T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” represents a conglomeration of many of the ridiculous traits of humankind—and the literati in particular; therefore, readers cannot take Prufrock seriously and are thus at liberty to laugh and enjoy the nutty things he thinks and says.

Introduction with Text of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

T. S. Eliot composed a little volume titled Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, which under the influence of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, became Cats, one of the ten longest running musicals [1] on Broadway.

How does one reconcile the lavish and hilarious persona responsible for the likes of old possum and the cats with the gloomy, spiritually dry personality of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land mentality?   That conflation is somewhat like confusing a man with little education and travel experience for the writer of the Shakespearean canon [2].

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 percioche 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. 

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

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. 

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. 

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

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. 

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?

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 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? 

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. 

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. 

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 towards 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.” 

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.” 

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. 

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. 

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.

Reading by Anthony Hopkins

Commentary on “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

T. S. Eliot is really a very funny poet. His works are taken way too seriously.  A reader needs to think irony, satire, and sarcasm and then enjoy a few belly laughs when reading Eliot.  And his character J. Alfred Prufrock offers one of the finest examples of Eliot’s humor, as he, at the same time, skewers the direction of art in the 20th century.

Prufrock Killed Poetry

The American humorist Garrison Keillor [3] has offered his experience with and opinion of “old Pru,” claiming that the poem is

a small, dark mopefest of a poem in which old Pru worries about whether to eat a peach or roll up his trousers.  This poem pretty much killed off the pleasure of poetry for millions of people who got dragged through it in high school.

Keillor and his ilk who learned to hate poetry because of being “dragged through it in high school” might benefit from revisiting the poem and considering it through a lens of irony brushed with satire and sarcasm.

For a more precise understanding of the poem, it is also important to realize that it is focusing on and providing a critique of the flaws of modernism, the movement that was having demoralizing effects on the art of poetry.

The ironic humor of the poem clearly rails against the angst-infused positions that were rendering poetry not only unintelligible but ultimately without literary value.

Who is J. Alfred Prufrock and what does he want?

Critics regularly note the ironic disjointedness in the title as a love song apparently sung by a man with a business-suit name. But they then descend into the maudlin angst of this poor pathetic creature, and ultimately they take the work as a criticism of modern society in general, instead of a criticism of the skewed direction of art.

Eliot was poking fun at such criticism and such stances. The poem itself is a mishmash of form, consisting of 131 lines separated into free-verse paragraphs (versagraphs), yet it has rime throughout, delivered in uneven rhythms. 

The form itself makes fun of free-verse and phony erudition (the many allusions to classic works that seem so out of place) as it floats them down a stream-of-consciousness. 

Opening Movement:  The Anesthetized Patient

The first three lines set up the hilarious mood of the poem: 

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table.

The first line sounds as if the speaker of the poem is inviting someone to go somewhere in the evening, perhaps a social gathering or just an outing with a lady friend; after all it is a “love song.” 

But the reader is slammed in the face as the evening is described as a patient on an operating table being prepared for surgery. The romance of supposed “love song” has died by line three.

The speaker continues to mumble, describing the evening quite negatively, briefly mentioning one night stands in nasty hotels, disgusting eateries, and the boring streets that lead to boring places of ill-repute—yet all this leads on to “an overwhelming question.” 

But then the speaker cuts off the thought by telling his listener not to bother asking what the “overwhelming question” is but instead says let’s just get going “and make our visit.” Now, it sounds as if the speaker and his companion are definitely going to a social gathering, maybe a dinner party. 

But the dinner party never materializes, and it becomes quite apparent that the speaker is simply addressing himself, likely while looking at his face in a mirror.   There is no companion; there is no evening engagement, just a musing voice that is making fun of all the modernist techniques that the poet is employing in the poem through this pathetic speaker. 

The Italian Epigram:  Professing an “Insidious Intent”

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

The epigram that opens the poem alerts the reader to the “insidious intent” of the speaker in the poem.  The six lines feature a quotation from Dante’s Inferno (XXVII, 61–66).  The following is a rough translation from the Italian of the epigram:

If I believed I was trying to bullshit
someone who could return to the world,
I would hold my tongue.
But since no one ever lives to return
to life again, at least so they say,
I will spew forth whatever I please.

The following is an interpretive paraphrase of the Italian epigram:

if I thought such nonsense would really be foisted on the world, I would not concoct it, but since those who delve into the avant-garde poetry world have nothing to take back, I have deigned to let it fly

Modern Boredom:  Vacuous Social Gatherings

The speaker describes the fog in the metaphorical likeness of a dog: it rubs its back and muzzle on the window-panes, and it “[l]icked its tongue into the corners of the evening.” 

The speaker is concerned about social gatherings; he has often encountered them, and the lines “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo” become a mantra.   

And the line “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” which follows his claim to have known all those bored people in offices, lounges, and evening affairs demonstrates the speaker’s awareness of his own boredom. 

Floating Down the Stream:  Tricky Man, Very Tricky Man

The speaker inserts telling images into his stream-of-consciousness descriptions of angst-filled scenes with outrageous images such as “I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”  Another outlandish sight is “I grow old … I grow old … / I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

And while these are famous lines often cited as showing the modern angst of Prufrock, they are quite humorous when one realizes that the speaker is making fun of the serious tone that critics will take regarding the style and highly allusive nature of the poem.  Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock has tricked many readers with his dry, spiritually destitute personality.

Tricked by Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock

The radio star Garrison Keillor blames “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” for “kill[ing] off the pleasure of poetry.” Keillor complains that the poem is “a small, dark mopefest of a poem in which old Pru worries about whether to eat a peach or roll up his trousers.” 

It is somewhat puzzling that Keillor, whose own banter attempts to lace humor with reportage, does not see the humor in “Old Pru.” Robert Frost asserted that his poem “The Road Not Taken” was “a tricky poem—a very tricky poem.” 

However, many other Frostian poems have turned out to be quite tricky as well. And T. S. Eliot became a master at composing some of the trickiest poems to grace the poetry world.

The Character of J. Alfred Prufrock 

The speaker of T. S. Eliot’s most widely anthologized classic is J. Alfred Prufrock himself, and his personality is the theme of the poem; he is a ridiculous character, utterly laughable.   As Roger Mitchell [4] has explained, 

[Prufock] is the Representative Man of early Modernism. Shy, cultivated, oversensitive, sexually retarded (many have said impotent), ruminative, isolated, self-aware to the point of solipsism.

In other words, “old Pru” is merely a conglomeration of many of the ridiculous traits of humankind—and the literati in particular; therefore, readers cannot take Prufrock seriously and are thus at liberty to laugh and enjoy the nutty things he thinks and says.

Failure to Read Closely 

Keillor refers to the following lines: “I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled,” and “Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?”  The former radio personality has been tricked by Eliot’s poem, and in Keillor’s comment about the poem, two assertions demonstrate his misunderstanding.

The first false assertion about the poem is that it is a “small, dark mopefest of a poem”: this is a false assertion because the poem is too funny to be a “dark mopefest,” plus it is really a longer poem than most lyrics; thus the descriptor “small” remains inaccurate.

The second false assertion is that, “old Pru worries about whether to eat a peach or roll up his trousers”:  while “old Pru” does ask if he dares “eat a peach,” he does not question whether he will roll up his trousers.  

These two false assertions suggest the reason that Keillor has been tricked by the poem; he simply has not read it carefully and closely enough, and likely his high school teacher was not adept at comprehending and teaching poetry. 

Other Funny Lines 

The opening of the poem, at first, may simply seem startling, but upon further study, the reader can see the hilarity in the absurdity of “the evening [ ] spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table.”   The juxtaposition of “evening/sky” and “etherized patient/table” is just so ludicrous that it is laughable.

“The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes”: fog becomes a cat or a dog, and the speaker likes that metaphor so well that he repeats it in the next stanza.   Fog as a dog jumps like a frog into the mind as one encounters those lines.

A close consideration of the lines, “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,”  reveals again the absurdity of taking Keillor’s criticism seriously.

The jarring juxtaposition of a pathetic creature double questioning his traipsing down a stairway and then hastening to the bald spot in his pate cannot help but elicit a laugh, provided the reader/listener is paying close attention. 

While Prufrock would be a sympathetic character were he less pitiful, he becomes a caricature, who instead of drawing sympathy draws derision from the reader.  Perhaps by tweaking their reading a bit and by reading closer, Keillor and other casual readers could learn to enjoy the misadventures of J. Alfred Prufrock.

Sources

[1] Mark A.Robinson. “Broadway’s 10 Longest-Running Musicals.”  Broadway Direct.  March 24, 2019.
[2] Linda Sue Grimes. “The “Shakespeare” Writer.”  Linda’s Literary Home.  February 11, 2026.
[3] Garrison Keillor.   “Choosing the Right Lunch Partners.” The Writer’s Almanac. February 20, 2007.
[4] Roger Mitchell.  “On ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’.”  Modern American Poetry.  November 2, 2015.