The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (1888 – 1965) was a British essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic, and "one of the twentieth century's major poets". He moved from his native United States to England in 1914 at the age of 25, settling, working, and marrying there. He eventually became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39, renouncing his American citizenship.
Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), which was seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including The Waste Land (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925), "Ash Wednesday" (1930), and Four Quartets (1943). He was also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry".
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
In 1915, Ezra Pound, overseas editor of Poetry magazine, recommended to Harriet Monroe, the magazine's founder, that she publishes "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". Although the character Prufrock seems to be middle-aged, Eliotwrote most of the poem when he was only twenty-two. Its now-famous opening lines, comparing the evening sky to "a patient etherised upon a table", were considered shocking and offensive, especially at a time when Georgian Poetry was hailed for its derivations of the nineteenth century Romantic Poets.
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea…
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock read by Sir Alec Guiness
Comentario
Escuchá el poema, ponélo una vez y seguí con la vista las palabras recitadas, y después buscá algún significado que haya despertado en tu interior. Si tan solo sirve para mejorar tu pronunciación… Bien, algo es algo. Todo es un proceso largo, y difícil. Hay que estudiar y leer y profundizar. Nada es regalado, nada es fácil.
¿Qué me despertó? Mientras lo escuchaba, y leía, trataba de buscar algún significado. Que había querido decir el autor. Algunas cosas: el envejecer, que se menciona en algunos párrafos, y el buscar algo, como a Dios.
Otros
I like Eliot´s reading best…
I love this poem! I liked your interpretation…
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