The Significance of the title of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” - T.S. Eliot || Sanjeedeep Mishra (2022)

 

Originally named "Prufrock Among the Women." , Eliot began writing “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” while being a Graduate student at Havard University during 1909-10. It was the first professionally published poem of the American-born British poet. Eliot called the poem a "love song" in reference to Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Love Song of Har Dyal", first published in Kipling's collection “Plain Tales from the Hills”(1888).

The original title does tell us that Eliot thinks Prufrock’s relation to the fairer sex is at the center of this poem. The title is actually the only place where Prufrock’s name is mentioned, since in the poem he talks about himself in the first person. However, the title is completely ironic.

The opening of the poem reveals the irony of title, especially the “Love Song” part. Here Prufrock says,

 

“Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

 

Such a proposition to a companion to go outside on a beautiful, tranquil evening appears to be quite romantic at first. Evening, on the other hand, bears a striking resemblance to an etherized patient awaiting surgery. The image evokes feelings of disease, morbidity, and doom. In fact, it successfully communicates Prufrock's mental state. The poet uses the sky and the evening to represent the protagonist's inner psychology.

The first few lines of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" have become a cornerstone of critics' readings of the poem. The central preoccupation has been with the notorious distinction be-tween "you and I."  The title would suggest a lady, but the epigraph (The quotation  taken from Dante's  Inferno  (Canto   XXVII, Circle VIII) which is  concerned ·with counsellors  of  fraud.  The  speaker,  Guido da Montefeltro, promised absolution by Pope Boniface VIII, advised the Pope how to destroy the Colonna  family  of  Palestrina.) suggests a scene out of the world, on a submerged level. Grover Smith explains the reference of the pronoun, "By a distinction between 'I' and 'you,' Prufrock differentiates between his thinking, sensitive character and his outward self. He is addressing, as if looking into a mirror, his whole public personality. His motive seems to be to repudiate the inert self, which cannot act, and to assert his will." In her Jungian interpretation of the poem, Joyce Meeks Jones reaches a similar conclusion: Prufrock, she argues, is an extrovert "who is unable to resolve the conflict between the demands of his own individuality, and those of his persona, or social mask. In con-sequence, he struggles helplessly in an eternal hell of self-estrangement and moral indecision."

The title "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" deftly undercuts the romantic connotations of the word "love song" by introducing the absurd name "Prufrock." There is a clear hiatus between the dull pedantry of the name J. Alfred Prufrock and  the  idea  of  a  love song.  The poem records the love wish of a man who has neither the physical vigor nor the mental courage to propose love.

Prufrock, the narrator of the poem, is a middle-aged man who is living a life void of meaning and purpose As he mulls over his drab, humdrum life, his thoughts are depressing. Prufrock displays numerous characteristics but three stand out the most: cowardice, passiveness, and pessimism. He has seen much of the city life with its meaningless socializing and decadent values. He wants to propose a lady but he does not have the mental courage to disclose it. He is indecisive and passive, incapable of taking action. His personal failure, together with his experience about life and society, makes him totally frustrated. Prufrock suffers from lack of will and hesitation. He is so paralyzed of his will that he himself does not dare to utter the “overwhelming question” of proposing a lady. He makes a decision that is postponed and altered right away. Various thoughts pass by his mind like the winding streets.

Certain images are repeated throughout the poem. Like the sea imagery, for instance, that suggested a profound and subterranean life measuring both depth to which Prufrock has sunk and his lack of depth. This theme is introduced in Line 7, “And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells”. Later in Line 73-74, “I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent sea.” And picked up again near the end of the poem, in Line 29, “We have lingered in the chambers of the sea”. This constant repetition gives an overwhelming impression of mind imprisoned, trapped within itself, within the mesh of language. The poem articulates inadequacy and like fog and smoke that isolate Prufrock’s world, his language.

Rather than showing the joy, bliss, and optimism of love, the poem portrays the protagonist's helplessness and pathos. Eliot eloquently captures the pollution and squalor that are associated with modern city life in this poem. People live in decrepit and filthy conditions, and their lives are dismal. The poet aptly captures modern society's boredom, loneliness, and frustration. Significantly, he presents his central point through J. Alfred Prufrock's anti-romantic love song. Prufrock's plight here is a metaphor for the state of modern urbanised culture.

 

REFERENCES-

JONES, A. R. (1968). Prufrock Revisited. Critical Survey, 3(4), 215–223. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41549304

Childs, D. J. (1988). Knowledge and Experience in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” ELH, 55(3), 685–699. https://doi.org/10.2307/2873189

Wikipedia contributors. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.