T.S Elliot

[name]

[professor /instructor]

[course]

November 4 , 2007

The Poetry of T .S . Eliot

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 1914 - 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 xv - xviii

His work from this period is very dark and obviously influenced by the 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

The Love Song of J . Alfred Prufrock ' was first published in 1915 . It opens with Italian verse from 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 streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming question (9 . The women seem out of reach , 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 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 . That is not what I meant at all . That is not it , at all ' is followed by later by it is impossible to say just what I mean (12 . Later this thought is inverted and repeated , 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 : 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...