a person who walks up the street of London. The protagonist is Alfred
Prufrock. He is an antiromantic hero, rather timid, self-centred. The tone
is very ironic, images are startlingly fresh. The title suggests that some
feeling should be shown to the other person. The poem starts as a dialogue:
Let us go out – you & I…
Critics argue that you & I are two sides of one & the same person. Eliot
says that “YOU” is a companion of Prufrock. We should pay attention to the
epigraph: “The truth will remain under”. This means that the speaker can
persuade himself to talk only if this will never be heard. It is his own
dramatic monologue. Prufrock is intensely preoccupied with himself.
Probably he signs his love song to himself… (though it doesn’t matter much)
We can understand “love-song” in ironic sense because the whole poem is
an elaborate rationalization for not seeking love. Love cannot exist in
this ugly senseless chaotic world. It is a miracle, hopeless yearning of
person for the vitality. The whole scene makes us see that love is not
possessive in this world. Repulsive attitude of the narrator towards what
he sees – images of a pair of ragged claws, mermaids singing each to each.
Leitmotif:
 ãîñòèíûõ äàìû òÿæåëî
Áåñåäóþò î Ìèêåëàíäæåëî.
It means that they talk of what they pretend to know.
The poem is full of allusions. The epigraph is quite important, taken
from Dante’s “The Divine Comedy”. The end of poem is pessimistic. It is one
of the most understandable of his poems.
“The Waste Land” (the poem (1922) in ”Dial” & “Criteria”[GB]). The poem
consists of 5 parts & their titles speak for themselves:
“The Burial of the Dead”
“A Game of Chess” – an allusion of a medieval play, where the action was
as if in two playings.
“The Fire Sermon” – the postulates of oriental religion.
“The Death by the Water”
“What the Thunder Said”
In terms of forms the poem is a collage of fragments of memories,
overheard conversations, quotations put together only by the implied
present of a sensible person (= a refined sensibility = a modern poet),
upon whom all these complexibilities & varieties of human world are hipped
& who staggers under the burden of them. We can say that the mind of the
poet is heavily packed with cultural tradition. A poem abounds in highly
sophisticated allusions:
. “The Tempest”
. Anthropological account of “Grail”(“Ãðààëü”) legend– a legend
connected with Christianity – a cup from which Christ drank;
. from “The Divine Comedy”;
. alluded & used words from operas of Wagner;
. refers to the story of crusification;
. uses French symbolists;
. as well as scraps of popular culture – music-hall songs, slang
words, contemporary fashion;
He hips everything together. This bits & pieces are set into a matrix of
flowing stream of consciousness of a man. The dramatic portrait of a single
mind becomes the portrait of an age. Eliot provided 52 notes for “The Waste
Land” when it was first published. The poem was opposed violently but there
were also admirers. They said that Eliot gave a definite description of
their age. Now terms “lost generation”, “post-war disillusionment”, “jazz
age”, “waste land” are used parallelly For many contemporary writers &
critics “The Waste Land” was a definite description of the age.
Civilization was dying. Critics regarded it as the disillusionment of a
generation. Eliot protested against that. The term “waste land” is used in
literature alongside with the term “lost generation”.
He also employed the myth of dying & reviving king – what the poem
expresses is the need of salvation & this is expressed in 3 Sanskrit words
(give, sympathize & control). There are many barbarisms in the poem.
In 1925 he published another poem in the same tonality. “The Hollow Man”
develops the major themes & images of “The Waste Land” – problems of
spiritual bareness, the problem of loss of faith in contemporary
generation. The poem is a set of recurrent symbols. The meaning depends on
cumulative effect of the individual images. The idea of spiritual sterility
in the image of Hollow Man – grotesque caricature of man, their behaviour
is mimicry of human activity. The poem is very short. It is easily read but
not so easily understood. There are 5 parts in the poem. Other images –
Death of the Kingdom. The life of the Hollow Man – is more shadowy & less
real than the life beyond the grave. Religion is substituted by simple
rituals devoid of all true feelings & emotions. The end-of-the-world
(apocalyptic) motive is very strong in the poem. The picture is very
pessimistic. The poem ends hopelessly:
This is the way the world ends,
Not with a bang but a whimper…
Eliot’s development after “The Waste Land” was in the direction of
literary, political, religious conservatism. Classicist in literature,
royalist in politics & Anglo-Saxon in religion he developed more composed
lyrical style.
His mature masterpiece is “Four Quartets” (1944) which is based on the
poetic memories of certain localities of America & Britain. This is a
starting point for his probing in the mystery of time, history, eternity,
the meaning of life. It deals with one single question of what significance
in our lives are ecstatic intense moments when we seem to escape time &
glimpses of supra-ordinary reality (it resembles Joyce’s “Epiphanies”.
There are two epigraphs that give clues to the answer. The epigraphs are
very important.
The first comes from Heroclitus. It contrasts the general wisdom of the
race with moments of private individual insight. It shows the dualism of
individual existence. First of all individuality is apart of a body of
mankind, located in history & tradition. Secondly, it is a unique
personality. Each person embraces both & this predetermines the reaction to
intense moments.
The second is short – “The way up & the way down are one & the same”.
This is another duality, two ways of apprehending the truth. The first one
is an active embrace of ecstatic experience (the way up), the second one is
a passive withdrawal from experience into self (the way down).
The poem got a reputation of a great obscurity due to a philosophical
richness but at the same time it is intensely musical. He tries to make it
closer to music by the motives that return like the tones in music. It is
not by chance that the poem is called “Four Quartets” – 4 instrumental
voices in the quartet. In his essay “The Music of Poetry” he explained this
usage of recurrent things.
From 1926 he experimented with poetic drama “The Cocktail Party”. But
his dramas remain unpopular because drama needs plot.
Eliot received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1949 as recognition of
his innovations in modern poetry. He also wrote critical works “The Sacred
Wood”, “The Use of Poetry & the Use of Criticism”, “On Poetry & Poets” –
most influential literary documents.
David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930)
Lawrence was very much influenced by Freud’s conception of human
personality. He is considered to be a modernist but he didn’t experiment
with form. On the outside he worked within the confines of English novel
tradition but he broke from the understanding of human relations that were
accepted in critical realism. He was the first who touched upon the problem
of marrying, the relations between sexes, he didn’t hush down the
contradictions between them. His main concern was to liberate a person from
all the constrains which were put by the society upon him. There was so
much taboos, hush-hush attitudes to this topic, that …
He is compared to Eliot. Both started from similar points that
civilization threatens human beings, it is hostile to man. Civilization is
sick, it destroys people morally & bodily. What Lawrence can suggest
instead? His religion was belief in blood & flesh as being wiser than the
intellect. This belief became one of his main themes. He interpreted human
behaviour & character from this standpoint. All his writings were
underlined with a deep discontent with a modern world. And this fact unites
him with other modernists. Civilization is on the wrong track. Science,
industrialization produced a race of robots. Civilization is evil. The only
way out – the way back – to re-awaken our emotional, irrational layers of
consciousness. He was little concerned with social problems. Lawrence’s
treatment of character is based on the assumption that 7/8 are submerged &
never seen. He explored the unconscious mind that was not always seen but
was always present. He is fumbling for the words to describe strictly
indescribable. He enjoyed popularity in his lifetime. His first works are:
“The White Peacock” 1911
“Sons & Lovers” 1913
They were well received. Critics thought that there appeared one more
working-class writer. His late works were received with shock & opposition
because of his frankness to the questions of sexuality, relations of men &
women. These themes suffered from late Victorian prudishness. He was the
first to describe sexual relations using common words not…
“Sons & Lovers” is considered to be autobiographical. Lawrence was
brought up in miner’s family in Nottinghamshire. His mother was cultivated
ex-school teacher. She married beneath herself & so she tried to develop
