I am interested in the fact that this was written without any checking:
"Eliot’s ugly politics couldn’t diminish the radical, explosive force of his
poetry."
I have been delighted to see that Robert Crawford's new biography of the
"young Eliot" affirms also what I have thought for years: that at the time of
"Prufrock" Eliot was not the person whose politics later became "ugly." In fact,
in 1919 he called himself a "liberal" and also said that although at home he was
a conservative, in England he was a "Labourite." He seemed to change pretty
drastically between then and 1924 when he said he was "all for Empire" and very
reactionary.
While he read Maurras in the Paris year and, as Ascher claims, remained
influenced by it all his life, he also read Bergson that year, and at the time
of writing "Prufrock," he said, he was "completely Bergsonian." He was reading
widely and thinking through very contrasting ideas. The reactionary and no doubt
"ugly" politics (and even those were somewhat mixed) came later. Crawford's book
looks very intensively at the person he was up through TWL, and the person who
wrote "Prufrock" did not have the thorough and seemingly complete world view of
the later Eliot--in fact, was "completely Bergsonian" by his own account.
The "radically explosive force" did not then conflict with his politics as it
may have with the older person who wrote the late poems.
>>> "
[log in to unmask]"
<
[log in to unmask]> 08/06/15 3:19 PM
>>>
He probably meant Arnold.
Good to see in the underlying
piece that we are getting away from the usual image of Prufrock as pathetically
comic and interestingly bland. As I have said here in the past I credit Prufrock
(and therefore Eliot as his creator) with more of an inner life. Just his
(Prufrock's and Eliot's) capability to evoke so much in the poem belies the
usual famous analysis.
N.B. I also think Arnold is famously
misunderstood.
Sent from my iPhone
> On Aug 6, 2015, at 3:05
PM, Carrol Cox <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> James Loucks: Do
you mean as in the ancient test for pure gold? Or the Arnoldian literary
touchstone? -- Jim Loucks
>
> It's been 50+ years since I read
"The Forsaken Merman" -- which might have an interesting connection with "Till
human voices wake us. . . ." Some bright under-grad might work on it.
>
> Carrol
>
>
>
>
> From: P
<
[log in to unmask]>
> To:
[log in to unmask] > Sent:
Thursday, August 6, 2015 12:18 PM
> Subject: Re: Letter of
Recommendation: 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'
>
>
>
Prufrock is touchstone.
> P.
>
>
>
>
>> On 6 Aug 2015 5:10 am, "Rickard A. Parker"
<
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Another
recommendation:
>>
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock.html?_r=0
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock.html?_r=0>
>>
>> The New York Times Magazine
>> Letter of
Recommendation: 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'
>> August 6,
2015
>> By Mark Levine
>>
>> Mark Levine has
written for the magazine since 2002. His new book of poems, ‘‘Travels of
Marco,’’ will be published in 2016.
>>
>>
>> The
last paragraph:
>>
>> I lost myself in its winding
passageways and felt momentarily reunited with my teenage self, transported into
a world of frightening, delirious possibility. ‘‘Prufrock’’ could restore me to
the primal necessities of poetry like nothing else. It wasn’t the same poem I
discovered years earlier, nor the poem my students read, but with disarming
specificity, ‘‘Prufrock’’ remained capable of speaking to an enduring desire for
something larger than myself, made available through the shape-shifting powers
of the imagination. ‘‘Why is the poem called a love song?’’ a student asked. It
was a good question. I turned to the class. ‘‘Is Prufrock in love?’’ Long
silence. Then a student spoke: ‘‘Yes,’’ she said. ‘‘In love with poetry.’’
>>
>> A version of this article appears in print on August
9, 2015, on page MM20 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: ‘The Love Song
of J. Alfred Prufrock’.