.
The epigraph, about embarrassment of telling the audience his story, is similar to the embarrassment a poet feels in sharing their early work (Elliot would have related. He said that, although he wrote his first poems at around 14, he destroyed them cause they apparently were "gloomy and despairing").
The title "The Love Song of ..." is quite simplistic, and makes sense as a working title for someone writing a poem but hasn't come up with a proper title.
Prufrock says later on that he is "Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse". That would explain some of the melodic yet seemingly tautologous lines, like "To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet" and "I know the voices dying with a dying fall". They're tautologous because they were written by Prufrock himself.
Your explanation is better than the video. Thank you.
Very nice. The older I get the better this poem sounds to me. It reminded me to read "To His Coy Mistress" again. The older I get the stronger the images. the eternal foot man, the moments of my glory etc..,
Yes, what a good connection. I should look at that poem, too!
Terrific review, thank you, your voice is honey to the ears.
It was really really good. I understood the poem now. Thank you so much!
This is a beautiful interpretation! Your video is going to help me in my AP class. Thank You love.
I was really lucky to have found this video. This was so perfectly splendid, so profoundly explained. I enjoyed your explanation thorough out and I really thank you for doing such an amazing job !
“The ‘you’ of the first line seems to be the reader at first, but ‘you and I’ could be two aspects of Prufrock- his thinking self addressing his public personality- though the final ‘we’ that drowns may not be only the whole Prufrock, but a universaling touch.”
I think the reason the smoke refers to yellow cat is the way smog is seen to move between yellow car lights, neon and industrial lights...very smooth like a cat.Thank you for ur analysis waiting for more to come!!!
I stumbled upon this analysis and I am very glad I did. I'm currently reading "The Lovesong of Miss Queenie Hennessy" by Rachel Joyce, which is the follow-up to "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry". It is never overtly stated in the book, but the phrase, "let us go then, you and I" struck something in my mind and after googling it, I rediscovered "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" which I studied a long time ago for A-level. I then realised there are quite a few references in the book to this poem by T.S. Eliot. And inevitably, it reignited my desire to rediscover T.S. Eliot. Thank you, Six Minute Scholar for inspiring me towards a further interest in poetry and literature which I hope to explore further!
How interesting! Good luck with your analysis!
Thank you for such a lovely interpretation.
What if the mermaids at the end of the poem are the women he would be having tea; he hears them singing/ talking. But they do not sing for him/ talk to him. He imagines himself with them when in that depth, alive with conversation.
Prufrock is a royal doctor and Jack the Ripper. That is his obsession with women, what he cannot show and his impulse with death but this is him in a social gathering despite his true character. It fits the medical allusions, Dante's foreward and his neurotic narcissism.That is how I've always felt about this poem. I questioned it at the start of this video but with age and over the years the feeling becomes stronger. Not to mention I've always got vibes from Poe's Tell-tale Heart from this.
Thank you so much! I'm so happy I found this! I'm an Italian student,and I am trying to study Eliot alone,but it's so hard! But anyway with your lesson I was able to understand a little bit more about this poem! Thank you so much! Now i will watch all your videos! Thank you!
You're welcome! I'm so glad this helped. Eliot is a challenge. Good for you for wading into his deep waters!
Well done, a very good talk. Thanks, I appreciated this.
Thank you soo much for sharing your knowledge this helps us to make our studies easier please keep uploading like this wish to see more of your vedios. Good luck
+Roma Khan You're welcome! And thanks. :-)
This was a great discussion of this poem, and quite nicely detailed I must say. Thanks！Also, what I think is another purpose of the little refrain “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michaelangelo” is to emphasize that Michaelangelo is the type of man that women talks about, at least according to the speaker, and he does not think himself to be any Michaelangelo which in turn makes him doubt himself more and refuses to dare to disturb the universe by going forward and confessing to a woman.
This was a HUGE help! Thank you so much for sharing your interpretations with us.
You're welcome!
Not analyzing this for a class, just found the video thought I should read the poem. After I read it I watched the video in it's entirety and found myself thinking some of the same things you were saying. Glad to know I'm not too far off the path as I plan to teach English sometime in the near future. Thanks for keeping me confident, despite Prufrock's views on life. =]
Cool. :-) Good luck with teaching!
Thank you very much. That reading, and you (and I) was wonderful.
Jason Beech I sincerely did not mean to come across as pedantic; but I am certain that we here are either poets, students of poetry, or at the very least English majors. I did enjoy the lecture, but correct grammar in a lecture of this nature is the least we should expect... Charis
This made my day! couldn't have understood the poem so well without this video's help.
Please upload more videos like these.
And yeah, thanks
I'm glad. You're welcome!
Thanks Rebecca, I found your analysis of Prufrock very informative and would make the following observations.
I feel that Prufrock is 'talking to himself' the Poem is him reflecting on his inadequacies, like you might do when you beat yourself up when looking in the bathroom mirror? So there is no companion nor is it addressed to the reader.
I also feel that this isn't a particular social gathering phobia. It is a whole life-time of disappointment in his indecisiveness, not being able to express what he really felt, clamming up, procrastinating over yet another cup of coffee and now he is getting old and probably never will show anyone the real Prufrock.
A hopeless romantic, but a loner, who sees/feels emotions everywhere in life from the dirty streets, the lonely men, the beautiful women and the beach. But he was fearful that he was not eloquent enough to fully express the passions he has, and had he tried he would have been misunderstood anyway.
Instead he quietly if not awkwardly played the supporting role throughout his life. The only time he felt at ease was in his dreams, imagination, inside his head and then life pulls him back to reality and he drowns.
100 years old this month, here is my attempt to express it th-cam.com/video/ONOFaEMFGVQ/w-d-xo.html
Thank you so much. I like the way you went smoothly in this reading. However my question is why you didn't try read the poem title. It starts with the "love"! What love? Why it doesn't appear in this love song? Did he (a) love song not (the) love song?! The sense of hopelessness is very clear in the poem so what love is it that can make a thin hared man dress up and attempt to eat a peach. This metaphor I think refers to his sexual "inability".
I love poetry and although English is not my language I feel this poem has touched me very deeply.
Thanks again
Thank you for such wonderful and illuminating observations I about prufrock!!!
Thank you. Love from India, Assam. You saved me.. have semester exams in 3 weeks.. thank you so much.
I'm so glad you explained so well . Thank you so much,I nearly omit the poem.I wasnt going to prepare this for tomorrow's exam cuz I found it so tough.But u did so easily n I got many points out of it ...U are so good ♡
I'm taking an online class on American Literature and I always come across your work so I've subscribed, Thank you!
Thank you. I've always loved this poem. I love it more now. And I identify with it deeply. Hesitation, self doubt, being stuck in indecisiveness. Wow! My life writ large. Have you studied or analyzed the myth of the fisher king, the fool and the holy grail? The only thing the film has to do, at the right moment, is to submit to his innate instinct and ask his question. Just that action of realizing outwardly who he is inwardly, will save the wounded king and by extension, the kingdom. There a parallels here, I think, between Parcival and Prufrock.
THANK YOU!!!! You helped me appreciate this poem so much more! With love in Christ, have a blessed day! :D
bayonettafan001 You're welcome! Blessings to you too. :-)
thanx, your explanation opened up the poem hugely for me !
i'm old enough for it to sting ! :o)
thank you very much, it's very helpful.
high five from Saudi Arabia ()
You gave me a much deeper understanding of this great poem.
Very enjoyable explication. Prufrock is a man who has missed a lot in life and comes to realize this more and more as he ages. In the 100 times that I have read this poem, I have come to believe that he misses the close company of a lover but cannot get up the courage to court one of the women in a rooming house where they all share time together. That may be the “question” he cannot address. Also, he will need to roll up his pant legs because he is shrinking in height as he ages.
Definitely helped me gain a better understanding for sure, thank you so much.
Thank you for this. I had already started to have an idea formed for the analysis for this poem and was looking for a reading of it because I thought it "sounded" aesthetically pleasing in my head (if that makes sense?) But your analysis of the poem helped me to form the ideas into more solid concepts and now I have a working interpretation of the narrator as an extremely gifted person, creatively, but also an extreme introvert with a bit of social anxiety. I found myself wishing, though out your analysis, that I had had you for my "intro to lit" class, because you made it accessible where as my teacher just said read it and write a page about it.
I'm glad to hear that this helped. It's a confusing poem all right, and I myself puzzled over it for years!
That was beautifully analysed. Thanks a lot.
You're so welcome! Thanks for watching.
Although this analysis is long, THANK YOU SO MUCH for making this video! It really helped me understand the poem. Now I can write my essay! :)
I just finished my ENC1102 class, and your videos were so helpful. THANK YOU SO MUCH
Wow! I've been in love with Eliot's Waste land since high school but I never quite got this one. Now that I understand it I think I like it even more than the Waste land. Thanks! :)
Cool! The Wasteland is a great work. You're welcome!
SixMinuteScholar I noticed you didn't mention the line "Do I dare disturb the universe?", which, for me personally, is the line in the poem that resonates the most deeply inside of me. Any take on that one?
massive thank you. that was a great help, and you made it so easy. Thank you again
You're welcome! :-)
I love the videos you make! Your videos really help me understand and appreciate the work so much more. As opposed to just being confused and dragging through English 2. Thanks so much for your work!
Tea & toast is breakfast in England (marmalade as well). So I don't think the poem is quite so logical and chronological.
'A dying fall' could be a first Shakespeare reference - Orsino's speech (If music be the food of love....) 'That strain again, it had a dying fall'
Dante/Lazeras both returning.
I found the recent book - about the young Eliot really revealing. Also his friendship with Ezra Pound.
The old man 'angst' is challenging for a women, I think, you're very brave!
One trap of 'academia' is that we need to know what to write to pass exams (or as one English teacher said, words to the effect that 'I've got to teach this damn poem!
Eliot, for me, is the struggle with profundity verses the banality of everyday life and makes a rendezvous with my own life's quest.
I love your patience and understanding with the people who wrote comments
Tea and toast is also at tea time in England. :)
Well done. Thank you for your thoughts.
You're welcome! And thanks.
Thanks a lot Rebecca. Your explanation was really helpful.
I see many parallels between Prufrock and the man in Notes from Underground by Dostoyevsky. They seem to both live in this subterranean realm but have experienced said realm in different ways. Anyway, thank you for the explanation!
Awesome, I will love researching this. There are so many hidden allusions in Prufrock that we could spend years analyzing it. Not that there is a right or wrong answer as to how it is perceived. That is the joy of reading Eliot.
To say Eliot was a well read man would be an understatement. There are many parallels from the multitude of authors he has read. I guess my point is, we have to read more in order to appreciate what he was trying to convey.
I thank you so much for opening my eyes to this. I have been timid to read works of authors such as Dostoevsky.
I have not seen any other reference to Dostoevsky. The majority point out the obvious Biblical, Shakespearean, Mythological similes as Eliot points it out.
I hope others will see your comment and research this as well.
Thank you again
Kris Yallowega I’m glad it’s inspired you to branch out in your reading! I highly recommend Notes from underground (it’s my favorite book) and Crime and Punishment. I was hesitant to read such authors myself at some point but I’m glad I gave them a chance.
@@VictoriaAntonetti Hello Victoria, I have been waiting for more of your analysis and realized that I am the one who stopped the chatter.
Over time I have been leaning toward J. Alfred Prufrock was not a bachelor but a married man wanting to leave his wife. He had money at one time but may have lost it.
I am also wondering how long before people turn away from Eliot. The biblical allusions throughout his prose, not just Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.
I look forward to your reply and hope all is well with you in this time of concern.