Jul 24 2014 : Mirror (Pune)
Till human voices wake us
EUNICE de SOUZA
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T S Eliot was a significant poet who wrote wonderful lines, but led poetry into a dead end
I taught T S Eliot's poetry for several years, but have only just begun to wonder if he is the great poet I thought he was. Obvious ly he was a significant poet, and wrote some wonderful lines, but I also think he led poetry into a kind of dead end, as Joyce did with his Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. Startling as writing, but where could one go from there?
He seemed to be intent on going against the grain by publishing a poem such as The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, in 1917 during the World War. In contrast to the war poems of Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Edward Thomas and others, Prufrock is entirely an “internal“ poem, in which a diffident middle-aged man, spends his time mumbling and grumbling to himself about his inadequacies, the inadequacies of the high society to which he belongs.Prufrock, despite his stodgy name, feels immersed in his life of fantasy, lyrical longings, until the voices of ordinary society make him feel as if he is drowning in the banal. He hears the magic voices of mermaids till ordinary human voices with their mundane preoccupations make him “drown.“
“I have measured out my life in coffee spoons,“ he says memorably on one occasion. It seems oddly self-indulgent for a writer who denounced the Romantics, and felt that poetry should be “impersonal.“ This word “impersonal“ has been used as a stick with which to beat women writers, for their apparently “bare all “ writing, while many male writers have been read differently from women writers talking about the same thing. Think of Nissim Ezekiel who wrote about a failed marriage and other such without any critic commenting on the fact.
It is easy to fault Prufrock. On the other hand, what is one supposed to do when the world appears to be falling apart? It's an endless debate. Is there something one can do, or is it best to concentrate on playing chess, writing poems, avoiding news on TV and in newspapers? Friends who work in foreign-funded NGOs are often frustrated by the insolence of the donors, and give up their jobs despite their very high salaries. Best to concentrate on coffee spoons?
Prufock is a poem more relevant to our experience than the much-touted The Wasteland.
The Wasteland is a significant poem, full of cultural references. But these are references to which the average person has no access. Not that a poet has to tailor his references to the average person. An academic can certainly work out the puzzles, but what is the point if a poem becomes a chore for the reader? Would anyone want to buckle down and read it for the good of one's soul?
The pity is that such work has overshad owed truly memorable and accessible poems such as Auden's Shield of Achilles, in which, he talks about the state of the world, and laments the fact that we have never learned to weep when others wept. The second-last stanza reads A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,Loitered about that vacancy; a birdFlew up to safety from his well-aimed stone.That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,Were axioms to him who'd never heardOf any world where promises were kept,Or one could weep because another wept.
That's a poem worth treasuring, not just reading as a culturally significant chore.
He seemed to be intent on going against the grain by publishing a poem such as The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, in 1917 during the World War. In contrast to the war poems of Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Edward Thomas and others, Prufrock is entirely an “internal“ poem, in which a diffident middle-aged man, spends his time mumbling and grumbling to himself about his inadequacies, the inadequacies of the high society to which he belongs.Prufrock, despite his stodgy name, feels immersed in his life of fantasy, lyrical longings, until the voices of ordinary society make him feel as if he is drowning in the banal. He hears the magic voices of mermaids till ordinary human voices with their mundane preoccupations make him “drown.“
“I have measured out my life in coffee spoons,“ he says memorably on one occasion. It seems oddly self-indulgent for a writer who denounced the Romantics, and felt that poetry should be “impersonal.“ This word “impersonal“ has been used as a stick with which to beat women writers, for their apparently “bare all “ writing, while many male writers have been read differently from women writers talking about the same thing. Think of Nissim Ezekiel who wrote about a failed marriage and other such without any critic commenting on the fact.
It is easy to fault Prufrock. On the other hand, what is one supposed to do when the world appears to be falling apart? It's an endless debate. Is there something one can do, or is it best to concentrate on playing chess, writing poems, avoiding news on TV and in newspapers? Friends who work in foreign-funded NGOs are often frustrated by the insolence of the donors, and give up their jobs despite their very high salaries. Best to concentrate on coffee spoons?
Prufock is a poem more relevant to our experience than the much-touted The Wasteland.
The Wasteland is a significant poem, full of cultural references. But these are references to which the average person has no access. Not that a poet has to tailor his references to the average person. An academic can certainly work out the puzzles, but what is the point if a poem becomes a chore for the reader? Would anyone want to buckle down and read it for the good of one's soul?
The pity is that such work has overshad owed truly memorable and accessible poems such as Auden's Shield of Achilles, in which, he talks about the state of the world, and laments the fact that we have never learned to weep when others wept. The second-last stanza reads A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,Loitered about that vacancy; a birdFlew up to safety from his well-aimed stone.That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,Were axioms to him who'd never heardOf any world where promises were kept,Or one could weep because another wept.
That's a poem worth treasuring, not just reading as a culturally significant chore.
