WEBVTT 00:12.220 --> 00:16.100 In talking about Pound and The Cantos last week, 00:16.097 --> 00:18.967 I was talking about translation a lot. 00:18.970 --> 00:24.690 In the case of Eliot I'll be talking about quotation, 00:24.686 --> 00:30.726 a related but different practice, and one that we'll see 00:30.732 --> 00:33.812 again in Marianne Moore. 00:33.810 --> 00:42.570 In Pound's case there is a wish in poetry for immediacy, 00:42.571 --> 00:49.901 for some kind of seemingly natural language. 00:49.900 --> 00:53.480 Pound doesn't want, and doesn't use, 00:53.480 --> 00:57.370 quotation marks, just as he doesn't use 00:57.367 --> 01:02.497 footnotes. If you look at Pound in any of 01:02.497 --> 01:08.287 the editions of his work, from The Cantos 01:08.290 --> 01:15.000 backward, you will find that the poems 01:15.000 --> 01:26.210 are presented without notes, without any kind of apparatus, 01:26.210 --> 01:28.830 without any kind of help. 01:28.830 --> 01:32.290 That's because, I think, Pound wants to, 01:32.286 --> 01:36.186 in some sense, give you a--he doesn't want to 01:36.185 --> 01:39.105 get in your way in any sense. 01:39.110 --> 01:43.530 He wants you to have a kind of immediate experience of the 01:43.532 --> 01:48.112 writing that he's presenting, even when it comes in the form 01:48.110 --> 01:51.740 of quotation. But as I suggested, 01:51.735 --> 01:58.045 for Pound, a sort of central practice is translation, 01:58.045 --> 02:04.715 which he also describes as transmitting the impulse. 02:04.719 --> 02:13.139 And I spoke last time as if the impulse meant the motive or the 02:13.142 --> 02:17.492 emotion in a piece of writing. 02:17.490 --> 02:21.710 I think that Pound also had a kind of scientific or technical 02:21.706 --> 02:25.356 sense of that process of transmitting the impulse, 02:25.360 --> 02:30.390 and that what he wants to do is carry; 02:30.389 --> 02:33.719 he wants writing to carry energy. 02:33.720 --> 02:39.700 He wants it to carry a kind of pulse, and he wants to give you 02:39.704 --> 02:43.044 a kind of direct access to this. 02:43.039 --> 02:48.239 The contrast with Eliot is striking, I think. 02:48.240 --> 02:54.080 Instead of translation, you find in Eliot more often 02:54.076 --> 02:57.756 quotation; quotation which implies a 02:57.762 --> 03:03.592 certain relation to the literary past, just as Pound's practices 03:03.590 --> 03:08.030 of translation imply a relation to tradition. 03:08.030 --> 03:12.250 Think about the difference between these forms, 03:12.250 --> 03:14.820 translation and quotation. 03:14.819 --> 03:19.809 It's a way to understand the differences between Eliot and 03:19.806 --> 03:25.056 Pound, and through them to think about at least two of modern 03:25.055 --> 03:30.475 poetry's possible relations to the literature of the past. 03:30.479 --> 03:34.609 Remember, too, that modern poetry – and 03:34.610 --> 03:40.700 that's a word or a phrase that Eliot and Pound both used – 03:40.701 --> 03:45.451 that modern poetry is a specifically historical 03:45.451 --> 03:49.631 category. It's a historical way of naming 03:49.631 --> 03:55.661 what it is. You could contrast this with 03:55.661 --> 04:01.391 Romantic poetry, say, or Imagism, 04:01.389 --> 04:12.309 which are names or labels that identify something more like an 04:12.307 --> 04:18.927 aesthetic project or a tendency. 04:18.930 --> 04:26.210 Here, to call modern poetry "modern" is to choose as its 04:26.207 --> 04:34.407 defining quality its position in history, its place in literary 04:34.412 --> 04:40.632 history. And it does place modern poetry 04:40.633 --> 04:44.223 in history ambiguously. 04:44.220 --> 04:51.550 Is modern poetry--is its modernness an index of the way 04:51.554 --> 04:57.534 it extends the past, or is it rather "modern" 04:57.530 --> 05:02.420 because it breaks with the past? 05:02.420 --> 05:08.740 Does "modern" mean some kind of renewal and continuity, 05:08.744 --> 05:11.794 or does it mean rupture? 05:11.790 --> 05:16.670 Translation and quotation suggest, as I say, 05:16.665 --> 05:20.515 different relations to the past. 05:20.519 --> 05:25.509 Pound aims to "make it new" itself, I suggested, 05:25.509 --> 05:30.499 a translated phrase from the ancient Chinese. 05:30.500 --> 05:35.800 Pound, in doing this, aims to carry culture forward, 05:35.803 --> 05:42.463 to hand it over to us as a kind of living and immediate thing. 05:42.459 --> 05:48.749 The past is renewable in translation, it is communicable. 05:48.750 --> 05:52.330 That's part of the premise of translation. 05:52.329 --> 05:56.129 For Pound, the past is something that can be 05:56.133 --> 06:00.563 re-embodied continually and needs to be re-embodied 06:00.556 --> 06:04.976 continually, over and over again in new forms. 06:04.980 --> 06:09.730 In this sense, translation envisions a past 06:09.730 --> 06:14.820 that is metamorphic and mobile and durable. 06:14.819 --> 06:18.299 It's something that is always essentially itself. 06:18.300 --> 06:23.230 It's something that is capable of being carried forward. 06:23.230 --> 06:28.840 And you think about Pound's voyagers, his seafarers – 06:28.842 --> 06:34.352 Odysseus or the "Seafarer" poet – as being agents or 06:34.350 --> 06:38.820 representatives of acts of translation. 06:38.819 --> 06:45.669 They embody the action of carrying something across, 06:45.673 --> 06:48.993 journeying. In quotation, 06:48.992 --> 06:54.562 however, the past is something to be preserved, 06:54.558 --> 07:01.098 which is different; preserved or maybe mocked, 07:01.104 --> 07:10.074 in the sense of--mocked in the sense of copied or parodied. 07:10.069 --> 07:15.539 Quotation seems to imply two possible relations to the past, 07:15.539 --> 07:19.799 when you think about it: deference to the past, 07:19.802 --> 07:23.142 deference to what has been said; 07:23.140 --> 07:26.770 or some kind of violation of it. 07:26.769 --> 07:31.729 When you quote someone, especially maybe your parents 07:31.730 --> 07:35.070 or a teacher, what are you doing? 07:35.069 --> 07:43.599 Probably you mean either to honor them or to mock them, 07:43.596 --> 07:47.016 right? To, in a sense, 07:47.020 --> 07:53.210 defer to their authority or to take it away, 07:53.213 --> 07:58.783 to empty it out. Both of these are possible: 07:58.779 --> 08:04.439 empty it out by parroting it, treating it as if it were 08:04.438 --> 08:11.248 merely iterable and formulaic and therefore without substance. 08:11.250 --> 08:15.910 Eliot's quotations teeter ambiguously between these two 08:15.909 --> 08:20.909 options and sometimes you may feel he's doing the one thing 08:20.913 --> 08:25.403 and sometimes you may feel he's doing the other; 08:25.399 --> 08:30.079 that he's somehow deferring to the past and honoring it, 08:30.077 --> 08:35.347 or he's doing something quite subversive, something parodic. 08:35.350 --> 08:39.690 And in Pound I don't think there's any of that ambiguity, 08:39.687 --> 08:42.927 ever. It's a very striking contrast. 08:42.929 --> 08:51.929 If you listen to Pound online, you hear a voice that is fierce 08:51.932 --> 08:56.952 and melodramatic and in earnest. 08:56.950 --> 09:00.850 You listen to Eliot, you hear another voice 09:00.848 --> 09:04.448 entirely; one dry, diffident, 09:04.448 --> 09:07.568 hard to place tonally. 09:07.570 --> 09:13.820 This is all worked into the poetry and our encounters with 09:13.824 --> 09:19.534 it on the page. Again, you might contrast the 09:19.526 --> 09:27.726 heroic figures that you meet in Pound, whether they're Odysseus 09:27.730 --> 09:35.930 or a troubadour poet or one of the political leaders that Pound 09:35.933 --> 09:40.583 fastens on. These are men of will and 09:40.576 --> 09:42.796 willpower and action. 09:42.799 --> 09:46.889 These are the people that attract Pound's admiration and 09:46.889 --> 09:51.279 imagination. Whom do you meet in Eliot? 09:51.279 --> 09:53.809 J. Alfred Prufrock, 09:53.814 --> 10:02.264 this figure of extraordinary indecisiveness and indeterminate 10:02.262 --> 10:07.052 will, someone who's diffident. 10:07.049 --> 10:13.539 Well, Prufrock is surely a version of Eliot and we 10:13.543 --> 10:20.573 encounter in Eliot generally some of the problems that 10:20.566 --> 10:28.376 Prufrock raises for us through his meandering mode of speech 10:28.384 --> 10:32.894 and difficult-to-place tone. 10:32.889 --> 10:38.669 Let's look at some pictures of Eliot, maybe my favorite one, 10:38.667 --> 10:44.537 especially since we're going to be thinking about and talking 10:44.543 --> 10:49.443 about Eliot's age and how he projects himself. 10:49.440 --> 10:53.070 This is Tom at eight. 10:53.070 --> 10:55.300 He was born in St. 10:55.296 --> 11:00.856 Louis, the only major British poet born in St. 11:00.863 --> 11:05.173 Louis, in 1888. He went to Harvard. 11:05.169 --> 11:14.839 This was not a surprise and, in a sense, it was a family 11:14.841 --> 11:18.401 mission. He spent his summers, 11:18.404 --> 11:21.764 importantly, in Massachusetts and on the 11:21.755 --> 11:26.305 coast of Massachusetts, the North Shore of Boston. 11:26.309 --> 11:31.859 And these places return and recur in his poetry. 11:31.860 --> 11:40.840 As a graduate student at Harvard in 1910 he expatriated 11:40.843 --> 11:42.843 to Europe. 11:42.840 --> 11:48.330 11:48.330 --> 11:53.810 This is Eliot in 1910,1911. 11:53.809 --> 11:59.629 He had studied philosophy at Harvard and he went on to study 11:59.627 --> 12:04.357 philosophy at Cambridge with Bertrand Russell. 12:04.360 --> 12:08.080 He wrote his Master's thesis on F.H. 12:08.077 --> 12:11.197 Bradley. That's an association I'll say 12:11.198 --> 12:14.558 more about when we get to The Waste Land. 12:14.559 --> 12:22.139 In 1915 he met and married Vivienne Haigh-Wood, 12:22.144 --> 12:29.074 a charismatic and volatile Englishwoman. 12:29.070 --> 12:35.590 This romance produced for Eliot a kind of dramatic conflict with 12:35.587 --> 12:41.477 his family over his wish to marry her, his wish to take up 12:41.483 --> 12:45.803 residence in England; and behind all this, 12:45.796 --> 12:49.246 and with all this, his sense of vocation, 12:49.248 --> 12:53.878 his desire to become, to establish himself as a poet 12:53.877 --> 12:56.687 and man of letters rather than the 12:56.691 --> 13:01.301 more-easily-to-be-approved-of career of a professor and 13:01.295 --> 13:05.895 scholar that he had seemed to have been made for. 13:05.899 --> 13:13.709 Pound was Eliot's older friend and mentor, very quickly upon 13:13.708 --> 13:20.188 their meeting in Europe; and Pound, always putting his 13:20.185 --> 13:25.415 fingers in everything, wrote quite an extraordinary 13:25.419 --> 13:28.349 letter to Eliot's father. 13:28.350 --> 13:31.700 And I've got that on your handout, on the top page, 13:31.698 --> 13:33.638 a little quotation from it. 13:33.640 --> 13:38.500 It says a lot about Pound; it says something about Eliot, 13:38.501 --> 13:41.651 too. This is a letter in which Pound 13:41.647 --> 13:44.717 felt the need to, probably with some 13:44.716 --> 13:49.446 encouragement but probably also some embarrassment, 13:49.450 --> 13:57.280 from Eliot, felt the need to defend Eliot's expatriation to 13:57.283 --> 14:00.393 the family patriarch. 14:00.390 --> 14:04.840 And Pound says: As to his [Eliot's] 14:04.841 --> 14:07.901 coming to London, well anything else is a waste 14:07.898 --> 14:09.358 of time and energy. 14:09.360 --> 14:13.100 No one in London cares a hang what is written in America. 14:13.100 --> 14:16.460 After getting an American audience a man has to begin all 14:16.460 --> 14:19.700 over again if he plans for an international hearing. 14:19.700 --> 14:23.450 [And who wouldn't plan for an international hearing?] 14:23.447 --> 14:25.967 He even begins at a disadvantage. 14:25.970 --> 14:29.030 London likes discovering her own gods. 14:29.029 --> 14:33.649 Again, in a literary career, mediocrity is worse than 14:33.651 --> 14:37.591 useless. Either a man goes in to go the 14:37.590 --> 14:43.280 whole hog or he had better take to selling soap and gents 14:43.284 --> 14:47.304 furnishings. [Is this the right way to write 14:47.297 --> 14:48.177 Mr. Eliot? 14:48.180 --> 14:50.650 I don't know. He must have felt so.] 14:50.650 --> 14:54.690 The situation has been very well summed up in the sentence, 14:54.686 --> 14:59.066 "Henry James stayed in Paris and read Turgenev and Flaubert. 14:59.070 --> 15:02.530 Mr. Howles returned to America and 15:02.531 --> 15:04.631 read Henry James." 15:04.629 --> 15:08.599 [And then he says in another important sentence:] 15:08.597 --> 15:13.387 A literary man's income depends very much on how rigidly he 15:13.392 --> 15:18.602 insists on doing exactly what he himself wants to do. 15:18.600 --> 15:23.560 Interesting. The idea is that by 15:23.562 --> 15:29.772 establishing some kind of independence from tastes in a 15:29.767 --> 15:34.417 literary market, Eliot will in fact come to 15:34.415 --> 15:38.775 establish his position in that literary market, 15:38.778 --> 15:42.938 and his ability, in fact, to create taste. 15:42.940 --> 15:46.250 And so in fact he did. 15:46.250 --> 15:52.220 At this early point in Eliot's career there is a kind of 15:52.218 --> 15:57.428 important conflict between conformity and revolt: 15:57.426 --> 16:01.546 conformity to his parents' wishes, 16:01.550 --> 16:04.620 social expectations; or revolt from them, 16:04.620 --> 16:07.990 which is also, I think, another way to 16:07.989 --> 16:13.629 describe the tension between two different senses or aspects of 16:13.634 --> 16:17.674 quotation. Pound wants Eliot's father to 16:17.673 --> 16:21.543 see that his son's revolt is okay, because, 16:21.544 --> 16:25.144 in fact, he's also going to conform. 16:25.139 --> 16:28.819 He's going to conform to a certain ideal of tradition, 16:28.817 --> 16:30.757 to professional standards. 16:30.759 --> 16:38.829 He's not just going to have a wild time, he's going to work 16:38.828 --> 16:44.948 hard and do what a literary man should do. 16:44.950 --> 16:48.570 Eliot, you'll see, takes up these themes in 16:48.572 --> 16:54.092 different terms but related ways in "Tradition and the Individual 16:54.093 --> 16:57.633 Talent," which I'll talk about later. 16:57.629 --> 17:01.429 Like Pound, Eliot, we'll see, wants to ally 17:01.428 --> 17:05.858 himself with tradition, wants to ally himself with 17:05.860 --> 17:09.930 tradition over against vers libre, 17:09.930 --> 17:16.430 Amy Lowell and "Amygism," and at the same time his relation to 17:16.434 --> 17:20.384 tradition, even from very early on, 17:20.380 --> 17:27.940 was potentially subversive, and his poetry was very new and 17:27.936 --> 17:32.526 disturbing. Now, there are all sorts of 17:32.531 --> 17:38.551 interesting things in the Beinecke, including – here he 17:38.549 --> 17:44.139 is again, the author of "Prufrock" – including T.S. 17:44.138 --> 17:48.768 Eliot's waistcoat; H.D.'s death mask I showed you 17:48.768 --> 17:52.788 last time; here's Eliot's waistcoat. 17:52.789 --> 18:00.659 I like this as an object, as part of the literary archive 18:00.663 --> 18:07.573 we have. Also, it's interesting isn't it? 18:07.570 --> 18:10.220 It's a piece of Eliot's costume. 18:10.220 --> 18:13.750 Costume was very important for T.S. 18:13.749 --> 18:18.019 Eliot. I think it's also potentially a 18:18.024 --> 18:22.584 kind of emblem of quotation in his work. 18:22.579 --> 18:30.509 Is Eliot taking on the past and the aura of propriety in order 18:30.509 --> 18:34.929 to parody it or empower himself? 18:34.930 --> 18:40.600 These are questions we might ask even about the waistcoat. 18:40.599 --> 18:49.159 Is it some kind of disguise, is it a costume through which 18:49.158 --> 18:55.758 he conforms to social forms and expectations, 18:55.764 --> 19:01.774 or is it again something he puts on? 19:01.769 --> 19:06.909 All of these questions are at, for me, the center of Eliot's 19:06.910 --> 19:11.270 interest and power, and also, I think, 19:11.268 --> 19:19.408 some of the lasting power that he exerts in schools and for 19:19.414 --> 19:23.194 students. I will confess that my high 19:23.186 --> 19:26.586 school yearbook carries a quotation from T.S. 19:26.586 --> 19:29.676 Eliot, in fact, from "The Love Song of J. 19:29.677 --> 19:33.847 Alfred Prufrock," which I won't identify for you. 19:33.849 --> 19:39.349 And as I think about that, why I cared about Eliot when I 19:39.352 --> 19:43.972 was seventeen or so – not that I don't now, 19:43.970 --> 19:51.460 too – when I think about that, it seems to me that his 19:51.457 --> 19:59.487 special combination of ambition and aggression expressed, 19:59.490 --> 20:04.820 as it is very often by young people through parody or satire 20:04.815 --> 20:08.555 or diffidence, was powerful for me, 20:08.564 --> 20:11.334 too, as a young person. 20:11.329 --> 20:17.609 All of this is on display in Eliot's great poem, 20:17.612 --> 20:20.292 "The Love Song of J. 20:20.286 --> 20:28.436 Alfred Prufrock," which is what I'll concentrate on today. 20:28.440 --> 20:37.010 "Prufrock" is a poem composed initially at Harvard and 20:37.013 --> 20:46.723 something Eliot carried along with him in the years after; 20:46.720 --> 20:51.280 a poem created out of pages and pages of drafts, 20:51.282 --> 20:57.302 which Eliot kept adding to and going back over and re-combining 20:57.301 --> 21:02.111 and re-composing, somewhat like his repetitive 21:02.111 --> 21:04.191 and wayward speaker. 21:04.190 --> 21:10.890 You can find early versions of the poem in a book of Eliot's 21:10.888 --> 21:17.468 early and otherwise uncollected work that Christopher Ricks 21:17.472 --> 21:23.722 edited a few years ago called Inventions of the March 21:23.717 --> 21:27.817 Hare. It's a very interesting book, 21:27.824 --> 21:32.724 and you can see Eliot exploring different ways to write this 21:32.715 --> 21:36.275 poem, which hung around for a long time. 21:36.279 --> 21:42.659 It was eventually published in 1915 in Poetry magazine. 21:42.660 --> 21:46.380 And in this way, just like "Mowing," just like 21:46.377 --> 21:51.167 Yeats's "The Fisherman," which also appeared there then; 21:51.170 --> 21:54.990 also, a poem we'll get to in a couple of weeks, 21:54.991 --> 21:59.541 Marianne Moore's "A Grave"; and some of the Imagist poems 21:59.538 --> 22:02.858 we discussed last week – all these appeared, 22:02.857 --> 22:06.247 thanks to Pound, in Poetry magazine. 22:06.250 --> 22:10.640 The poem became the title of Eliot's first volume. 22:10.640 --> 22:17.840 Interestingly – this is the cover of the book – it leaves 22:17.844 --> 22:23.734 off the full title which was Prufrock and Other 22:23.728 --> 22:30.788 Observations, which is an interesting title. 22:30.789 --> 22:34.339 First of all, is "Prufrock" an observation? 22:34.339 --> 22:38.639 Eliot was treating this character as if he were an 22:38.641 --> 22:41.421 observation. You can think about what that 22:41.423 --> 22:43.883 might imply. And then think about that word 22:43.880 --> 22:46.570 "observations." It suggests something seen, 22:46.569 --> 22:49.679 of course, as well as some kind of speculation. 22:49.680 --> 22:56.680 It's also a way of defining and presenting Eliot's poems. 22:56.680 --> 22:59.320 He doesn't say Prufrock and Other Poems, 22:59.318 --> 23:02.128 he says Prufrock and Other Observations. 23:02.130 --> 23:06.890 And Observations is, in fact, a word that Marianne 23:06.887 --> 23:11.897 Moore would use to title her first book of poems a few years 23:11.900 --> 23:15.970 later. On that cover we see Eliot's 23:15.972 --> 23:21.732 name and Prufrock's, in some kind of alteration – 23:21.727 --> 23:28.747 alternation, rather--"Prufrock" being a little bit bigger than 23:28.748 --> 23:32.318 "T.S. Eliot," but raising for us 23:32.316 --> 23:38.756 graphically the simple question: what is the relationship 23:38.762 --> 23:41.872 between these two? 23:41.869 --> 23:49.609 Yes, the one man created the other thing, "Prufrock." 23:49.610 --> 23:51.860 Are they the same thing? 23:51.860 --> 23:53.950 How different are they? 23:53.950 --> 24:00.990 Here's the interior of the book. 24:00.990 --> 24:03.730 You can see--although, well, you can't see, 24:03.734 --> 24:07.664 but if you get a better look at this online you will see that 24:07.655 --> 24:11.745 this book, which is in the Beinecke, 24:11.750 --> 24:14.930 has a signature on it, "W. 24:14.931 --> 24:19.131 Stevens, NY, October 17,1917." 24:19.130 --> 24:24.320 So, this was Stevens's copy, which he, as a young man 24:24.320 --> 24:30.610 wandering around the streets of New York, picked up and kept. 24:30.609 --> 24:39.169 It was, like Frost's early work, published in London in 24:39.169 --> 24:46.619 1917, now in Bloomsbury, by the Egoist Press. 24:46.619 --> 24:51.989 And there's the table of contents, the first and long 24:51.989 --> 24:57.459 poem included in the volume being "The Love Song of J. 24:57.461 --> 24:59.631 Alfred Prufrock." 24:59.630 --> 25:05.580 Well, what do we expect from a poem that calls itself that, 25:05.577 --> 25:07.627 "The Love Song of J. 25:07.628 --> 25:09.678 Alfred Prufrock"? 25:09.680 --> 25:12.220 First of all, what do we expect from this 25:12.222 --> 25:14.512 genre, the love song, a love song? 25:14.510 --> 25:15.790 What is a love song? 25:15.790 --> 25:18.150 What is a love song like? 25:18.150 --> 25:22.130 Presumably, it would be a romantic poem, 25:22.131 --> 25:24.991 even a poem about romance. 25:24.990 --> 25:32.390 What we get is perhaps something more like a parody of 25:32.388 --> 25:38.808 a romantic poem and something much stranger. 25:38.809 --> 25:43.449 This is going to be familiar to very many of you: 25:43.450 --> 25:48.330 Let us go then, you and I When the evening is spread out 25:48.326 --> 25:52.726 against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a 25:52.727 --> 25:55.737 table; Let us go, through certain 25:55.741 --> 25:59.731 half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats 25:59.730 --> 26:02.600 Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels 26:02.599 --> 26:06.249 And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: 26:06.250 --> 26:10.280 Streets that follow like a tedious argument 26:10.280 --> 26:14.060 Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming 26:14.058 --> 26:18.748 question… Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" 26:18.750 --> 26:21.620 Let us go and make our visit. 26:21.619 --> 26:25.809 In the room the women come and go 26:25.810 --> 26:28.590 Talking of Michelangelo. 26:28.590 --> 26:32.250 26:32.250 --> 26:37.780 Meter? It's a topic we've raised 26:37.783 --> 26:43.853 before. It isn't iambic pentameter. 26:43.849 --> 26:46.909 It's notably, importantly, 26:46.911 --> 26:49.851 not iambic pentameter. 26:49.849 --> 26:54.929 Instead, you are introduced to another kind of rhythm of 26:54.927 --> 26:58.617 speech, which you can work at to scan, 26:58.619 --> 27:02.249 but without even going into any detail about it, 27:02.254 --> 27:06.124 I think, we can describe that rhythm as languid, 27:06.119 --> 27:16.649 as open to variation, as including hesitancy and 27:16.647 --> 27:21.797 sometimes abruptness. 27:21.799 --> 27:28.249 It is a way of speaking that is interrupted, often; 27:28.250 --> 27:38.370 is alternately voluble and nervous. 27:38.369 --> 27:46.239 The poem's initial discontinuities of rhythm and 27:46.237 --> 27:55.107 pattern and image introduce us to really a new kind of 27:55.108 --> 28:03.978 structure in poetry that would include a kind of, 28:03.980 --> 28:09.290 almost a principle that any time you establish a pattern you 28:09.289 --> 28:11.449 must quickly break it. 28:11.450 --> 28:14.700 "Let us go then, you and I, / when the evening 28:14.698 --> 28:20.378 is spread out against the sky"; it sounds like this character's 28:20.379 --> 28:23.359 going to speak in couplets. 28:23.359 --> 28:27.339 "Like a patient etherised upon a table"; 28:27.340 --> 28:29.830 where did that come from? 28:29.829 --> 28:37.109 We could supply another third line that would be very 28:37.109 --> 28:40.049 different, I think. 28:40.049 --> 28:44.889 Immediately, we are invited to 28:44.888 --> 28:55.398 surrealistically conjure a prone patient, someone sick and being 28:55.400 --> 29:02.550 attended to and "etherised," unconscious, 29:02.545 --> 29:07.055 and objectified upon a table. 29:07.059 --> 29:12.839 If we felt as though we were going to be in a romantic, 29:12.838 --> 29:18.618 crepuscular atmosphere, we are suddenly confronted with 29:18.616 --> 29:22.786 an image quite disturbing and ugly. 29:22.790 --> 29:26.040 And note that it doesn't rhyme. 29:26.039 --> 29:32.139 I suppose you could connect "table" to "hotels" and 29:32.143 --> 29:36.663 "shelves" below, but it's not a strong 29:36.659 --> 29:44.349 connection and there has been no preparation for it before. 29:44.349 --> 29:48.119 So, immediately, we are given an image and a 29:48.123 --> 29:50.493 rhyme decision, if you like, 29:50.493 --> 29:55.583 that complicates any kind of sense of pattern that we might 29:55.583 --> 29:59.623 have predicted from the first two lines. 29:59.619 --> 30:06.029 That rhythm, well, the contrast to an iambic 30:06.034 --> 30:12.304 poem is strong and should be emphasized. 30:12.299 --> 30:17.019 And I want to draw your attention to an example that 30:17.020 --> 30:21.460 would have been in the ears of Eliot's listeners, 30:21.462 --> 30:24.982 and that is – Eliot's listeners; 30:24.980 --> 30:31.210 Eliot's readers – that is the end of Tennyson's "Ulysses," a 30:31.206 --> 30:35.796 poem well known in the nineteenth century: 30:35.800 --> 30:38.660 The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; 30:38.660 --> 30:41.210 the deep Moans round with many voices. 30:41.210 --> 30:44.660 [I quote it, too, because Eliot loved this 30:44.660 --> 30:49.850 passage and it returns in his late poetry in interesting 30:49.851 --> 30:51.551 echoes.] Come my 30:51.550 --> 30:54.340 friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a 30:54.336 --> 30:55.696 newer world. … 30:55.700 --> 30:57.610 It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; 30:57.609 --> 31:00.309 It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, 31:00.309 --> 31:03.169 And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. 31:03.170 --> 31:06.970 Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' 31:06.970 --> 31:09.090 We are not now that strength which in old days 31:09.089 --> 31:12.109 Moved earth and heaven, [we're older] 31:12.111 --> 31:14.631 that which we are, we are,-- 31:14.630 --> 31:17.690 One equal temper of heroic hearts, 31:17.690 --> 31:21.190 Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 31:21.190 --> 31:24.100 To strive, to seek, to find, and not to 31:24.098 --> 31:27.248 yield. Echoing, I think, 31:27.247 --> 31:32.017 Milton's Satan, the blank verse suddenly 31:32.015 --> 31:37.755 becomes a kind of heroic medium of the will. 31:37.759 --> 31:42.969 Well, the contrast is important with the poetry that Eliot is 31:42.973 --> 31:48.013 presenting to us because here the question of the speaker's 31:48.012 --> 31:53.572 will is so much at issue and his manner of speech is so different 31:53.573 --> 31:57.573 from the example that Tennyson gives us. 31:57.569 --> 32:02.079 Tennyson specifically, in this dramatic monologue, 32:02.080 --> 32:06.770 as in others of his oeurve or other important 32:06.774 --> 32:12.784 nineteenth-century examples, introduces us to a dramatic 32:12.777 --> 32:18.777 speaker who has a kind of coherent character and whose 32:18.778 --> 32:22.498 unity of character, if you like, 32:22.497 --> 32:27.507 is allied to the unity of the verse form itself. 32:27.509 --> 32:31.299 Eliot gives us something very different. 32:31.299 --> 32:37.559 He creates, in "Prufrock," I would say, not a character. 32:37.559 --> 32:42.479 Rather, he creates something more like a consciousness. 32:42.480 --> 32:51.800 He creates a fragmentary consciousness that rises and 32:51.797 --> 32:59.857 falls, takes shape and disperses before us. 32:59.859 --> 33:06.349 John Stuart Mill said in a memorable passage that poetry 33:06.354 --> 33:13.324 – lyric poetry is what he was thinking of – is overheard 33:13.321 --> 33:18.101 speech. Overheard speech. 33:18.099 --> 33:23.439 And you can think, if you have some sense of the 33:23.437 --> 33:30.247 Romantic poetry of Wordsworth or Coleridge as examples before 33:30.251 --> 33:34.061 you, of what Mill had in mind, 33:34.061 --> 33:41.021 the way in which in those poems we listen in on a soliquizing 33:41.024 --> 33:46.894 poet's thoughts. Listening to "Prufrock" is much 33:46.889 --> 33:53.849 less like listening to someone speak on the street or on the 33:53.854 --> 34:00.824 stage than it is like closing your eyes and remembering, 34:00.819 --> 34:05.979 or inventing voices in your mind. 34:05.980 --> 34:11.930 Eliot is creating a kind of overheard inner speech. 34:11.929 --> 34:22.239 He's letting us listen in on a mind that we don't see whole, 34:22.244 --> 34:26.094 we don't feel whole. 34:26.090 --> 34:30.900 We only get parts of it. 34:30.900 --> 34:37.080 Fluctuation: this is the medium and the 34:37.084 --> 34:44.574 rhythm that we enter when we enter the poem. 34:44.570 --> 34:50.770 There is, as I was already suggesting, no overarching 34:50.768 --> 34:55.058 pattern for the poem's verse form. 34:55.059 --> 35:00.589 I think this is probably true for other dimensions of 35:00.592 --> 35:03.042 organization as well. 35:03.039 --> 35:06.729 There are rather, in this poem, 35:06.732 --> 35:14.122 what I would call a kind of set of unfolding local systems of 35:14.117 --> 35:18.957 organization. There are couplets. 35:18.960 --> 35:23.650 We see couplets in that first paragraph, but then they're not 35:23.647 --> 35:25.597 systematically pursued. 35:25.599 --> 35:32.309 Instead, what you get in the poem are a lot of loose ends, 35:32.310 --> 35:36.230 pauses; bits and pieces of language, 35:36.233 --> 35:41.453 language that is almost always full of quotations. 35:41.449 --> 35:47.029 Your editor will give you the source for some of them. 35:47.030 --> 35:52.680 What we have then in the poem as you move through it is a lot 35:52.681 --> 35:55.791 of shifting, improvised orders. 35:55.789 --> 36:01.279 This formal instability in the poem is related to, 36:01.282 --> 36:06.552 and it constructs, a special sort of speaker, 36:06.550 --> 36:12.240 one who is performing for us his thoughts, 36:12.235 --> 36:19.995 his thoughts experienced as a set of routines or riffs or 36:20.001 --> 36:24.021 acts, and they come and go without 36:24.022 --> 36:27.292 very definite aim or conclusion. 36:27.290 --> 36:31.310 36:31.309 --> 36:34.729 Looking at the cover of Prufrock, 36:34.730 --> 36:39.900 I asked you to think about the relationship between Prufrock 36:39.903 --> 36:41.573 and T.S. Eliot. 36:41.570 --> 36:47.840 You can think about "Prufrock," the name itself: 36:47.839 --> 36:52.369 "J. Alfred Prufrock," almost a kind 36:52.374 --> 36:54.644 of parody of T.S. 36:54.642 --> 36:59.152 Eliot. The name suggests a kind of 36:59.150 --> 37:03.880 upper-class English or Anglophile person. 37:03.880 --> 37:10.340 Those formal initials are pretentious in a way. 37:10.340 --> 37:16.630 I think it's proper to think of Prufrock as in some sense a kind 37:16.625 --> 37:20.815 of comic figure, almost like a cartoon or a 37:20.815 --> 37:23.305 caricature or device. 37:23.309 --> 37:32.539 On one level he is a kind of parody of a Romantic singer. 37:32.540 --> 37:36.580 He is bourgeois; he is intellectualizing; 37:36.579 --> 37:42.139 he's incapable of grasping and expressing what we expect from a 37:42.141 --> 37:45.461 love song, that is, strong emotion. 37:45.460 --> 37:51.320 The poem can be seen, too, as a kind of critique of 37:51.324 --> 37:57.074 Romantic egotism and of the Wordsworthian ideal of 37:57.070 --> 38:02.090 expression. This is something that Eliot 38:02.094 --> 38:08.274 theorizes polemically in his essay, "Tradition and the 38:08.274 --> 38:10.844 Individual Talent." 38:10.840 --> 38:15.210 And in fact, why don't we look there for a 38:15.208 --> 38:20.428 few minutes to get more sense of Eliot's ideas. 38:20.429 --> 38:26.629 On page 946, the back of your book there, 38:26.633 --> 38:35.473 he says, quoting Wordsworth in the "Preface" to Lyrical 38:35.473 --> 38:40.333 Ballads: …We must believe that 38:40.325 --> 38:44.065 "emotion recollected in tranquility" is an inexact 38:44.069 --> 38:47.069 formula, for it is neither emotion, 38:47.069 --> 38:50.559 nor recollection, nor without distortion of 38:50.556 --> 38:52.546 meaning, tranquility. 38:52.550 --> 38:55.580 [That you get in an Eliot poem, at least.] 38:55.576 --> 38:59.416 It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from 38:59.415 --> 39:02.345 the concentration, of a very great number of 39:02.348 --> 39:05.018 experiences which to the practical and active person 39:05.018 --> 39:07.268 would not seem to be experiences at all; 39:07.269 --> 39:11.139 it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or 39:11.138 --> 39:14.438 of deliberation. These experiences are not 39:14.443 --> 39:19.613 "recollected," and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is 39:19.611 --> 39:24.361 "tranquil" only in that it is a passive attending upon the 39:24.362 --> 39:28.022 event. Eliot is trying to describe 39:28.017 --> 39:32.327 poetry here as having a kind of--generating a kind of 39:32.327 --> 39:37.297 experience in and of itself that is distinct from any kind of 39:37.299 --> 39:42.899 recollected experience, and it is curiously impersonal 39:42.895 --> 39:44.965 as he imagines it. 39:44.970 --> 39:47.790 And he continues: There is a great deal, 39:47.794 --> 39:50.014 in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and 39:50.012 --> 39:52.272 deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is 39:52.266 --> 39:55.716 usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, 39:55.718 --> 39:59.168 and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. 39:59.170 --> 40:03.580 [We know what he means.] Both errors tend to make him 40:03.577 --> 40:05.827 "personal." [And now T.S. 40:05.834 --> 40:09.834 Eliot will say:] Poetry is not a turning loose 40:09.830 --> 40:13.560 of emotion, but an escape from emotion; 40:13.559 --> 40:18.239 it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from 40:18.240 --> 40:20.470 personality. But, of course, 40:20.467 --> 40:25.007 only those who have personality and emotions know what it means 40:25.006 --> 40:28.296 to want to escape from these things. 40:28.300 --> 40:34.630 Which is an extraordinary kind of coda to this polemical 40:34.625 --> 40:39.695 passage, and revealing, of course, the way in which 40:39.697 --> 40:44.737 Eliot, even as he's polemicizing against a romantic poetry that 40:44.744 --> 40:49.424 would be too personal, is deeply invested in the 40:49.421 --> 40:54.811 personal and personality, and conflicted about it. 40:54.809 --> 41:03.539 I've been talking about ambiguity in Eliot. 41:03.539 --> 41:06.769 Well, we can speak of "ambivalence." 41:06.769 --> 41:11.149 This essay retains, even while it is critiquing, 41:11.153 --> 41:14.793 a certain romantic story of creation. 41:14.789 --> 41:19.719 And we could say something similar about Eliot's love song. 41:19.719 --> 41:25.769 "Prufrock" is a kind of pre-text or a device through 41:25.768 --> 41:29.918 which Eliot can speak of himself. 41:29.920 --> 41:35.790 "Prufrock" becomes a way of writing about the self when to 41:35.794 --> 41:41.054 Eliot it no longer seems plausible to write as one's 41:41.051 --> 41:45.381 self, as Wordsworth had felt it to be. 41:45.380 --> 41:50.350 You can think of "Prufrock" as a kind of mask behind which you 41:50.348 --> 41:54.828 hear a young poet asking questions about himself and his 41:54.828 --> 41:58.978 art. List the poem's questions. 41:58.980 --> 42:02.110 Prufrock asks questions throughout. 42:02.110 --> 42:03.640 Do you recall them? 42:03.640 --> 42:07.190 They are: "Do I dare?" 42:07.190 --> 42:10.500 "Do I dare disturb the universe?" 42:10.500 --> 42:13.580 "So how should I presume?" 42:13.580 --> 42:16.480 And, "How should I begin?" 42:16.480 --> 42:21.130 "Shall I say?" He says that pretty often: 42:21.126 --> 42:22.786 "Shall I say this? 42:22.786 --> 42:24.626 Shall I say that?" 42:24.630 --> 42:29.300 Daring, presuming, beginning, "what shall I 42:29.304 --> 42:32.644 say?"--these are, are they not, 42:32.643 --> 42:38.543 an ambitious young poet's questions about how to write 42:38.543 --> 42:41.823 poetry. The question is, 42:41.820 --> 42:47.880 why should beginning be something that you really have 42:47.881 --> 42:52.621 to dare? What does that imply? 42:52.620 --> 42:55.700 Why should it be frightening? 42:55.700 --> 42:59.070 Why should it give you pause? 42:59.070 --> 43:05.270 Why, if these are a young man's questions, as I'm suggesting, 43:05.273 --> 43:09.723 does Prufrock seem as old, as old and weary, 43:09.719 --> 43:12.959 as he does? In fact, how old do you think 43:12.961 --> 43:13.371 he is? 43:13.370 --> 43:19.140 43:19.140 --> 43:23.110 I don't know. Ask yourselves that question; 43:23.110 --> 43:27.610 ask yourselves what evidence you would have for one answer or 43:27.610 --> 43:30.630 another. It's hard to pinpoint his age. 43:30.630 --> 43:36.000 Prufrock is, isn't he, a kind of old-young 43:35.996 --> 43:39.396 man, or a young-old man? 43:39.400 --> 43:46.520 He is cautious and aggressive at the same time: 43:46.515 --> 43:50.085 old and young. These paradoxes, 43:50.093 --> 43:53.133 I think, point to Eliot's sense of his place, 43:53.127 --> 43:55.747 his own place, in literary history, 43:55.746 --> 43:59.936 and some sense of what it meant to be "modern" for Eliot. 43:59.940 --> 44:04.680 Prufrock is burdened by the question of how to begin. 44:04.679 --> 44:08.599 Indeed, he begins exactly by deferring beginning; 44:08.600 --> 44:12.010 by failing to come to the point; by putting it off; 44:12.010 --> 44:15.960 by delaying because by implication, beginning is indeed 44:15.960 --> 44:19.910 something threatening, something that must be dared. 44:19.909 --> 44:25.129 But this only makes sense if Prufrock really does want to 44:25.127 --> 44:29.407 disturb the universe, or at least the system of 44:29.414 --> 44:31.934 culture as he found it. 44:31.929 --> 44:37.069 It only makes sense if beginning really does require 44:37.073 --> 44:39.093 disturbing things. 44:39.090 --> 44:45.590 The implication is that the universe is already complete 44:45.585 --> 44:49.005 without Prufrock, without T.S. 44:49.009 --> 44:54.559 Eliot and anything that he might do or say. 44:54.559 --> 44:58.379 You can extend this to Eliot's idea of culture and, 44:58.376 --> 45:01.576 in particular, to his sense of the literary 45:01.582 --> 45:04.202 past. You see the idea in "Tradition 45:04.204 --> 45:06.014 and the Individual Talent." 45:06.010 --> 45:11.880 On pages 942 to 943, he speaks of – towards the 45:11.875 --> 45:18.835 bottom of the page on 942 – tradition as a kind of ideal 45:18.839 --> 45:21.649 order of monuments. 45:21.650 --> 45:26.780 Tradition is in some sense, well, it's monumental and it's 45:26.780 --> 45:30.200 already complete, as he imagines it. 45:30.199 --> 45:34.149 To add to it, to enter it would be to change 45:34.145 --> 45:35.975 it, to disturb it. 45:35.980 --> 45:43.560 In fact, Eliot evolves here a quite ingenious and complicated 45:43.559 --> 45:50.509 argument for how the new could indeed be introduced to a 45:50.508 --> 45:57.328 tradition conceived in the terms I just described. 45:57.329 --> 46:05.999 Eliot says, on the bottom of the page, about any new poet: 46:06.000 --> 46:09.990 The necessity that he shall conform [and there's that 46:09.991 --> 46:13.271 word, "conform"; think of the waistcoat], 46:13.268 --> 46:17.168 that he shall cohere [and remain put together], 46:17.174 --> 46:22.444 is not one-sided [this was quite an extraordinary argument; 46:22.440 --> 46:28.420 he's saying it's not only necessary for a new poet to 46:28.420 --> 46:33.100 conform to tradition]; what happens when a new work of 46:33.101 --> 46:36.881 art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all 46:36.884 --> 46:39.244 the works of art which preceded it. 46:39.239 --> 46:42.029 [Something which happens simultaneously to all the works 46:42.030 --> 46:43.400 of art which preceded it. 46:43.400 --> 46:46.620 This is quite a claim.] The existing monuments form an 46:46.617 --> 46:50.057 ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the 46:50.058 --> 46:53.758 introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among 46:53.760 --> 46:56.410 them. The existing order is complete 46:56.410 --> 47:01.220 before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the 47:01.224 --> 47:06.274 supervention of novelty [novelty comes as something that 47:06.274 --> 47:08.724 supervenes; it has force, 47:08.723 --> 47:14.183 it's a leopard in the temple], the whole existing order 47:14.181 --> 47:17.851 must be, if ever so slightly, altered; 47:17.849 --> 47:19.839 and so the relations, proportions, 47:19.840 --> 47:23.520 values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted, 47:23.519 --> 47:28.269 and this is conformity between the old and the new. 47:28.269 --> 47:34.319 Here, Eliot is struggling with an idea of tradition as 47:34.321 --> 47:41.401 something that is static and fully present in and of itself, 47:41.400 --> 47:45.180 a sense of the new as something that is revolutionary and that 47:45.184 --> 47:48.804 threatens tradition, or is threatened by it. 47:48.800 --> 47:50.630 How can he bring them into alignment? 47:50.630 --> 47:55.350 Well, through this very complicated process that he 47:55.347 --> 47:58.647 describes which gives the modern, 47:58.650 --> 48:04.920 gives the new, an extraordinary power to make 48:04.923 --> 48:12.053 us see and, in fact, to realign the relations among 48:12.052 --> 48:16.332 all the works of the past. 48:16.329 --> 48:21.719 This is, as I say, quite an extraordinary power. 48:21.719 --> 48:25.499 The implication is the new poet must in some sense wrest 48:25.496 --> 48:29.546 authority from all those who have come before through a kind 48:29.547 --> 48:32.497 of imaginative and rhetorical violence, 48:32.500 --> 48:38.420 a kind of insurrection in the temple of culture. 48:38.420 --> 48:42.980 Prufrock's sense of age expresses for him a feeling of 48:42.983 --> 48:48.153 belatedness, an anxiety that he's already run out of time. 48:48.150 --> 48:51.570 His very youth, the fact that he's only just 48:51.566 --> 48:53.946 now starting, makes him old. 48:53.949 --> 48:58.999 To presume would be to reverse this order, to dare to come 48:59.003 --> 49:03.263 before and to claim priority for his own work. 49:03.260 --> 49:10.400 As I say these sentences, I sound a whole lot like Harold 49:10.400 --> 49:18.050 Bloom as he describes the mission of any poet in his work, 49:18.050 --> 49:20.360 The Anxiety of Influence, 49:20.359 --> 49:24.079 and that is because Bloom's work is deeply indebted 49:24.084 --> 49:28.114 precisely to Eliot and to "Tradition and the Individual 49:28.107 --> 49:32.627 Talent." These are questions I'll say a 49:32.627 --> 49:39.927 little bit more about next time, as we finish discussing Eliot's 49:39.929 --> 49:46.999 "Love Song" and begin to talk about The Waste Land.