Issue:

№ 13 2022

УДК / UDK: 821.111.0
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2022-13-61-108

EDN:

https://elibrary.ru/VQLYER

Author: Vassily M. Tolmatchoff
About the author:

Vassily M. Tolmatchoff, Doctor Hab. in Philology, Full and Chair Professor, Department of History of Foreign Literature, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 1st Humanities building, Leninskiie Gory, 119991 Moscow, Russia.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1412-1084

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Abstract:

The paper examines in detail the history of the creation of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, as well as the methods of its research in Western and Russian literary studies. The author proposes to combine a careful reading of this text with the notion of this poem as a spiritual autobiography of Eliot, which has various dimensions: from personal, proper poetic to esoteric. Based on the analysis of the biography of the young Eliot, the poet's relationship with J. Verdenal, the history of the poem, the drafts, the final text, the title of the poem, the epigraph, the poem's place in the poet's work, Eliot's statements about “Prufrock” the paper identifies the parameters of the symbolism of this work, which, playing on Eliot's complex relationship with the inexpressible (having an ambivalent nature), extends to its composition (the relationship of “I” and “you”; the paradoxical nature of the ending), the system of images and motifs (Prufrock as a theatrical person, the opposition of the male and female world), the special sense of reminiscences from Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, the philosophy of creativity as a mystery (Prufrock as a poet, combination of eroticism and mysticism, the theme of sacred crime) and love (homoerotic theme), genre (elusiveness of genre, Faustian beginning in it), symbolism and esoterics (“Prufrock” as a Masonic text on initiation, on life as theatre). The author gave a special place to the concretization of ekphrases (Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Burne-Jones), the content of which confirms the thesis that the poem has a text in the text.

Keywords: T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, title, epigraph, philosophy of love, text in text, ekphrasis.
For citation:

Tolmatchoff, V.M. “To the Symbolism of T.S. Eliot's Anthological Poem.” Literature of the Americas, no. 13 (2022): 61–108. https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2022-13-61-108  

References:

Ackroyd 1985 — Ackroyd, Peter. T.S. Eliot. London: Abacus, 1985.

Aiken 1916 — Aiken, Conrad. The Jig of Forslin: A Symphony. Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1916.

Aiken 1978 — Aiken, Conrad. Selected Letters of Conrad Aiken. Edited by Joseph Killorin. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978.

Aiken 1963 — Aiken, Conrad. Ushant: An Essay [1952]. London: W.Н. Allen, 1963.

Baedeker 1908 — Baedeker, Karl. London and its Environs. A Handbook for Travellers. London: Dulau, 1908.

Eliot 1974 — Eliot, T.S. Collected Poems 1909 –1962. London: Faber and Faber, 1974.

Eliot 1934 — Eliot, T.S. “A Commentary.” Criterion, vol. 13, no. 52 (April 1934): 452.

Eliot 1996 — Eliot, T.S. Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917 by T.S. Eliot. Edited by Christopher Ricks. London: Faber and Faber, 1996.

Eliot 2009 — Eliot, T.S. The Letters of T.S. Eliot. Vol. 1, 1898–1922, rev. ed., edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.

Eliot 1932 — Eliot, T.S. “Preface.” In Philippe, Charles-Louis. Bubu of Montparnasse. Translated by Laurence Vail. Paris: Crosby Continental Editions, 1932: VII–XIV.

Eliot 2015 — Eliot, T.S. The Poems of T.S. Eliot. Vol. I, Collected Poems 1909–1962, Uncollected Poems, The Waste Land: An Editorial Composite. Edited by

Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015.

Gordon 1977 — Gordon, Lyndall. Eliot’s Early Years. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Greene 1951 — Greene, Edward J.H. T.S. Eliot et la France. Paris: Boivin, Éditions contemporaines, 1951.

Miller 2005 — Miller, James E., Jr. T.S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet, 1888 –1922. University Park, PА: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005: 117–135.

Perinot 1996 — Perinot, Claudio. Jean Verdenal: T.S. Eliot's French FriendAnnali di Cà Foscarì. Università di Venezia, XXXV (1–2), 1996: 265–275.

Polovinkina 2013 — Polovinkina, Olga I. “ʽMuká i Mýka’: Dzh. Al'fred Prufrok, ʽblednyi P'ero’ i osnovy sovremennogo bytiia” [“ʽFlour and Torment’: J. Alfred Prufrock, ʽPale Pierrot’ and the Foundations of Modern Being”]. Voprosy Literatury, no. 5 (2013): 9–46. (In Russ.)

Poluyakhtov 2012 — Poluyakhtov, Igor. “Kommentarii” [“Commentary”]. In Eliot T.S. Poeziia i drama v perevodakh I. Poluiakhtova [Eliot T.S. Poetry and drama in the translations of I. Poluyakhtov]. Compiled by A. Galin. Moscow: IP Galin A.V. Publ., 2012: 338–346. (In Russ.)

Pound 1950 — Pound, Ezra. The Letters of Ezra Pound: 1907–1941. Edited by D.D. Paige. N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1950: 50.

Probstein 2018 — Probshtein, Yan E. “Primechaniia” [“Notes”]. In Eliot T.S. Besplodnaia zemlia; Polye liudi: Poemy, stikhotvoreniia, p'esy [Eliot T.S. The Waste Land. Hollow People: Poems, poems, plays]. Moscow: Inostranka Publ.; Azbuka-Atticus Publ., 2018: 968–973. (In Russ.)

Shelkovich 2014 — Shelkovich, Mikhail V. “Funktsiia gomerovskikh i dantovskikh alliuzii v ʽLiubovnoi pesne Dzh. Al'freda Prufroka’ T.S. Eliota” [“The function of Homeric and Dante allusions in ʽThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by T.S. Eliot”]. Vestnik PSTGU. Series III: Philology, no. 4 (39) (2014): 82–95. (In Russ.)

Smidt 1961 — Smidt, Kristian. Poetry and Belief in the Work of T.S. Eliot. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961.

Stayer 2021 — Stayer, Jayme. Becoming T.S. Eliot: The Rhetoric of Voice and Audience in ‘Inventions of the March Hare’. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021.

Tolmachev 2015 — Tolmachev, V.M. “T.S. Eliot, poet ʽBesplodnoi zemli’.” [“T.S. Eliot, poet of ʽThe Waste Land’.”]. In T.S. Eliot, poet «Besplodnoi zemli» [Eliot, T.S. The Waste Land]. Edited by V.M. Tolmachev, A.Yu. Zinovieva. Moscow: Ladomir Publ.; Nauka Publ., 2015: 273–378. (In Russ.)