_J_阿尔弗雷德_普鲁弗洛克的情歌_赏析_英文_

艺 术 殿 堂
《J. 阿尔弗雷德・普鲁弗洛克的情歌》 赏析 The analysis of the theme in“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
◎马
（华中师范大学
琳
430079）
湖北・武汉
Abstract This paper aims at providing some information on the comprehension and appreciation of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S.Eliot. In a form of dramatic monologue, the poet draws us a picture of an evasive hellish world through Prufrock’ s meditation over the business of the suggested marriage proposal. The theme of the poem can be explored by the analysis of Prufrock’ complicated psychological activities. The paralysis of Prufrock can be obviously shown through this 140-line poem. s Key words morbid world paralysis disillusionment
130
2008 年第
4期
安徽文学
艺 术 殿 堂
him from mental torture, after all he still has to come back to face the reality. He is mentally dead. The theme of the poem can be explored by analyzing Prufrock’ psychological journey. From the beginning to the end of s the poem, Prufrock experiences a complicated psychological journey. He experiences seven mental changes. From stanza 1 to 3, Prufrock doesn’have courage to express his love to the womt an that he loves. Expressing any kind of affection to her is awkward and difficult. He has mentality of diffidence. From stanza 4 to 5, Prufrock pretends that he has time to express his love. He has mentality of pretence. From stanza 6 to 9, Prufrock always ask questions. These questions indicate his uncertainty about whether he should express his love and how to express his love. He is unsure of what to do and afraid to commit to any particular choice of action. He has mentality of uncertainty. From stanza 10 to 11, Prufrock has strong eagerness to take action. It seems that he has gathered full courage to express his love to his lover. He has mentality of eagerness. From stanza 12 to 15, he has mentality of self-debasement. From stanza 16 to 19, Prufrock imagines that he lives in his fantasy. Living in the fantastic world freed from worries is a pleasant daydream for Prufrock. He imagines the peaceful world under the sea playing with mermaids merrily. He has mentality of fantasy. Stanza 20 describes the images of mermaids. The mermaids are symbols of vitality, youth and life, which is absent in both modern world and Prufrock. The mermaids evoke a more mysterious and imaginative world. And although he can imagine the mermaids are singing, he presumes that they can never sing to him. And the images convey Prufrock’ longing for beauty and love, but the poem returns to the s human voices and wakes him from fantasy. The sea represents reality, for the mermaids it is a life giving sea, but to Prufrock , he drowned into the modern world which is death in life. His only happiness can be found in daydreams and can be destroyed easily . He has mentality of disillusionment. After so many times of thinking and hesitation, finally his dream of expressing his love to his lover was broken because of his mental paralysis. The theme of the poem can be analyzed from the aspect of the linguistic form. The whole poem includes a lot of repetition of stanzas, questions, sentences and sentence structures. It obviously represents Prufrock’ hesitation and spiritual paralysis. s Eg. 1. So how should I presume? 2. How should I begin? 3. And indeed there will be time. 4. I grow old…I grow old. ming question also leads the readers to the internal world of Prufrock. i.e., his romantic dreams about ladies, his boredom of the trivial life, his wishes to change, his visions and revisions of plans, his hesitation, his fears of formulations of various types, etc. Prufrock is paralysed. Paralysis means the incapacity to act. Prufrock's paralysis is whether he should "dare to eat a peach" in front of high-society women. Prufrock's paralysis roots itself in the poem's structure. Sentence 3 shows he keeps insisting that there will be time to do many things in the social world. His eternal dilemma is characterized by his belief that there will be time to consider everything. Sentence 4 shows Prufrock's greater anxiety about the future and aging. Already characterized as having lost the luster of youth (and pathetically trying to approximate the bohemian style of rolling his trousers in order to make himself look younger), the only thing Prufrock marches toward decisively is death. Prufrock seems already in his own nightmarish afterlife. When Prufrock says that he has seen the eternal Footman holding his coat and laughing means he knows that he is reaching near the end of his life. In the poem, Prufrock urges his lady to accept him and to be together with him while they are still young and alive. However, it is only his illusions. "And indeed there will be time" reinforce his fixation on paralysis. He always attends the social gatherings with the hope of finding his lover. He wants to ask a woman to dance, or catch someone's eye. But he fails. He knows he is eligible enough to interest a woman, but his inner world won't allow him to risk a moment of expressing his love despite his raging desires. The ladies are young, as the references to "White" and "bare" indicate he is no longer young. Prufrock simultaneously plans his approach and tells himself that he can put off the action. Deciding not to try, Prufrock questions whether his effort is meaningful. He excuses his fear by rationalizing that his speaking to the lady will not achieve any real response. Generally speaking, Eliot presents a vivid picture of Prufrock’ life in front of the readers through Prufrock’ eyesight s s and internal world. Readers are deeply impressed by his mentality: his conflict with mental torture, his looking forward to the climax of love, his fear of love, his trouble of indecision, selfcomforting, self-escaping and self-excusing. From the aspect of his paralyzed desire and sticktiveness in his life, we can infer that the society he lives in seems to be normal superficially, but actually people who live in it are suffering from a kind of spiritual death. Profrock seems to be a doomed tragic figure, but it is not an individual’ tragedy, it is the tragedy of a generation, a tras gedy of human civilization. To some extent, the psycho-analysis
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is Thomas Stearns Eliot’ most striking achievement. It presents the meditation of s an aging man over the business of proposing marriage. The poem is in a form of dramatic monologue, suggesting an ironic contrast between a pretended“ love song”and a confession of the speaker’ incapability of facing up to love and to life in a s sterile and morbid upper-class world. Throughout his monologue he speaks of himself and the way the world is through his eyes. Prufrock, the protagonist of the poem, is aging, indecisive, neurotic, isolated, self-important, illogical and incapable of action. He is a kind of tragic figure who led a very passionless life and caught in a sense of defeated idealism and tortured by unsat“ isfied desires. The setting of the poem resembles the polite so“ ciety” Pope’ The Rape of the Lock” After repeated mental of s . struggle about whether to show his love to his lover, Prufrock ends his love story by suffering from severe spiritual paralysis. The poem is intensely anti-romantic with visual images of hard, gritty objects and evasive hellish atmosphere. The poem begins with a scene that does not seem very inviting. Prufrock’ surrounding on an evening out is described with s phrases that insinuate melancholy and depression. The first 12 lines imply the time and the place of the event. Eliot compares “patient etherized upon a table” And then he compares dusk to a . “ the streets to tedious argument of insidious intent” This is a . fresh and unique method of comparison. From line 15 to line 22, Eliot describes the yellow fog with the method of personification which deeply impresses the readers. These descriptions leave the reader a feeling of restlessness and dissatisfaction from Prufrock “ about his life. The sudden appearance of soft October night ” is a poetic way of description. The combination of vulgarity and