Smoke, Prufrock and la Femme Fatale (I.S. Turgenev and T.S. Eliot on a Rendez-Vous)
- Issue:
- УДК / UDK: 82-95
- DOI:
10.22455/2541-7894-2018-5-310-353
- Abstract:
The paper offers a comparative study of Turgenev’s novel Smoke (1867) and Eliot’s Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915). Eliot's poem has been thoroughly studied in this context for the first time; the research aims to state some important analogies between two texts and reveal new semantic contents and conceptual substances. The parallel analysis of the novel and the poem also helps to clarify their historical-literary significance and to understand why these works continue to attract attention of readers and critics. The choice of the two works for the research has been determined by the literary texts themselves and a number of typological parallels. Eliot highly appreciated Turgenev's literary genius, and expressed his admiration for Turgenev’s works in his letters and literary criticism (“Turgenev”, “In Memory of Henry James”). Particular attention is paid to the Europeanism of Turgenev and Eliot, whose aesthetic positions can be defined as “an incarnation of European culture” (T.S. Eliot). One of the central characters of both texts is a femme fatale considered in mythological (Gorgon Medusa, Helen of Troy) and culturalhistorical (“the epoch of Salome”) aspects. Such figurative concepts as “crab”, “dead head”, “smoke”, etc. were examined through comparative perspective. The study suggests that Smoke and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock largely correspond to the aesthetics and style of the modernity being marginal works in Turgenev’s and Eliot’s heritage thus reflecting the borderline character of the turn of the centuries – and of the cultural eras.
- Keywords: I.S. Turgenev, T.S Eliot, “Great Europeans”, I.S. Turgenev’s Smoke, T.S. Eliot’s Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Europeanism, modernity, the epoch of Salome, la femme fatale in literature, dead head motif, high modernism.
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