Wednesday, August 7, 2019
The Poetry of T.S. Eliot Essay Example for Free
The Poetry of T.S. Eliot Essay The poetry of T.S. Eliot is of such greatness that it will be read and analyzed by future generations of students and critics as long as there is poetry. Eliot received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 and his work spanned a period of time from 1910 until his death in 1965. The period 1914â€â€1922 was very significant for Eliot for obvious as well as personal reasons and events. He was living in England and Europe was witnessing the end of the First World War and realizing the devastation caused. Personally he was having marital difficulties as well as emotional and psychological problems. (Eliot xvâ€â€xviii) His work from this period is very dark and obviously influenced by the â€Å"wasteland†of Europe as well as his marital and personal issues. The poems are compelling and in their unique way stand to illustrate the beauty that can be created in the dismal.            â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock†was first published in 1915. It opens with Italian verse from â€Å"Dante’s Inferno†, seemingly trying to set a tone of death and damnation. There are no bright spots or happiness in the poem; instead there is a sense of anxiety, uncertainty and sadness. He walks â€Å"streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming question†(9). The women seem out of reach, â€Å"in the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo†(10). It is not a pleasant scene. Eliot appears to want to escape it, to be â€Å"a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas†(11).  His language in Prufrock is full of allusions and very difficult to read and interpret, and it is almost as if he has sympathy for the reader. He shows his frustration at miscommunication in several lines, some repeated. â€Å"That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all†is followed by later by â€Å"it is impossible to say just what I mean†(12). Later this thought is inverted and repeated, â€Å"that is not it at all, that is not what I meant, at all†(13). Towards the end he becomes melancholy and thinks of his old age and death: â€Å"I grow old†¦I grow old†¦I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they will sing to me†¦we have lingered by the chambers of the sea by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown till human voices wake us and we drown†(13). The reader is left to wonder if Prufrock was drowning in a sea of human voices. This conflict and miscommunication is symbolic of both Eliot’s marital and personal difficulties. The poem is depressing and full of darkness, conflict and anxiety. It is only the beginning of his bleak viewpoint.            This theme of darkness and miscommunication continues to be reflected in his poetry. In â€Å"Morning at the Window†. Eliot is â€Å"aware of the damp souls of housemaid sprouting despondently at area gates†¦waves of fog toss up to me twisted faces†¦and tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts an aimless smile that hovers in the air and vanishes†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (24). He writes of his â€Å"Aunt Helen†not in reflection of her life, but upon her death, focusing on silence and the task of the undertaker: †¦the undertaker wiped his feetâ€â€he was aware this sort of thing had occurred before†(26). There is a gloominess that seems to be everywhere Eliot looks. His theme of miscommunication is in his very words, often bizarre and difficult to interpret. In â€Å"Mr. Apollinax†Mr. Apollinax â€Å"laughed like an irresponsible foetus ‘he is a charming man’â€â€but after all what did he mean†(28).   If the words are difficult enough to understand, the final verse is all but impossible to comprehend. â€Å"I remember a slice of lemon, and a bitter macaroon†(29).            Through these unsettling works Eliot shows himself to be a master at portraying a side of the human condition no one really likes to see, yet invariably at sometime everyone does. Often he points out the contrary view as he does in â€Å"The Wasteland†. Springtime is a timeless topic for countless poets expressing the wonder and beauty of nature coming alive after a winter asleep. Not so for Eliot. â€Å"April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain†(65). Not surprisingly he seems to prefer winter. â€Å"Winter kept us warm, covering earth with a forgetful snow, feeding a little life with dried tubers†(65). The theme of miscommunication continues to either cause or accompany the darkness. â€Å"Speak to me. Speak. Why do you never speak. Speak. What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? I never know what you are thinking†(69).            Eliot revisits his earlier theme of death as sea in the â€Å"Death by Water†section of â€Å"Wasteland†, advising Gentile or Jew â€Å"entering the whirlpool† to remember â€Å"Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead†(77). In the final section â€Å"What the Thunder Said†his depression seems to come to triumph. Eliot emphasizes â€Å"after the agony in stony places the shouting and the crying†¦he who was living is now dead, we who were living are now dying†(78). His landscape has been ruined: â€Å"falling towers Jerusalem Athens Alexandria Vienna London Unreal†(79). Despite his viewpoint and topics his work is beautiful as it moves the â€Å"unreal†of his imagination to our â€Å"reality†in such a unique and personal way; overall he has in fact communicated his reality in a masterful and compelling fashion. Eliot has proved that good things can arise from, if not be inspired by terrible situations. Works Cited            Eliot, T.S. The Waste Land and Other Poems. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2004.
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