The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Plato's Allegory of the Cave

When I started reading in detail this poem of T.S. Elliot I remembered my classes of philosophy in high school and I realized that the protagonist of “The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is pretty similar to the prisoners in the Plato´s allegory of the cave.

The fear, the insecurity and indecisions, the “do I dare?” are like the chains which keep the prisoners in the cave, trapped in the shadows that they believe is the real world. They, prisoners and Prufrock, are chained by their thoughts, by their procrastination, by their conformism, by their fear to change, by their fear to face the real world.

“Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”

Prufrock is thinking about breaking these chains, as the prisoner who releases himself in a moment of bravery, of courage, a moment of desire of the genuine world out of the cave, a moment of the need of being different from those prisoners who do not make any effort to get out of the cave. This person no longer want to be part of that crowd of prisoners, he wants to live no more in a world of shadows, where the reality is disturb, is limited and blurred, and once he is outside he realizes that all his life he was blind, that the “real world of the shadows” was not even close to be real at all, and he feels compassion for those who are still in the cave, for those who, like Prufrock, are afraid of the change, afraid of being different, for those who are part of the crowd which live in a world of shadows private of the knowledge and the real world.

When I realized of these similarities between Prufrock and the prisoners, I started thinking about my own chains, my fear to face uncomfortable situations or maybe to face realities which are totally unknown by me. Nowadays, people tend to be in their comfort zone because they are afraid to fail, to be different, to face the faces of the judgment. Why we are so afraid of the change, of the different? Why sometimes we are like Prufrock and we think a lot before making decisions?

I would like to share an image that caught my attention while I was looking for sources for my piece of writing. Do you think that social networks are the chains which keep us far from a real face to face communication? Don´t you believe that those conversation in social networks are just the shadows of a real conversation?

Poetry as mathematics

In "The Spirit of Romance" of Ezra Pound, there is an extract that called my attention, in which he specifies that:                                                                                                                   "Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, squares, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite".

As we have studied the Modernism and its main exponent authors, we can notice that these poems are totally related to personal aspects of each author, in which they try to express and transmit a specific feeling that is tied to a specific situation. Despite being similar emotions, they transmit them in a unique and original form. Therefore, all of these forms are different ways to see and understand their worlds, their minds, their way of think and feel. 

As mathematics, poetry give us the possibility to have different perspectives of life and its problems or "equations", which every person understands and solves in a different manner. Poetry, despite its complexity for analyzing and comprehending its contextual factors and relations, is a kind of guide, a facilitator, that people will only understand if they speak its same language. 

Modernism still remains

Nowadays, our society depends on technology; we no longer depend on ourselves, as humanity used to do before the Industrial Revolution. If we look at ourselves today, we are less capable of dealing with face to face communication. We want everything done as quickly as possible, and when things do not work well or are a bit harsh, we just throw them and buy  new ones. All these things mentioned above, are a clear example of what the modernists called the chaos in the modern society. I've always believed that, albeit we live in a different time, we still have the same ghosts of the modern world.

 Every day, humanity is overwhelmed with the new upcoming technologies, most of the people are expectant to get the new iphone, the more advanced tablet and the ultimate x-box game, and this seems for everyone that our world is running as normal as it is. But, if we go back in history, if we go back to the modern society, if we go back to the overall change carried out by the new inventions such as the automobile, the telephone, the dynamite, and the new effective ways to kill people, we can understand and feel the same feeling that probably William Butler Yeats experienced at the moment of writing “the second coming” and “Leda and the Swan”.  He was observing that the world was coming to an end age of reason, due to this new age of science, progress, democracy and modernization.

 Let’s think for a moment of the drastically change that the modernist lived, all the changes he observed were in some way destroying the valuable aspects of a society that was not rule out by technologies, but by its nature.

On the contrary, today our society relies on these “technologies” that were supposed to improve our lives and make it easier, but the question is: are we conscious as modernists were about the huge and profound impact that the modern society has left to our actual society?

I sincerely believe that our society has become sightless as its tempo has become faster and faster and has not let things take its course and also has not giving the chance to take in all the changes we have been going through.

 

Poems, Past, and Present

To begin with, I must confess that at the very beginning of this course, it was really hard for me to understand topics, more difficult was  creating connections between them,  but even harder was connecting those ideas with my current thoughts. Although, finally I saw the light, and I don’t know if my interpretation is correct, but make sense for me.  I found something similar between Ezra Pound’s poem “In a station of the metro” and William Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming”, analyzing them from the point of view of context.

“The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.”

From one side, Pound describes a situation from the real world in which he was immersed, and that context or environment is not positive at all, he is alluding to unhappiness. Since he refers to people, as faces that suddenly appear, like ghosts, being just part of a huge group of people with no personal identities apparently. The most terrible idea is that he considers people beautiful, as petals are, but with no more future than falling down, as human race destiny would supposed to be.

On the other side, Yeats’ poem is also referred to a hopeless, troubled, and bitter world.  Using phrases as;

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre”; “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”; “The darkness drops again”,

In which he is alluding to his real world, and what he thought that the future was going to be. He thinks of a world monotonous, empty, that is waiting for something spectacular to happen.

What disturbed me more, from all that mentioned before is the fact that these poems were written many years ago, even before Second World War. And I’m not telling that they were a sort of premonition, which is not that impossible to think, but they were a mirror of their reality in those times, in those big cities, and the scene is not that distant of our current social context.

 I mean, Ezra was describing a typical morning or evening in Santiago’ subway, or even closer, I use Valparaiso’ subway every day, and the outlook is pretty similar; a lot of people moving from one side to another as if they were in a standby status. And same thing happens to me with Yeats’ poem, which is a perfect description of what is going on in different countries around the world; for instance, Ukraine, Syria, or even Chile sometimes, makes me think that we are into this negative gyre.

Does anybody agree with me? or Am I being just too depressive?

Nature in Modernism

First of all, I would like to mention that I’ve always been into growing plants and being in contact with nature. Maybe that is the reason why I realized that although modernist artists lived in the big cities, full of streets, concrete, ashes and smoke emanating from industries, nature has been somehow present in many modernists’ writing. For example the petals and the black bough in Pound’s haiku “In a Station at the Metro”, the countryside in D.H. Lawrence’s novella “The Fox” and the image of a tree in Ezra Pound’s poem “A Girl”.

However, not only writers have included nature in their work. The American artist Thomas Hart Benton, who declared himself an enemy of Modernism, in 1944 created “Homeward Bound”, a painting that represents the struggle between rural life and industrial progress of those times.

Nevertheless, city and nature are not just two completely opposite sceneries or images, but they depict also different concepts. The city is home of Prufrocks, shallowness, labelling, tourists, and people following the crowd and on the contrary, nature is home of authenticity, freedom and connectedness with our inner self and with the cosmos. That is why sometimes I feel as D.H Lawrence felt and I agree with his thought: the closer I get to civilization, the more I like primitive life.

Now going back to modernists work, why to include nature in their work if modernists were immerse in a place that absolutely lacked of it? Because they were dissenters of their own times, as the essay The Cities mentions "they abhorred the city: the dream of scape from its vice, its immediacy, its sprawl, its pace..." So, in a way, bringing back nature to their work is a way of saying that there is something missing in the city: authenticity and connectedness with our inner self and with the cosmos. Like a metaphor.

To wrap up, I would like to show you an image that represent the contrast city/nature and hopefully it makes you reflect about it.

The Hippopotamus - T.S. Eliot

While I was a looking for a topic, I found a certain poem that immediately called my attention just by its title. That one is, as the title says, The Hyppopotamus by T.S. Eliot, which says:

The broad-backed hippopotamus

Rests on his belly in the mud;

Although he seems so firm to us

He is merely flesh and blood.

Flesh-and-blood is weak and frail,

Susceptible to nervous shock;

While the True Church can never fail

For it is based upon a rock.

The hippo's feeble steps may err

In compassing material ends,

While the True Church need never stir

To gather in its dividends.

The 'potamus can never reach

The mango on the mango-tree;

But fruits of pomegranate and peach

Refresh the Church from over sea.

At mating time the hippo's voice

Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd,

But every week we hear rejoice

The Church, at being one with God.

The hippopotamus's day

Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts;

God works in a mysterious way--

The Church can sleep and feed at once.

I saw the 'potamus take wing

Ascending from the damp savannas,

And quiring angels round him sing

The praise of God, in loud hosannas.

Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean

And him shall heavenly arms enfold,

Among the saints he shall be seen

Performing on a harp of gold.

He shall be washed as white as snow,

By all the martyr'd virgins kist,

While the True Church remains below

Wrapt in the old miasmal mist

As we see, we can`t help but notice some religious references in this poem, and I think it is important to know that Eliot was a devout member  of the Anglo-catholic church, an important fact if we want to understand this poem.

From my point of view, the hippopotamus represents mankind, and just like the poem says, the hippopotamus could be seen as a very strong and firm being to the eyes of the others, but in reality the hippopotamus is just flesh and blood, the hippopotamus is fragile, is susceptible to failure and it even has difficulties that will be impossible for him to overcome. On the other hand, we have the “True church” which the poem makes look like some sort of omnipotent being, an entity that is always right, that can overcome any obstacle and that it could represent “the word of God” or “true salvation” and that this hippopotamus must be leaded by this church. At this point we can imagine that Eliot is relating the True Church with the Anglo-Catholic church, and how this represents the true way of God, but actually by the end of the poem we can infer something different. The poem says that the hippopotamus takes wing and the true church remains below in the miasmal mist (or in another words, a toxic mist) that makes us think that this true church is not actually the Anglo-Catholic church, but a completely different one, and the hippopotamus taking wings may represent that this animal is “escaping” from this “true church” and is being washed from this one in order to be part of the real path of god, the Anglo-Catholic church.

So, what do you think of this poem? Do you agree or you believe it has a different meaning?

Charles Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal

Besides the authors we have studied and analysed in classes, there are many other writers that represent the spirit and vision of Modernism. One of these authors is Charles Baudelaire, a French poet who was the leading light among Symbolism and one of Les poètes maudits (accursed poets), poets characterised by their rejection to society and their bohemian lives. 

Baudelaire is considered one of the representatives of Modernism. Moreover, T.S. Eliot considered "Les Fleurs du Mal" (The Flowers of Evil), Baudelaire's most famous work, as "the greatest example of modern poetry in any language".

"The Flowers of Evil" was the author's first volume of poems, it was divided into six sections; "Spleen and Ideal", "Parisian Scenes", "Wine", "Flowers of Evil", "Revolt", and "Death". The poems treated mainly about sex corruption, sadomasochism, Satanism, metamorphosis, lost innocence and as many other Modernism writers, Baudelaire also had a fascination for his city, Paris. But above all, Charles Baudelaire wanted to highlight the beauty where most people wouldn’t see it, for example, in death.

I want to invite you to read this "beautiful" love poem called "Une Charogne" (A Carcass), taken from "Spleen et Idèal" (Spleen and Ideal).

A Carcass

My love, do you recall the object which we saw,
That fair, sweet, summer morn!
At a turn in the path a foul carcass
On a gravel strewn bed,

Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,
Burning and dripping with poisons,
Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant way
Its belly, swollen with gases.

The sun shone down upon that putrescence,
As if to roast it to a turn,
And to give back a hundredfold to great Nature
The elements she had combined;

And the sky was watching that superb cadaver
Blossom like a flower.
So frightful was the stench that you believed
You'd faint away upon the grass.

The blow-flies were buzzing round that putrid belly,
From which came forth black battalions
Of maggots, which oozed out like a heavy liquid
All along those living tatters.

All this was descending and rising like a wave,
Or poured out with a crackling sound;
One would have said the body, swollen with a vague breath,
Lived by multiplication.

And this world gave forth singular music,
Like running water or the wind,
Or the grain that winnowers with a rhythmic motion
Shake in their winnowing baskets.

The forms disappeared and were no more than a dream,
A sketch that slowly falls
Upon the forgotten canvas, that the artist
Completes from memory alone.

Crouched behind the boulders, an anxious dog
Watched us with angry eye,
Waiting for the moment to take back from the carcass
The morsel he had left.

— And yet you will be like this corruption,
Like this horrible infection,
Star of my eyes, sunlight of my being,
You, my angel and my passion!

Yes! thus will you be, queen of the Graces,
After the last sacraments,
When you go beneath grass and luxuriant flowers,
To molder among the bones of the dead.

Then, O my beauty! say to the worms who will
Devour you with kisses,
That I have kept the form and the divine essence
Of my decomposed love!

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)