Melancholetta

Rejoinder: Observations on Prufrock

Hi,

I can think of Camus' Mersault, Holden Caulfield and all...but with the latter two, there was always an element of nonchalancy involved..

This leads me to another train of thought altogether. We talked about Salinger's Holden, Robert Pirsig's Phaedrus, Camus' Mersault and TSE's Prufrock. Obviously, each one the alter-ego of the author/poet. If you search for objectivity in this realm of literature, forget it. Holden IS Salinger, Prufrock IS TSE...Now just see, who made it and who did not. Salinger and Syd Barrett, never seemd to understand the world around them. They got caught in the anomalies and paradoxes, and where are they now? Nobody knows. Both of them recluses, repoertedly insane, and remarkably, there were rumours that both had committed suicide. It is as though "Catcher in The rye" and Syd's lyrics were their last cries of agony in this hopeless world. They could not lead the fight, nor give it up,ultimately falling into "insanity"...But, TSE and Camus, both seemed to understand...in the sense that they knew the world cannot be understood. They stopped right at the end of the cliff...knew what was in store if they strode further and chose to walk back into the "sane world". Both got the Nobel Prize, led a seemingly comfortable, though compromised, existence, and lived famously. They knew the world was phony..They knew it wanted no association with whatever they understood as the plague of life. But, yet they did not want to give it all up, inspite of their greatness (or is it, because of their greatness ???). I think we have three kinds of people: 1)Those who havent realised something is wrong with the world. 2) Those who realise, and perished in the hope of unravelling it and 3) Those who realise, know that it is a hopeless situation and pretended to ignore everything about it.So, what is sanity? This seems to be a powerful question...

I mean, in Prufrock, the poem opens with a excerpt from Dante's Inferno...in hell and all...may be an objective co-relative of TSE on the burningsoul of prufrock

By the way, there is a different interpretation to the inclusion of the epigraph in the poem. The epigraph is as told to Dante when he visits Hades (Hell). it translates to

"If I thought my answer were for one who ever could return to the world, this flame should shake no more, but since none ever did return alive from this depth, if what I hear be true, without fear of infamy I answer thee.".

After this, Dante is made known of certain divine secrets that are not for the ears of mortals. If Dante, had a chance of going back to the world, he would not be told what is to be told after the passage.

This might point to the fact that Prufrock might not talk about all these things, if he came to know that the reader is going back to the same hellish existence. He needs a symapthetic ear from a person who is suffering just as he is. This might be another clue to the insecurity that Prufock/TSE might be having on account of living two lives. They realise, yet cannot admit, for fear of being lost in the struggle to convince the world. In the best words I can conjure, they were caught between the forgetful insanity of sanity and the realising sanity of insanity.

I believe there is more to it...

Stangenlord

posted by Dileepan @ 8:38 PM