The poesy of T. S. Eliot is of such illustriousness that it will be read and analyzed by future coevalss of pupils and critics every bit long as there is poesy. Eliot received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 and his work spanned a period of clip from 1910 until his decease in 1965.
The period 1914—1922 was really important for Eliot for obvious every bit good as personal grounds and events. He was populating in England and Europe was witnessing the terminal of the First World War and recognizing the desolation caused. Personally he was holding matrimonial troubles every bit good as emotional and psychological jobs. ( Eliot xv—xviii )
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His work from this period is really dark and evidently influenced by the “wasteland” of Europe every bit good as his marital and personal issues. The verse forms are obliging and in their alone manner stand to exemplify the beauty that can be created in the dismal.
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was foremost published in 1915. It opens with Italian poetry from “Dante’s Inferno” . apparently seeking to put a tone of decease and damnation. There are no bright musca volitanss or felicity in the verse form ; alternatively there is a sense of anxiousness. uncertainness and unhappiness. He walks “streets that follow like a boring statement of insidious purpose to take you to an overpowering question” ( 9 ) . The adult females seem out of range. “in the room the adult females come and travel speaking of Michelangelo” ( 10 ) .
It is non a pleasant scene. Eliot appears to desire to get away it. to be “a brace of ragged claws scurrying across the floors of soundless seas” ( 11 ) . His linguistic communication in Prufrock is full of allusions and really hard to read and construe. and it is about as if he has sympathy for the reader. He shows his defeat at miscommunication in several lines. some repeated. “That is non what I meant at all. That is non it. at all” is followed by subsequently by “it is impossible to state merely what I mean” ( 12 ) . Later this idea is inverted and repeated. “that is non it at all. that is non what I meant. at all” ( 13 ) .
Towards the terminal he becomes melancholic and thinks of his old age and decease: “I grow old…I grow old…I have heard the mermaids singing. each to each. I do non believe they will sing to me…we have lingered by the Chamberss of the sea by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed ruddy and brown boulder clay human voices wake us and we drown” ( 13 ) . The reader is left to inquire if Prufrock was submerging in a sea of human voices. This struggle and miscommunication is symbolic of both Eliot’s marital and personal troubles. The verse form is dejecting and full of darkness. struggle and anxiousness. It is merely the beginning of his black point of view.
This subject of darkness and miscommunication continues to be reflected in his poesy. In “Morning at the Window” . Eliot is “aware of the moist psyches of maidservant shooting despairingly at country gates…waves of fog flip up to me distorted faces…and tear from a passer-by with boggy skirts an aimless smiling that hovers in the air and vanishes…” ( 24 ) . He writes of his “Aunt Helen” non in contemplation of her life. but upon her decease. concentrating on silence and the undertaking of the mortician: …the mortician wiped his feet—he was cognizant this kind of thing had occurred before” ( 26 ) .
There is a glumness that seems to be everyplace Eliot looks. His subject of miscommunication is in his very words. frequently eccentric and hard to construe. In “Mr. Apollinax” Mr. Apollinax “laughed like an irresponsible foetus… ‘he is a capturing man’—but after all what did he mean” ( 28 ) . If the words are hard plenty to understand. the concluding poetry is all but impossible to grok. “I retrieve a piece of lemon. and a acrimonious macaroon” ( 29 ) .
Through these unsettling plants Eliot shows himself to be a maestro at portraying a side of the human status no 1 truly likes to see. yet constantly at sometime everyone does. Often he points out the contrary position as he does in “The Wasteland” . Springtime is a dateless subject for infinite poets showing the admiration and beauty of nature coming alive after a winter asleep. Not so for Eliot.
“April is the barbarous month. engendering lilacs out of the dead land. blending memory and desire. stirring dull roots with spring rain” ( 65 ) . Not surprisingly he seems to prefer winter. “Winter kept us warm. covering Earth with a unretentive snow. feeding a small life with dried tubers” ( 65 ) . The subject of miscommunication continues to either cause or attach to the darkness. “Speak to me. Speak. Why do you ne’er speak. Speak. What are you believing of? What believing? What? I ne’er know what you are thinking” ( 69 ) .
Eliot revisits his earliest subject of decease as sea in the “Death by Water” subdivision of “Wasteland” . reding Gentile or Jew “entering the whirlpool” to retrieve “Phlebas the Phoenician. a fortnight dead” ( 77 ) . In the concluding subdivision “What the Thunder Said” his depression seems to come to prevail. Eliot emphasizes “after the torment in stony topographic points the cheering and the crying…he who was populating is now dead. we who were populating are now dying” ( 78 ) .
His landscape has been ruined: “falling towers Jerusalem Athens Alexandria Vienna London Unreal” ( 79 ) . Despite his point of view and topics his work is beautiful as it moves the “unreal” of his imaginativeness to our “reality” in such a unique and personal manner ; overall he has in fact communicated his world in a consummate and compelling manner. Eliot has proved that good things can originate from. if non be inspired by awful state of affairss.
Plants Cited
Eliot. T. S.The Waste Land and Other Poems. New York: Barnes and Baronial Classicss. 2004.
