John Donne's Angst

     In the "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Prufrock can find no escape from his anxiety, self-doubt, and shallow society he lives in.  We can imagine him winding his way endlessly through a modern purgatory searching for a love to fulfill his life and save him from himself.  It is interesting and significant that during the years Eliot wrote this poem and the later "The Waste Land" (1922), Eliot's own life was darkened by a loveless marriage, a sense that life was hollow, and the Western world was undergoing inexorable cultural and spiritual decay.  That changed when he converted to Anglicanism and his poems reflected his longing for personal serenity.  From that time onward, Eliot's most unifying element in his work was his Christianity.  

     Like Eliot, another poet who moved from poems of secular concerns to ones of religious themes was John Donne (1572-1631).  And although his poetry was appreciated during his life and for a short time after his death, it fell into relative obscurity until Eliot championed him as an innovative artist and wrote an essay (The Metaphysical Poets, 1921) that secured his proper place among major English poets.  Today, Donne's poetry continues to resonate among some readers, but wider opportunities to encounter his poems in schools and universities have been supplanted by the English classes in which identity and gender politics dominate the curriculum.  

     Though no person's work can be divided into two precise portions, Donne's poetry does seem to branch into distinct fields: first, secular poems that celebrate physical and spiritual love; second, religious poems that lay open his anxiety and ambivalence concerning God's mercy.   

      One of his most powerful religious poems is his Sonnet IX, "If poisonous minerals."  (Some spelling and punctuation for this poem have been modernized.)  

                    If poisonous minerals, and if that tree

                    Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,

                    If lecherous goats, if serpents envious

                    Cannot be damn'd, alas, why should I be?

                    Why should intent or reason, born in me,

                    Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?

                    And mercy being easy, and glorious

                    To God, in his stern wrath why threatens he?

                    But who am I, that dare dispute with thee,

                    O God? Oh, of thine only worthy blood

                    And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,

                    And drown in it my sins' black memory;

                    That thou remember them, some claim as debt;

                    I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.

     In this poem, Donne begins by formulating a litany of logical points.  But within this logic there is a persistent and irresistible counter argument he keeps raising himself.  He asserts, "Why should he be accountable for his (sinful) nature when it was God himself who planted "that tree,/Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us"?  His point is plausible, so far, so good.  He follows with a comparison.  Why if other earthly creatures "Cannot be damn'd" should he be?  After all, are not goats lecherous, and serpents envious?  Shouldn't justice that is "Divine" be parceled out equally?  But is there something "equal" between him and other earthly creatures?   There is an essential distinction, and he admits it:  he possesses "reason," a faculty which endows him with means to discern and control moral implications of his actions; something animals simply don't have.  So why does he cite them as evidence to exonerate his personal culpability?  Are these psychological projections?  Whatever they may be, Donne's own words actually undermine his assertions almost as soon as he makes them.  He devises a more theological and tactful question and asks why would God threaten him, if Christianity's most important theological principle is Divine Mercy?  Isn't mercy "easy" for God to offer to all sinners?  Doesn't mercy amplify the glory of God?  

     By the eighth line of the poem, Donne's questions and seemingly logical argument wilt the moment they slam against the unyielding force of God's "stern wrath." He seems as lost as Prufrock, doom to inescapable suffering.  But as he moves through the sestet, his Christian conscience concedes his "dispute" is futile and entreats God to absolve him of his sins instead.  He asks that Christ's blood mix with his tears, so those sins are forgotten:  "Oh! of thine only worthy blood,/And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,/And drown in it my sins black memory." If God will not expunge those sins, then he asks that they be forgiven: "That thou remember them, some claim as debt."  If the poem were to end here, it would appear that Donne has repented his sins, given up his initial argument and submitted himself to the will of God.  But does he surrender completely?  The final line seems to gravitate back toward dispute as he suggests or rather argues again that God should forget his sins: "I think it mercy, if thou would forget."  Is Donne disputing again, attempting to persuade, to influence God's judgment?  This "second" request slides like a wedge between the eternal judge and the supposed penitent.  Is the tone of this line presumptive or repentant?  Why does he conflate God forgetting his sins with mercy when fear of damnation hovers over him?  What has become of the grace that infuses faith or does Donne believe that he only needs mercy to rescue his soul?  

Where and Why to Begin with Modernist Poetry

      Is literary Modernism (the literary movement beginning in the late 19th century characterized by "a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing in both poetry and prose fiction writing") relevant to our world today? The movement is characterized by stream of consciousness, fragmentation, and interior monologue. Its development derived from the replacement of idealism with disillusionment including a mistrust of governments and religious institutions, and the rejection of absolute truths. This new insight was embraced by artists of all types who seemed to have adapted ideas from Darwin, Freud, Einstein, Nietzsche. Some literary artists who adopted these ideas for increased psychological realism were Joseph Conrad, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, Sherwood Anderson, James Joyce, and T.S. Eliot.  

To examine whether Modernism is pertinent today, one would do well by reexamining T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."  The poem is written as a dramatic monologue, reminiscent of the style of superbly crafted works by Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning.  Tennyson and, especially, Browning drew interesting and complex characters in their poems straightforwardly expressing their speakers' motives and desires.  When we finish their poems, we come away satisfied with our understanding of each of the particular characters.  Eliot's poem is anything but straightforward.  For instance, he uses a quotation from Dante's Purgatory as an epigraph to his poem: 

                    S'io credesse che mia riposta fosse
                    A persona che mai  tormasse al mondo,
                    Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
                    Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
                    Non formo vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
                    Senza tema di'infamia ti rispondo.

     Its translation reads, "If I thought that my reply would be to one who would ever return to the world, this flame would stay without further movement; but since none has ever returned alive from this depth, if what I hear is true, I answer you without fear of infamy."  The speaker of this passage is Guido da Montelfeltro, guilty of giving false counsel to Pope Boniface in 1298.    

     The obvious question that the reader immediately asks is why does Eliot quote this passage from Dante?  The first stanza does not clarify what connection the epigraph might have to the poem:

                        Let us go then, you and I,

                        When the evening is spread out against the sky

                        Like a patient etherized upon a table;

                        Let us go, through half-deserted streets,

                        The muttering retreats

                        Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

                        And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells:

                        Streets that follow like a tedious argument

                        Of insidious intent

                        To lead you to an overwhelming question...

                        Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"

                        Let us go and make our visit.

Only by probing each stanza and afterwards perceiving the poem as a whole, can the reader elicit Eliot's meaning and possibly assess its relevance today.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

⁠⁠S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
⁠⁠A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
⁠⁠Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
⁠⁠Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
⁠⁠Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
⁠⁠Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky           

Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . . .

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

The speaker, whom we assume is Prufrock, invites some unnamed character to join him on a walk. But is this a literal walk or a figurative one?  Is there a destination?  What does the simile in line 3 imply about the Prufrock?  The streets he wanders through (real, remembered or imagined) seem like a descent into a dark, dismal world of a sordid, empty existence.  Why does he suppress the question he anticipates from his listener?  

The next stanza introduces a twice uttered refrain:

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

This rather random utterance breaks off the narrative sequence of the first stanza.  The reader feels lost.  Where did this come from?  What can women "Talking of Michelango" have to do with Prufrock?  One technique of Literary Modernism is defined as stream of consciousness.  This technique unveils a speaker's mind directly to the reader.  Instead of maintaining logical, distinct sequence of thoughts, the poet lets the reader see unedited thinking unfold naturally.  Prufrock's mind is roaming the way any person's mind might flow from thoughts to thoughts.  

By following Prufrock's thoughts as a stream of consciousness the reader is able to piece together the speaker's life and experiences.  Thus, the image of a peculiar "yellow fog," in the next two stanzas can tell us something about Prufrock:

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,      
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house and fell asleep.

Initially, what can the image and the movement of the fog suggest?   Looking at the next stanza might help:

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Prufrock asserts "And indeed there will be a time/For the yellow smoke (fog now blackened by coal soot) that slides along the street/Rubbing its back upon the window-panes."  Why?  Does the fog obscure Prufrock's visibility? Does this vapor allow time for us to self-create or possibly reinvent ourselves, "To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet"/ ..."time for a hundred indecisions,/ And for a hundred visions and revisions."  Is Eliot asking who we are or is he suggesting that modern man can no longer be definitive, therefore, implying that we no longer can be decisive or reliable?  That instead our thoughts are ambiguous and controlled by fear, discontent, regret, confusion, or cynicism?  Is this who we are today and if so, can we acknowledge it? 

In the next stanza, we again have the couplet of women and Michelanelo:

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

At this point in the poem, Prufrock's thoughts seem muddled. Or is this simply how his mind wanders?  Eliot engages us by means of fragmented phrases, images, and allusions to illustrate the psychology of the modern, insecure, indecisive man overwhelmed by a petty social world and by the unhappiness of his frustrated desires.  In this post-modern society do we feel trapped in a self-absorbed and image obsessed culture?  Can we possess the self-knowledge to resist the pressures of social conformity, or have we ceased to think and become enveloped in all our new means of escape? 

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

"And indeed there will be time," but for what---to fret about how we look to others?  We all can admit that the post-modern world's preoccupation with self-image has become ubiquitous, but does that make us all empty, devoid of unselfconscious thought? Dare we "Disturb the universe" or are we fearful to try?
.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
⁠So how should I presume?

Prufrock has "known them all already, known them all."  What is it he knows?   Women with whom he desires romance?  The "evenings," "mornings," "afternoons" of his life repeat without variation in a stagnant procession of days that echo in the phrase "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."  Beside an obsessive interest in our self-image, do our fully formulated lives reduce us to mindlessly measuring out our lives in robotic routines?  Is Prufrock seeking romance?  (Look back to the title.) He knows "the voices dying with a dying fall," but what do they mean to him?  And why does he wonder, "So how should I presume?"

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
⁠And how should I presume?

"And I have known the eyes already, known them all--/The eyes that fix you in formulated phrase."   Why does Prufrock narrow his focus to the "eyes" of those whom he knows "already"?  "Eyes" that reduce him to a "formulated phrase."  Prufrock is "pinned" on a "wall," his existence condensed into what people want him to be.  How is he to formulate his own words and phrases to move beyond the inescapable way people define him?  Don't we try to create who we are through social media?

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?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
⁠And should I then presume?
⁠And how should I begin?

Here, about halfway through the poem, we see what the "the voices dying with a dying fall" mean to Prufrock.  He has "known the arms already, know them all--/Arms that are braceleted and white and bare," He knows them, but what of it.  The "perfume from a dress" only makes him "digress."  Can he commence a romance when he only wonders whether he can "presume," or how he can "begin?"  Uncertainty and hesitation beset him.  Others (women) shape and control his perception of himself.  

⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

The image of going through "narrow streets" and seeing "pipes/Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows" mirrors Prufrock's life.  The "pair of ragged claws/Scuttling across the floors of silent seas" are an oblique allusion to Shakespeare's brooding, Prince Hamlet.  Do you see any parallel?  Any irony? 

⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
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.

The ambiguity of Prufrock's angst slides into deeper enigmatic depths in this stanza.  The "afternoon, evening, sleeps so peacefully!" until "it" "malingers."  Is the "it," "afternoon" or "evening"?  What is the "moment" he fears he won't have the "strength to force...to its crisis"?  Why does he imagine himself John the Baptist, "I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter," then negate that image by proclaiming "I am no prophet"? 

The enigmatic "it" persists through the next two stanzas: 

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
⁠Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
⁠That is not it, at all."

After so much hesitation and self-doubt, Prufrock considers whether it would have been worthwhile "To have bitten off the matter with a smile," to finally speak directly, "To have squeezed the universe into a ball/To roll it toward some overwhelming question," To raise himself up by a miracle and say finally "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,/Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all."  Would "it" have been "worthwhile"?  

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
⁠"That is not it at all,
⁠That is not what I meant, at all."

And what if he had found the courage to speak?  Where would it have gotten him beyond afternoon teas and trite social pleasantries?

⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

Here is the second reference to Prince Hamlet.  In Shakespeare's play, when charged with the enormous burden of avenging his father's murder, Hamlet attempts to think his way into action.  He delays and delays, which is understandable given the monumentality of what he must do; yet he does act finally with lethal effectiveness.  For all Prufrock does not know, he knows he is no Prince Hamlet.  Rather, he could be "an attendant lord, one that will do/To swell a progress, start a scene or two,/Advise the prince."  But is Prufrock merely a subordinate in a social hierarchy?  Advising a prince can be prestigious; but he is also "no doubt, and easy tool,/Deferential, glad to be of use,/Politic, cautious, and meticulous;/Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse/At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--/Almost, at times, the Fool."  At this point in the poem, Prufrock seems to be having an epiphany.  Does this self-knowledge enable him to free himself from suffocating rules and rituals of social mores?   Does self-knowledge enable us to resist social fashion from shaping our ethics and behavior?

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.  

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

The last eight line of the poem ("I have heard the mermaids singing...and we drown"), are among the most curious in the poem.  What do they reveal about Prufrock?  Eliot?  Us?

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.

  

     

    In Eliot's poem, Prufrock traverses through a social purgatory, the bleak world of 1910, where love has been reduced to barren assignations, social relationships to vapid gossip, and Prufrock himself to a middle-aged, inadequate, indecisive, timid man.  As he struggles within this quintessentially modernist poem, quintessentially a modernist man, ambiguity dominates a psychological landscape he lays in front of us.  We wander among innuendoes and enigmas, following Prufrock's "stream of consciousness," to the poem's conclusion, feeling the painful dichotomy between the potential of human relationships and love Prufrock seeks and the reality of the discordant human voices in which he is drowning.  In our post-modern world, we think we know ourselves and believe we have found answers in each new iteration of technology.  But do our device dominated lives of posting selfies on social media belie a smugness and, like Prufrock, we think we hear "mermaids singing," but one day "human voices" will wake us, and we too will drown?  

Please feel free to respond so that we may all involve ourselves in a dialogue on Eliot's poem and how we perceive our post-modern world in light of Prufrock's modernist neurosis.