Formulated Phrases in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot: Part 2

Wes & Erin continue their analysis of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” In Part 1, they covered roughly the first third of the poem. In Part 2, they begin with a discussion of Prufrock’s coffee spoons, and then continue on to: his allusions to John the Baptist, Lazarus, and Hamlet; the disjointed portrait of his probable love interest; and the twinning of aging and fantasy in the final stanzas. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Thanks to Nick Ketter for the audio editing on this episode. Transcript 0:09 Erin: Today we'll be continuing our discussion of T.S. eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. In part one, we covered roughly the first third of the poem, and in Part two we'll resume our conversation with Prufrock's coffee spoons. We'll discuss, among other things, Prufrock's allusions to John the Baptist, Lazarus and Hamlet, the disjointed portrait of Prufrock's probable love interest, and the twinning of aging and fantasy in the final stanzas. This is Erin O'Luanaigh, and this is Wes Alwan, and you're listening to Subtext. 0:50 Wes: And not all episodes of Subtext will appear here. subtextpodcast.com subscribe or by searching for us within the app itself. Okay, part two of our two part series on the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock. At the end of our last episode, we decided that we needed a minute for decisions and revisions before we could come back to more of this poem. The stanza we left on was the do I dare disturb the universe stanza. And now we are ready to measure out life in coffee spoons. 1:32 Erin: Nice. Good segue. So should we read this stanza? 1:38 Wes: Yeah, go for it. 1:39 Erin: Okay. For I have known them all already, Known them all have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons. I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. I know the voices dying with a dying fall beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? I'm trying to get into the mind of Prufrock in these readings. 1:57 Wes: So what is he worried about? 1:59 Erin: When I read this the first time, when he says, I've known them all already known them all. And then of course, the colon would indicate that the all refers to the evenings, mornings, afternoons. But isn't he also, at the same time referring to the people that he's going to be meeting at these parties? 2:14 Wes: Yeah, I think he's talking about these social occasions which the idea of measuring out life with coffee spoons is, you know, he's having tea with people, tea and coffee, to go up a few stanzas. Time for 100 visions and revisions before the taking of a toast and tea. Visions and revisions are nominally about his indecision, but of course they're also evocative of what he would do as an artist. So it would. So we'll have to revisit that question of the relationship between this social dissatisfaction and social indecision and what it means to be an artist. It's interesting because you get on the one hand, right, the evocation of evenings and mornings and coffee spoons. What he's been doing is social. He's been hanging out with these women. I don't know if there are other men there, if it's just him surrounded by women. I think the original title of this poem was Prufrock with the women or something like that. 3:12 Erin: I think it's among the women. 3:13 Wes: I want to say among the women. Right. So lucky Prufrock. I don't know about that, or maybe not so lucky. But yeah, apparently he'd been hanging out. He's been doing these tea times or whatever it is with these women. It's Been going on long enough to connect that social existence with a sense of futility, measuring out life and coffee spoons. So I suppose it's some sense that this is meaningless, dissatisfying. Once again, I think we're supposed to think about the possibility of an essential fraudulence to social relations and then by way of that, a possible fraudulence to love itself. So that when we get down to so how should I presume, maybe I should just ask the question, what is so presumptuous in this context? Assuming that he's going to ask this question, which for the sake of argument we're taking to be a proposal of some kind. 4:10 Erin: And what you just said, you're really opening this up for me. Because the October night, the sense of the evening at the beginning of the poem and also the red light district that we talked about last time, I was thinking that this was, you know, he was going to a party. I think that's even explicitly what I said in the first episode, maybe. And now I'm seeing what you're talking about. So I was thinking that he was going into an environment in which there were, you know, men and women and that it was a party or that it was, you know, the sun is going down and he's going to some event and there would be, you know, an equal distribution, though he's preoccupied with the women at the party. And the thing that kind of stopped me about that is in the previous stanza, it describes his morning coat, which I know is only worn until 5 or 6 in the evening. So he would have to go home and change if he was going out to a dinner party, actually. 5:02 Wes: But it is the evening supposedly, right? Right. The evening is laid out against the sky. 5:07 Erin: So now I'm wondering is he leaving the afternoon tea and going home at the beginning of the stanza or something like that? But the reason why all this occurs to me is because what you're describ. I'm realizing he must be in an all female environment. And if it's a tea, if it's in the afternoon, I can now sort of picture him as a kind of a eunuch in the middle of this ladies auxiliary tea or something like that. And so I'm presuming that his presumption is in such an environment. How could I turn this into an opportunity for a potential romance? Or how should I sort of break the mold of this particular kind of afternoon where he must be accepted as some sort of benign, inoffensive figure among these women and put myself out there in A sexual way and sort of change the tone of this. Not explicitly sexual, but you know what I mean, in a romantic way. And change the tone of their interaction with me. 6:02 Wes: Yeah, that's very good. You could read it both ways. So even if it's a. Whether it's a social engagement with. Well, I'm not sure if there are men there, then you could see him as simply preoccupied with women. And so among the women might just mean psychologically among. But yeah, I think it heightens it to just to take it more literally and say, this is why I wanted to call it J. Alfred Friendzone. Because the question of presumptuousness arises because he's in a situation where obviously the person that he's courting may not know that she's being courted. I think, you know, I think that's probably a strong possibility. So he has failed, as you point out, to establish that tone. And there's a very distinct shift in tone from the friendly to the romantic. And there are people who, you know, who have trouble shifting gears in that way. They have trouble moving out of what Freud called aim inhibited libido. So Freud saw this as, you know, our friendly relations with each other, our platonic relations with each other as sublimating sexual libido. And to try to move back to the sexual also inevitably involves something a bit aggressive or at the very least, it involves something potentially offensive and potentially objectifying. And for someone who's too much of a good guy, as we discussed last time, or too much with the preemptive absolution of being the good guy, just like Guido or an analogy to Guido. I think being so invested in that means that he's going to have trouble inhabiting this other role. It will feel presumptuous in the sense that he has to presume that she's interested in that way. And I think later on in the poem he's going to ask whether it's worth it. Right. Would it be worth it if I were rejected? And a friend might say, come on, it's not a big deal. She rejects you, she rejects you. What's the big deal? It's a numbers game. Move on to the next or whatever. 8:03 Erin: So you're saying that he needs a Will Smith to coach him? 8:06 Wes: That's right, yeah. For him, this is a cosmic, cosmic importance. It's a disturbance of the universe. What I'm trying to get at here by discussing Freud is how something like this shift from a more benign social situation to something more sexual could feel so terrifying, almost like actual danger, maybe even existential danger, but beyond that, dangerous to others, dangerous to the women, dangerous to the entire order of things if we want to take universe that way. So it's as if he feels the responsibility of an eruption of sexual reality into the world of social forms which keeps that under wraps. 8:50 Erin: If he is in some sort of afternoon or late afternoon or tea time environment, say you know, four or five o', clock, he would have to go home and change, I think, to then go out for the evening. And that would be a different set of clothes. Right. That would be a different environment, one more conducive to the kinds of things that he seems to be after. So I think that it would also be disturbing the universe, as you say, in the sense of disturbing the time. Because there would be some oddity, I think, about trying to make overtures to a woman in the afternoon or something. And so he would have to. Yeah, I don't know about that whole timeline theory, but that seems to be part of it. Like what you're saying that he's out of place in terms of the season and the hour and everything is not right here. And it would actually be some kind of a violation if he were to do what it is that he's planning on doing by inserting himself into this gang of ladies and then hitting on one of them. It's an evening activity. 9:47 Wes: Yeah. I'm thinking about this idea of measuring out my life with coffee spoons. And it occurred to me that this is a. It speaks to his caution, but which later on he will identify himself as a kind of Polonius and an over cautious person. Not Hamlet, but prudent to the point of possibly being a fool. So he's been taking baby steps, so to speak. And because he's middle aged, you could imagine this on a more surreal level if David lynch were directing this, you could imagine that he has actually been. Or maybe it's a Twilight Zone episode. You know, he's been doing this for his entire life, life with the same woman showing up the same place, having coffee, thinking about proposing and never doing it. And this just goes on and on. And perhaps that just is what the universe is at some level, if you're, if you're thinking pessimistically about it, not growth and generation and a work leading somewhere in the way that kind of got an evocation of that with Hesiod and works and days, but just this repetition, just this mere repetition of something that's very, very, very incremental, let's say. And the whole idea of measuring out life with coffee spoons. It occurred to me that that's a kind of work in miniature. So again, it made me think of the works and day stanza and the idea of there'll be a time to murder and create. That murder and create line is sort of thrown in. It's like a little bit of the unconscious dynamic of this suddenly emerging because he's talking about a face to meet the faces that you meet and time for 100 indecisions and this and that. The idea of murdering and creating is really quite jarring in that context. So coming back to this now we get the more mundane version of that, which is not doing anything so dramatic as that work wise, but just measuring out life with coffee spoons. 11:52 Erin: That Twilight Zone episode that you just outlined before was. I'm still reeling from that one. 12:00 Wes: That would be a good one. 12:01 Erin: Yeah, that would be really good. You should be a writer for the new. Is that still going on? 12:06 Wes: I think there is a new one, but it's. I heard it wasn't very good. 12:09 Erin: Well, that's because they haven't hired you yet for the Prufrock episode. 12:13 Wes: I don't think anyone's going to be able to replicate what Rod Serling did with that. 12:18 Erin: That's true. 12:19 Wes: Not just the voice, but the screenwriting. That's sui generis. 12:22 Erin: What do we make of this? The voice is dying with a dying fall. That's one of my favorite lines in the poem. It's a really elegant line beneath the music from a farther room. I'm not sure how this connects up with coffee spoons. Or maybe I do. But a dying fall is obviously like a slowing rhythm or diminishing volume. So the voices are diminishing beneath the music. So this is maybe the party has started, the nighttime party has started or something. Or he's describing the point at which words end and people are entertained or swept up into the music. And that is in a farther room. So that's unavailable to him while he's still sitting there with his coffee spoons. Maybe. But something celebratory and rapturous that he's incapable of taking part in or which is removed from him in another part of the house where they're having this party. I can picture the house very clearly, but I don't know if it's the house. Maybe I made enough of a connection right there. I'm not really sure. 13:17 Wes: Yeah. So he's listening to something going on in another room. He's hearing voices intermingled with music. It's an interesting experience because it involves hearing people talking, but not being able to make sense of what they're saying. Right. So it's just inarticulate, which is really odd when you think about it. And I think of it as like listening to another language. Or maybe it's like the Charlie Brown effect. You ignore adults and it's just wah, wah, wa. But regardless. So it's chatter. But the one thing that you do get that's still preserved in that situation, despite the fact that you can't really make out what people are saying, is you can make out tonalities, and you can get the general. Sometimes I think the general feeling of what's going on. And in this kind of very polite drawing room environment, it sounds like people struggling to make conversations, struggling to make small talk. And I get this sense of the. When sentences come to an end, it's not with excitement. It's not an uptick tonally. It's a grave accent, I guess. 14:26 Erin: You mean not in Prufrock's room? You mean in the music room? 14:29 Wes: Yeah. 14:30 Erin: Oh, okay. I read that differently. 14:31 Wes: Oh, how did you. 14:33 Erin: I meant that as the music started up, the voices were diminished, you know. 14:37 Wes: Oh, I see. The voices that he's with. Yeah. 14:40 Erin: No, no, no, no, no. In the other room, they're like. You know when. When a party starts and there's some chatter and the music starts playing. And as it gets louder, people are stopping talking because then the music either overcomes it or they are just sitting and listening to it. So I'm getting this idea that in the farther room, the party is starting. So it's actually a good thing, though the repetition of dying, I thought, was more of Prufrock's reflection on the fact that he can't join in that kind of revelry or whatever Cole Porter kind of situation I'm imagining in the other room. But I like your reading, too. 15:15 Wes: Yeah. I think these are two legitimate readings. I mean, in one case, you have him envying some more dynamic social situation that's happening far off, which fits. It's similar in the sense that he's still cut off. I still have imagined this as a very staged social environment. In either case, he's not. Where the music is. 15:39 Erin: Right. And that dying and the voices and the music. It's going to come back with the mermaids. Right. So maybe we'll be able to make sense of it once we get to the end. 15:48 Wes: Yeah. 15:48 Erin: Or maybe I'm just imagining the music. Oh, no, they will sing to me. Yeah. There is music, Right? 15:54 Wes: But really, they won't sing to him. He's not getting sung to in either case. Yeah, but I'm just thinking about what you said. I mean, in a way, you could think about the dying of the voices as just being relative to the uptick of the music. In either case, the question arises, how should I presume? And you have to wonder, why. Does this heighten the sense that his proposal is going to be presumptuous? Is it because he's cut off from people? He's not really. It gives you the sense that he's not really part of this scene in some way. Is he sitting on the couch by himself in the other room while everybody. Everyone parties in the main room? What's going on here? In one of the bits of secondary literature I read, someone associated this to Twelfth Night because Shakespeare uses this phrase, dying fall. Oh. 16:49 Erin: In Orsino's opening lines. 16:51 Wes: Right? Yeah. If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it. That, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die that strain. Again, it had a dying fall. Oh, it came o' er my ear like the sweet sound that breathes upon a bank of violets, stealing and giving odor. Enough, no more. Tis not so sweet now as it was before. I don't think it's a stretch because TS Eliot is so allusive and was so into Shakespeare to make this connection. 17:23 Erin: Yeah, sorry, Eliot, for the fact that this is one of my favorite lines and you stole it. 17:30 Wes: Is there any sense to be made in that connection? 17:32 Erin: Well, it's funny, the dying fall that you're talking about. I was thinking, if music be the food of love, play on. So I suppose if people are feeding off of music and he's feeding off of tea and toast and being his little parochial self in the other room. I don't know what else. 17:51 Wes: That strain again. It had a dying fall. What is that referring to? Is that referring to the music? 17:56 Erin: Mm. 17:57 Wes: Okay. 17:57 Erin: Yeah. The dying fall usually just means it's a diminuendo. 18:00 Wes: Okay. 18:01 Erin: But it's a classier way of saying it. So do you want to read the next stanza? 18:05 Wes: Sure. And I've known the eyes already, known them all. The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase. And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, when I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, then how should I begin to spit out all the butt ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume, known the eyes already. That's really. That's quite something. It gives you the sense, right, that what he sees in other people is primarily his concern about how they see him. The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase. We talked about this a little above the idea of they will say how his hair is growing thin and. And all that other stuff. And the idea that to fix you in a formulated phrase is to recognize you as someone with a certain sort of character who's not free necessarily to make choices and to do things, but simply a product of one's habits and traits. And in many cases, habits and traits that are difficult or impossible to change, including the habit of being shy or diffident, whatever it's going on with him. So he's driven to be the character that he is. And in the moment of confronting people, that sense is amped up, that sense of unfreedom. So it's very unmusical when you think about it now in the context of the music and the freedom that that affords. It's confidential situation to him is confined to. 19:39 Erin: So this is why I thought that in the previous stanza, I've known them all already known them all. And then I've known the eyes already known them all, that he's also saying he knows all these people. So he has, you know, he's fixed them the way that they have supposedly fixed him. What struck me in the second line, I mean, the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase. Obviously he's worried that he'll be, you know, skewered by their wit or, you know, whatever they're going to. However they're going to encapsulate him. But I thought that this was a really odd blending of. Of eyes and mouth, like the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase. 20:15 Wes: It's a mixed metaphor. 20:16 Erin: Right, Right. 20:17 Wes: That's good. I didn't notice that. I just thought of another meaning to fix you in a formulated phrase because I associate it to this moment when you're talking to someone and your fear of their response. So a lot of this is about eye contact and looking at other people's eyes and recognizing them, recognizing you and being afraid of their response to what you're going to say, how it's going to. How what you do and say will alter their conception of you. And being fixed is sort of like being a deer in the headlights in the moment, so that it has the effect of making the interaction more rigid and there's less spontaneity in what you say. And so what you say might be very formulated. I don't think this is the primary reading by the Way this is just a. Is an alternate way to take this. Actually, I think maybe. I don't know, balance. I think maybe they're equal readings. Because the idea is that others are pigeonholing him. Right? They are in their minds formulating him, but the. The difference between that and that actually shaping his life is thin. Right? So it's. It's not just that other people are pigeonholing him in their minds, but once you're pigeonholed in the minds of others, that affects you and it pigeonholes you. In actuality, it confines your behavior. So in other words, if I have a certain character and people respond to that, oh, that's just what Wes does. That's his habit, his days and ways, as Eliot puts it at the end of the stanza. And he tends to be. What's something that's not too negative? 21:54 Erin: A real asshole. 21:56 Wes: He tends to be an arrogant asshole. No, then you get to be formulated. Is not just for others to have this picture of you as someone who's a product of character and therefore unfree, but you become less free because you don't have as much room to move in the social situation. So in other words, it becomes hard to develop a new habit around people, whether it's like quitting cigarettes, the butt ends, or whether it's trying out a little bit of a new self or a new personality with people. Because people are going to respond to that and say what? That's not who you are normally it's going to draw attention. So you do become formulated by other people's responses to you. 22:36 Erin: That's why you have to move somewhere far away, like Gatsby. 22:39 Wes: Go to Long island or Salt Lake City. 22:45 Erin: Wes, could you, like, not reveal my secret plans to everyone on this podcast? 22:49 Wes: Please let us go to Salt Lake City and get ourselves away from the city. Sorry, city. And city to this rhyme. Terrible. Yeah. So formulated this to be. It's a very stark image of sprawling on a pin pinned to the wall like a bug. A scientific specimen. Right. For study. 23:11 Erin: And I was wondering what the butt ends were, but I guess I literally know that it's cigars. But cigars are. 23:18 Wes: Why cigars, as opposed to cigarettes. 23:21 Erin: Do people spit out the butt ends of cigarettes, don't they? No, they just throw. 23:26 Wes: Oh, you're thinking of when you cut off the end of the cigar and then spit that out. I was thinking of being done with a cigarette and disposing of the butt. 23:33 Erin: No, I don't think that works. Wouldn't spit it out. 23:36 Wes: You kind of flick it off your fingers. 23:38 Erin: This wouldn't fly in an MFA workshop, I think if it's cigarettes, which is not an advertisement for an MFA workshop, let me tell you. 23:45 Wes: But the poem would be much different after being workshopped. 23:50 Erin: Yeah, right. I really don't see where you're going with this. Yeah, well, because when you first. I know nothing about cigars, but when you first smoke it, I mean, when you first have to light it, don't you bite off one end of it first? 24:03 Wes: Yeah, you do bite it off and spit it out. Yeah. Unless you're fancy and you use some kind of cutting thing to do it. 24:09 Erin: Well, anyway, why does he want to go here if all this bad stuff is going to happen to him? That's what I want to know. 24:16 Wes: There's women, that's why. 24:18 Erin: Well, he doesn't even like the women all that much. You know, I think at the end of the last episode, I was like, I don't know. Is Prufrock really a jerk? And then it ended. 24:25 Wes: Yeah. Is he in love? Is Prufrock in love? It's a love song. 24:28 Erin: I don't know. If this is him being in love, then that's very sad. Yeah, it's very tiresome. 24:36 Wes: It is the least seductive love song ever written. 24:40 Erin: Well, there are butt ends in here. That's pretty sexy, but. 24:43 Wes: Yeah, right. Just thinking about spitting out the butt ends of my ways and days. 24:48 Erin: An after dinner cigar. 24:50 Wes: I'm trying to think about the metaphor here. What does it mean to spit out all the butt ends of your days and ways? Right. So he's measured out life and coffee spoons very incrementally. He's been spending all this time. The moment of the proposal is now. How should I begin? So this is the way he's characterizing what it would mean to actually do something now and hit on this woman or maybe even propose marriage to her. Just go straight from zero to 60. No. Hey, do you want to go on a date? Just, let's get married. We've been dating, haven't we? I've been showing up here for 20 years. So to actually utter these. Whatever words he's come to utter is like a spitting out. And I was thinking of cigarettes just because the butt ends. You know, the idea of his days and ways being exhausted like a cigarette that's been smoked and it's at this point of exhaustion that here he is ready to do something. And that the doing of this is the spitting out of the product conduct of all that. It's evoking Hesiod and it's evoking work in some way and even agricultural work, but also Polonian advice about how to live life, how to tend one's garden, how to do everything from farming to being a good person. The kind of a self helpy conception of life which begins with the necessity of work. Because of our fallenness, we get here an idea that work comes to an end and what it ends in is this proposal. And that's like spitting this out. I don't know. Can you make any more sense of that? 26:32 Erin: That's really good. That's far more profound than what I was thinking which is just the lack of consumption in these two stanzas. I mean at other times obviously he takes toast and tea and later he's going to be too full to act. So he does consume things in this poem. So maybe this is the wrong reading for me to take, but I just know the coffee spoons and the butt ends being spit out. I mean you're not actually. He doesn't say like I've measured out my life with cups of coffee or something like that. It's the spoon. And by the same token the butt end of the cigar or whatever we want to say is the part that you don't smoke and you spit it out. There's like a regurgitation or something that's happening here. He's not actually in terms of his daily life, which is what he's describing here. I think rather than what he's doing at the party, it's associated with like. Like the mechanism or the discarded parts, rather than like receiving sustenance from the actual. Not that you receive sustenance from a cigar, but the discarded parts is what he's focusing on in doing this proposal. 27:33 Wes: It's almost like I'm thinking of the. It's hard not to associate to the smoke and the fog. Right. The pollutants which are the byproducts of human civilization and social life. Right, right. And here that's what he seems to have to offer is the kind of the trash or whatever. And there may be something in here, the ends of my days and ways. He may be thinking of the fact that he's middle aged. Right. At the age of 23 he's middle aged and therefore he's already reached the end or he's close enough to the end of his life to think of it that way. The idea of him being formulated early on as the idea of him comments about the things it about his age essentially. So it's beyond character, as I pointed out it's specifically being pegged as someone who is too old for love in some way, that there's something inconsistent about age and his belated proposal. Which brings us back to the concept of this sort of being an anti seduction poem or something. A reverse seduction poem where it's like, you know, know it's not marry me, you're going to get old. It's, you know, marry me, I'm old. I'm already old, so marry me. Something like that. So to give the proposal is to. Instead of doing something spontaneous with one's youthful vitality and, you know, and if he were doing that right, we'd get a real sense of love in the poem instead of what we do get. It's as if saying something expressing his love is saying something about his age. That's what I'm trying to get at. To make the proposal as a confession of mortality. That's part of the hesitation, I think the concept of presumptuous means that he's worried about the effect on others, I think. And the effect here is that his love is not love. It's just the waste product. That's the phrase I'm looking for. The waste byproduct of all the living that he's done too much living, living so much living that he's like a coal plant that's produced all this ash. And that's what he brings to the table. I'm taking a bleak poem and making it even bleaker. So when you offer yourself up to someone, are you offering? What is it you're offering? What does it mean to offer your love? Does it mean to offer a certain state of mind towards another person? A certain type of habitual relation over time? Is it just a subjective feeling? Or is what you're offering when you make the proposal a certain form of life, a certain way of life that's predicated on you engaging in certain behaviors, right? So for instance, even as mundane as washing the dishes and picking up your underwear off the floor and then the anxiety there is what I'm offering. Something that's entirely formulaic and also not adaptable, not changeable in the context of a relationship, which is something that people always often have a problem with, is that they have their. They come to the table with all these habits and that becomes disastrous because the habits are inconsistent and people have trouble making the adjustment. 30:49 Erin: Wes, you're like, you're breaking me. I can't. 30:52 Wes: What do you mean? 30:55 Erin: Oh my gosh. I'm like, 30:59 Wes: what? What do you mean? 31:00 Erin: You're destroying My belief in love right now. 31:03 Wes: Sorry, I'm gonna blame it on Prufrock. 31:07 Erin: Oh, wow. 31:07 Wes: I'm just trying to make sure that this stanza is sprawling on a pin before we actually take leave of it. 31:13 Erin: Well, I think I'll be. Before this is over. 31:15 Wes: Yeah. It's a real and interesting concern. What does it mean to offer love? And then maybe Prufrock, at the very beginning is right. Do not ask, what. What is it? Just go make the visit. Just do it. Because if you ask, what is it? These are the sorts of considerations you. You get into, right? We're. We're temporal creatures. So love isn't just some time slice in which someone has affectionate or loving feelings. Love means a ways and days. Love is spread out temporarily. It includes negative components as well. If it is to be love, it has to be organized in the right kind of way, even if it is negative. So you can think of, like, Augustinian theodicy, right? If there is evil in the world, it's for the greater good, and it's privation. So you have to recast the negative moments as privation that are structurally necessary to the creation of a greater whole. And then that becomes a different conception of love than the everyday conception. And so maybe the everyday conception is not up to the task. And T.S. eliot, through Prufrock, is expressing a very philosophical concern. It sucks to be a philosopher who's going to propose, right? 32:37 Erin: Well, let me. Let me. 32:38 Wes: You want to ask, what is it? And then you write a long poem instead of provoking. 32:42 Erin: Well, then let me fight back against this because I have to come back from the. 32:46 Wes: I was going to win you ever with St. Augustine, but I guess not. 32:49 Erin: Well, you know, close, but these abstractions. So what you're proving to me then is that Prufrock doesn't love this woman. Surprise. This isn't a love song, though it seemed to be to look at something abstract, or I think, to look at oneself. Like, if this were a love song, then he would be not looking at his inabilities, to not want to presume all of these inabilities related to himself and his own mental comportment around marriage or relationships or women in general. So he wouldn't be dwelling on his abstract sense of incompatibility. He would be looking at the woman and the woman's habits and saying that he wants to, if he loved her, saying that he wants to adjust himself to that, or that he found something adorable or admirable or whatever in her own way of being that he finds compatible with his. So to me, this kind of philosophical frame of mind and this idea of like, what do I have to offer? That's an entirely selfish way of being. And it's entirely not conducive to love or to caring about another person. Because if you love another person, you're directed towards then them and you're not thinking about. I mean, sure, you get a sense of like, oh gee, you know, how can I measure up? Or maybe this doesn't, you know, maybe this isn't going to work, or maybe I'm not right for this person. You get all of those things, but you don't have some sort of abstract conception of anything that's entirely about one's own. Like in a way, I think that's like kind of the ultimate selfishness. To be like, what do I have to offer? Well, you could just love this person and give something of yourself. So I. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if he were really in love, then he would be familiar with this woman's personality and way of being and would want to join himself to that rather than saying that he couldn't engage with life at all and doesn't want to do anything because he doesn't feel himself capable of joining himself with anyone in this kind of abstract way. 34:54 Wes: I think you're right. He's very obviously self centered. Right. And this would be the worst kind of love poem to receive. 35:00 Erin: Oh, I've gotten worse. 35:02 Wes: Yeah. Just in the sense of badly written or in the sense of. So to love someone in a way he has to. We all have to escape our own gravitational orbit. You know, we have to escape our self preoccupation. And that includes escaping preoccupation with the love of others. This is one thing that psychoanalyst Erich Fromm wrote a book called the Art of Loving. Very small book that I recommend in that we actually did a partially examined life episode on it a long time ago. Okay. 35:33 Erin: That's why that's familiar to me. 35:34 Wes: I think one of the insights of that book is that when people think about love, they think a lot about being loved and they think a lot about loving other people in ways that are often conditional, even if it's just unconscious. And in particular conditional on that other person loving them back. So to really love in a way, you have to transcend the concern about rejection. I think that's the hardest part. And not even at this moment when you're making the proposal, but within the relationship itself. Because it's always a possibility. It's a possibility in A big sense the person will die or decide they want to get away from you. It's a possibility in smaller senses where you just feel rejected by some everyday interaction with the person. And then that has to be. Be negotiated. And so love has to be a decision which transcends all those possibilities. And so you don't to truly love you really just. It's like willing something or deciding something. It's like an ultimate act of free will. That's when you get there, not when you're thinking about whether the other person is going to love you back or even maybe even whether they're the right person for you. 36:48 Erin: One that's really freeing though because I mean then you're not thinking like how can I measure up? Or whatever. Like if you get past that whole inward direction and just focus outwardly, then probably you also by that same token become more attractive because you're not so, you know, like Prufrock tripping yourself up and being so ruminating and unable to act. It's like it. I don't know. Either way it's a self fulfilling prophecy either for good or ill. 37:19 Wes: And I think this goes for work as well and for including artistic creativity. People get hung up on or they develop inhibitions to work because they get worried about fame and fortune essentially they get so worried about the reception for their work, they get so caught up in the eyes of others that it becomes not an act of love anymore and enjoyable. It's too anxiety producing and unfortunately we can't ever fully escape that. Right. We have to be thinking about an audience and so on and so forth. So it's very tricky with work. But the solution to the inhibition is to be able to inhabit the mode of loving and loving what you're doing. For there to be more of that than there is of a worry about whether the product is any good or whether it's going to be well received. Just to try and make some connections back to the meta narrative about art. 38:19 Erin: Should we do the next stanza? Yeah, that was a. We better speed it up, Wes. 38:24 Wes: Well, yeah, we gotta fill out. We do have quite a few stanzas left. Oh my God. 38:29 Erin: All right, I know. All right. And I have known the arms already, known them all. Arms that are braceleted and white and bare but in the lamplight downed with light brown hair. Is it perfume from a dress that makes me so digress. Arms that lie along a table or wrap about a shawl and should I then presume and how should I begin? 38:51 Wes: The arms sound to me immediately like A kind of Homeric reference. It's a Homeric epithet like rosy fingered dawn or swift footed Achilles. White armed is oft repeated. The Greek word is. And lovely haired as well is another very, very common epithet. So knowing about Eliot's education, I don't think it's a stretch to say that he's taking these very romantic, in the broad sense, Homeric epithets and turning them into something. I don't think sinister is the right word, but very unromantic and maybe objectifying. Right. It feels like someone cutting up the body or focusing on a body as opposed to focusing on the whole person. 39:41 Erin: Two words stick out to me in the stanza. First of all, known the arms. So that's a little bit sexual. And second of all, downed. So I suppose this could be crueler. He's being a little bit gentle with that word. 39:55 Wes: Yeah. I mean, what does down evoke? Right. It's a goose. Right. Soft feathers you could sleep on, though. You could use those arms as a pillow. Yeah. There's a comforting aspect of this as well. And these are feminine charms. So this isn't. It's not just Prufrock who feels this way about white bare arms. These are sexual objects. Right. For men. For women. I don't know for women, but for men, at the very least. And then perfume from a dress, the way arms lie along a table or wrap around a shawl. So the upshot of the stanza seems to be that we should ask again how this is related to a feeling that it's presumptuous to proceed. But it seems to me that what he's noting here are these feminine charms as opposed to an engagement with the whole personality. It's something more, something possibly trivial, something possibly not a basis for something, for a more sustained relationship. 40:59 Erin: I think you're right. He's gone too far out on a limb here. And not barumch and not. Sorry, this is the only. 41:08 Wes: That took a while to compute. 41:13 Erin: Oh, God, I think I need to be etherized on a table right now. And this, I think, is the only real glimpse that we get of her, which is sad in a way. The digression. Is the digression about the light brown hair on the arm or is the entire poem meant to be the digression? 41:31 Wes: Well, I was thinking that. Right. And now you think of the muse like aspect of love. Right. Love is supposed to lead to. I mean, this is the way Plato or Socrates defines love in the Symposium as reproduction in the presence of something or someone beautiful. After rejecting a lot of different Conceptions of love, including the soulmate conception. Right. The two halves separated by the gods in Aristophanes account. So that what you're looking for when you look for love is to find one's other half that's rejected in favor of this more dynamic and reproductive conception. So that a digression is kind of a pejorative take on that productive component of love, that reproductive component, whether that's children or whether it's the reproductivity involved in being an artist. And so in a regular love poem, he might say something like, you've inspired me to write this beautiful thing. In this case, it's a digression. It's a hesitation. It's something that keeps him from love. It's not even a seduction. Right. It's not a seductive poem. It's something that functions to drive someone away. So it's an interesting reversal. I think you wonder what it says about poetry and art in general. Maybe this is a worry that those things are not consistent with action and with romance. That it out competes it in some sense. And then just one final thing. Knowing the arms already known them all. It's not her arms in particular. It's arms of women. It sounds like he's known them on these social occasions. Right. Seeing them lie along a table. This is another aspect that kind of saps it of the romance. Because it's no longer just one person, but it's women in general. And it could also just be known in literature. Right. He's read too much Homer, always with 43:32 Erin: the poetry bashing, you know. 43:34 Wes: Yeah. Sorry. All right. Shall we move on? 43:37 Erin: Yeah. 43:38 Wes: Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets and watched the smoke that rises from the pipes of lonely men in shirt sleeves leaning out windows. So what's interesting to me is now we get this is sort of the synthesis of this inner space of women and what's been going on on the streets outside. So it sounds like he has to communicate this outer world to this inner world of the chambers with women. Is that the masculine world? Is that the lower class world? Is that the sexual world to the world of polite society? You can think of it in different ways. Is that his character, which now I'm starting to associate with the smoke because of the butt ends. 44:25 Erin: Yeah. This kind of collapses. What you were saying before with, you know, the fog and the smoke and the pipes, like the smoking pipes and also the pipes on the, you know, chimney pipes or whatever. 44:36 Wes: Yeah. 44:36 Erin: Altogether. And then we get. Should we just quickly move on to the. Because I feel like we're gonna have a lot to say about the next. 44:41 Wes: Yeah, let's go on. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas. So what the hell is going on there? He's just the claws. He's not the crab or the lobster. 44:54 Erin: Yeah. Well, if it's silent seas, then he wouldn't have to say anything. Right. That's what I get from this. He wouldn't have to make an effort. He wouldn't have to be thinking about any of these things. And the claws are very, I don't know, Grabby. 45:11 Wes: That's perfect. That's perfect. That's exactly what I was. 45:15 Erin: Is that the right thing? 45:17 Wes: Yep. That's kind of the kind of guy he is. Okay, well, I was thinking he could 45:22 Erin: grab as many arms as he wants. 45:23 Wes: That's right. Exactly. Exactly. It's interesting. He's disembodied. It's a really interesting image of just the claws moving across the ocean floor. 45:37 Erin: I've known the claws, known them all. 45:41 Wes: And push them away and crack them open and eaten them with a thing of butter. Yeah. Grabby is perfect because it seems to be about desire. You know, he's all desire in some ways, but it's not. It's a very rough, kind of appetitive, potentially destructive desire. Right. If he had a hand, he could reach out and grab a hand. Said he has a claw, and so he can't reach out without damaging what he's gonna get. So. And there's a kind of ravenousness here, you know, if he's. If he doesn't have a belly, if he's disembodied, then that it can't ever be filled. And so the. The scuttling is. Is eternal. Looking for things to destroy with one's claws, but you can't ever feed yourself with it. A really, really dark image, you know? Why is this the solution to not wanting to talk about walking through narrow streets at dusk? Why is this preferable to talking about that? Because the previous lines are. Shall I say, blah, blah, blah. Nope. Instead, I wish I didn't have to talk about that. I'd rather be pair of claws. Yeah. Why is it so hard to talk about the other stuff? 47:00 Erin: I suppose there seems to be a sexual divide here of the realm of men and the realm of women. Women that he can't bridge that gap. The smoking and the outside of the house and the loneliness of the men, they're actually leaning away from. Right. They're leaning outside of the houses out of the windows, and away from the province of women, the land of women, according to Eliot's own sort of conception here, I think. And away from the perfume and the braceleted and bare arms of the women inside, and the sort of cleanliness of that, and out into the mucky. Sooty. Polluted. Polluted both through something that maybe doesn't have too much to do with these men or women, but is a byproduct and also is being, like, actively polluted by people smoking. There's a disconnect. There's a gender divide there that. That can't be bridged. So he's saying he would rather go to a realm in which there is no divide, per se, or no mental divide or whatever between men and women. It's pure instinct. 48:09 Wes: Well, I think I kind of maybe mischaracterized it because I think he's just attacking himself. 48:14 Erin: Okay. 48:14 Wes: I mean, the first thought here might have been, I should have been a crab scuttling across. You know, you can imagine Eliot writing that before he lands on Ragged Claws. And so you get a kind of spinelessness, but also kind of the hard shell on the outside. So the spinelessness speaks to the indecision, and the hard shell speaks to his rigidity and formulated nature. The way to see it here is he's just attacking himself. He's characterizing his hesitation and fear and indecision, so maybe fear most of all. And then I was just asking the question of, well, why doesn't he not want to. Why doesn't he want to talk about that stuff? And I think you had a very good answer for that, which is there's something about having to cross the masculine, feminine divide that's too much for him, 49:02 Erin: which is weird because he already has. I'm imagining him as the sole man, as I said, at, like, a tea party. 49:08 Wes: He's in the friend zone, though, Right? 49:10 Erin: Right. But that friend zone, it's not strictly feminizing, per se. It's not like making a guy into one of your girlfriends. But I think that's what it's supposed to be here, in an extreme version of that. So in a way, he has a way in, but he's screwed himself up or something even more by crossing that divide. 49:30 Wes: Yeah, so I think it's a good point. He's crossed the divide in a sense. And then the sense in which he hasn't crossed the divide, which we discussed, was the sense in which he can't become a sexual actor or have any sexual or romantic agency. So he's passive in that sense. Says something to do with communicating that outside world that we began with to this inside world of women. And you wonder what does that mean beyond communicating the masculine to the feminine? Or you could look at this in terms of a class element as well, if you wanted, which I think those two things always line up in some sense. 50:08 Erin: The thing too is, like I think we mentioned at the beginning, who's. Like, some people say that they don't even know if Prufrock ever comes in at all. You know, if everything is from the perspective of the street and he's just sort of mentally coming in or recounting times in which he has been inside in this particular woman's home or whatever. I don't know. There's a strangeness about this because the lonely men in shirt sleeves leaning out of windows. I think of this as a. Like an after. Like smoking out a window, as being either an after work activity or an after sex activity. To be leaning out of a window smoking. 50:45 Wes: Well, yeah, and I think it's meant to relate back to. Like in the beginning we wondered is he walking around a red light district? I think he didn't like this reading as much, but is he with the one night restless nights and one night cheap hotels. So the association here would be to men leaning out of the windows from those places. So that would provide a pretty straightforward thesis about what's going on here, which is some association to a past sexual life or to seeing prostitutes or something like that. Whether he's directly involved or whether that's just his conception of the nature of male sexual desire. 51:20 Erin: I guess I'm using that as a bridge to the next stanza. Because then we have something even stranger going on here. And the afternoon, the evening sleeps so peacefully, Smoothed by long fingers a sleep sleep tired or it malingers stretched on the floor here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head grown slightly bald, brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet and here's no great matter. I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker and I have seen the eternal footman hold my coat and snicker and in short, I was afraid. 51:59 Wes: Smoothed by long fingers. Here we get another Homeric touch, Rosy fingered dawn. But it's the afternoon. 52:07 Erin: Well, this is the etherized patient, right? 52:09 Wes: This is the evening and the afternoon. The evening. What do we make of that? Am I missing something there? How can those be? The. I mean the evening is afternoon, but generally we think of the afternoon as still being day. 52:21 Erin: This is why Elliot is happier in England, because this is just tea time to me this is just that, that tea time hour of afternoon bleeding into Evening before or 5 o' clock now 52:35 Wes: it's no longer the evening is no longer etherized on a table. But it's asleep. Yeah. So we get a more. And it seems to have become the cat in my mind. 52:45 Erin: Oh yeah, you're right. 52:47 Wes: Stretched on the floor. It seems like in some sense the outer world now has come inside. 52:54 Erin: That's good. 52:54 Wes: And it is. And it's kind of a cozy. It's a nice cozy conception of it. You know, that's the way the stanza begins. It doesn't end well. But sleep tired malinger stretched on the floor. I think the. Smoothed by long fingers. I was thinking of, you know, just cat hair that's been smoothed. 53:13 Erin: The idea of malingering, isn't that like faking an illness to escape work, doing work? 53:18 Wes: Yeah. Okay, so we do get a little reference back to sickness, which is what etherization suggests. 53:23 Erin: Right, Right. This also makes me think like if you're pretending to be asleep, isn't that the classic I don't want to have sex with you? Kind of that and feigning a headache. And so again, the kind of like love and work doubling thing going on here. But then it's stretched on the floor beside you and me, so it's not in the bed at all. It's not. I mean, nor is it an actor in this. It's just the evening. But it seems to be like the little spirit animal of this particular day, whether it be the cat or the patient or both. 53:59 Wes: Seems to me she has a cat. 54:01 Erin: She has a cat. Okay, a cat made of fog. Yep. But I'm thinking that this is a bedroom, but I don't know why I'm thinking that stretched on the floor here beside you and me. I mean, I suppose they could still be on the couch in the damn sitting room, but Yeah, I suppose they must be because it's still after tea and cake and ice and. But I'm thinking of this as like a bedroom doubling as a recovery room with the evening light coming into it. But for some reason the patient's been left to recover on the floor and the people are in the bed. 54:34 Wes: So once again, something about Should I after tea and cakes and ice is the. Somehow it's a conflict between all this nice tea time stuff and Then the more momentous proposal. But he's wept and fasted, wept and prayed. Wow, that's pretty intense, Prufrock. 54:55 Erin: I think in the last episode I said something about how the heavy desserts that he's indulged in have sort of depleted his resolve. So we have this image of being overfed and therefore kind of inert. But then also the idea of having been weeping and fasting or praying is kind of like screwing up one's spiritual fortitude. 55:22 Wes: Yes. I hadn't thought of this. Right after tea and cakes. This is kind of the effect of all this stuff. Drinking tea and eating cake is to get tired. It's precisely the opposite of getting excited or animated to propose. So by contrast to that, he's fasted in preparation for all of this. As if there needs to be some sort of. How would you describe it? Would you call it religious atonement that he thinks needs to be preparatory and then we get the comparison to John the Baptist. 55:58 Erin: Sure. And also, being in a state of fasting is supposed to be in a state of greater communion with God. It's supposed to help you deny the physical in some way and focus on something higher and get you into a more prayerful state of mind in a lot of religions, I think. 56:19 Wes: So he's trying to wake himself up. He's trying to stay. You get the idea of someone who's trying to stay awake, someone in this very sleep inducing from the very beginning with the fog and all the etherized patients. Something where he's kind of stumbling his way through dream landscape or something, trying to wake up through fasting and prayer. 56:44 Erin: But then he becomes sort of like John the Baptist inside out. 56:48 Wes: So let's tell the story of that with the head on the platter and all that. 56:51 Erin: So Herod wanted to marry Herodias, who was the wife of his brother, also named Herod. There wasn't a lot of imagination in baby naming back then. And so Herodias, the woman that he wanted to marry, her daughter, who was Salome, danced. And she danced so well that Herod wanted to give her anything. And she wanted. Well, she asked her mother what she should have. And since, I guess Herodias was annoyed by John the Baptist trying to intervene in her marriage to her brother in law, I guess you could say she told Salome to ask for the head of John the Baptist on a platter 57:30 Wes: and served it up to her reluctantly, but. 57:33 Erin: Well, it says reluctantly, but I'd be annoyed if some guy was telling me what to do with my life. And I was King Herod because he doesn't seem like a guy who takes no for an answer. 57:44 Wes: So how's Prufrock? How has his head been on a platter? It sounds almost. On the face of it, it sounds like, okay, I know what rejection is like, but I'm not sure that's gonna work. 57:55 Erin: Well, first of all, I think it's funny because John the Baptist is a hairy guy, right? 58:01 Wes: Yes. 58:02 Erin: Yeah. 58:03 Wes: I didn't know that. 58:04 Erin: Yeah. He looks like a. Like a. Like a crazy lion and everything. You know, he got. He has a lot of hair. He's out in the wilderness and he has, you know, he's like a crazy prophet. He has a lot of hair. He's always shown as having a lot of hair. And again, a kind of, you know, like, obviously a lot of strength and a lot of inner resolve and spiritual fortitude and all that kind of stuff. So he's a good sort of ideal male figure. So there's the joke of Prufrock being bald as John the Baptist. Then there's this idea of him being served up as a meal, which, again, we could say is like the sprawling on the pin idea, but also this idea that, you know, there's something with appetite here and the idea that he's sort of eaten himself out of a romantic moment and. And now he himself is being the food served up for, I guess, other people's fun, enjoyment, whatever. So I don't know that there's a parallel with the John the Baptist story. I think it's more like the John the Baptist story turned inside out. So instead of intervening in a sort of courageous way, the way John the Baptist does, he's not intervening and he's not being courageous. 59:20 Wes: That's what I was thinking was that this is about his lack of courage, which makes it sound as if what he fears. Right. He's trying to tell us about the stakes here. What's at stake? Why is he afraid? Sounds like he's afraid of getting his head cut off, so to speak, whatever that means. And if there is, this may be force, but if there is a comparison, a greater comparison to John the Baptist, then it could be the idea that any proposal kind of represents an intervention between the woman he's proposing to and other her other suitors, basically. So that may be forced, but in the same way that John the Baptist, in a way, is intervening, you could see any proposal as an intervention between her and all her other possible mates. Because there are other possible mates. There's the real possibility of rejection. There's the possibility that she chooses someone else, which becomes, in a way, the beheading. And on the other hand, he's not a prophet, which is to say he can't really see the future. So he doesn't really know whether he's going to be rejected. But it doesn't matter. He's still basically, in the end, he's afraid and he doesn't act. There's a sense in which the moment of hesitation, which you. You hesitate perhaps because you imagine rejection, you are playing prophet, even though you're not really. The only way to roll in that situation is to not do that, is to not make those predictions. 1:00:53 Erin: To add credence to my earlier point, there's an Internet page that says that John the Baptist is typically portrayed with a large mop of unruly hair. Hmm. 1:01:03 Wes: So my head grown slightly bald. Yeah. So he's not only no prophet, but he's no possessor of hair. 1:01:13 Erin: Yeah, well, and John the Baptist is really interesting too, because he's always wearing animal skins. And he's an odd combination of someone who is fearless and has this sort of animalistic quality, but at the service of a higher power because he's, you know, he's an ascetic at the same time. Time. He's kind of an impossible combination. 1:01:31 Wes: He's kind of a mensch. I think John Cassavetes would be the one to play him. 1:01:35 Erin: Oh, yes, that would be so great. But he's kind of like Michelangelo, I guess, because Michelangelo is also kind of a strange combination of things in that he's like this hyper manly, virile. I mean, I don't know, we could call John the Baptist virile, but I 1:01:51 Wes: think that's the image I'm getting from what you said. 1:01:53 Erin: Yeah. Yeah. But also, I guess with. No one could accuse Michelangelo of being an ascetic. But I guess the art component, the art half of it is what we get in Michelangelo. The idea of being an artiste balancing out the other side, a masculine, animalistic side. Not that being a man and being an animal are same thing. But you know what I'm trying to say here. 1:02:18 Wes: Yeah. 1:02:19 Erin: I have to backtrack every claim I make about either gender before someone gets my. Out of me. 1:02:24 Wes: I mean, it's as if he thinks he has to be that type of guy, whether it's the dear owl type or the ascetic type or maybe the artistic type. I mean, I am no prophet. The suggestion now seems to be that if you could predict, if you were certain I had this Fantasy. When I was younger, in college, if I just knew that she would say yes, if I just had that gift of prophecy. Or. Or you tell the mutual friend, hey, I'm interested. If he just had that gift of prophecy, he could move forward. But he's not. This is supposed to be some kind of Herculean task, right? The moment of greatness. The proposal is going to be the moment of greatness. I mean, with those stakes, who can win, Right? Without prophecy, without certainty of success, then he can't go forward. 1:03:12 Erin: Well, I think that this stanza represents that moment. I think the. That even though he's sort of telling it in the past tense, I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker. I think that as he says that that's it, that's the moment passing. Because then in the following stanza, the moment has passed and now he's sort of Monday morning quarterbacking the whole situation. 1:03:31 Wes: That's good. 1:03:32 Erin: But, yeah, so I think that's it. And he sees the footman holding his coat and snickering. And so that moment of greatness is actually that John the Baptist moment. So there's something about that that's. It's like the height of the moment, but it's also like this sort of like castrating image happening at the same time and then nothing. 1:03:53 Wes: Yeah, I like the idea of leaving the apartment, leaving the house, being shown out by the butler or something as that. Becoming the eternal footman. So goodbye, off to Hades with you. For the people who can't act. That's the place, the shadows. 1:04:12 Erin: What circle of Hell is that? 1:04:14 Wes: Right. What's a good name for that? Circle of Hell? 1:04:16 Erin: The nine and a half circle would 1:04:20 Wes: be the Friend Zone circle. 1:04:21 Erin: Oh, yeah, there you go. 1:04:23 Wes: It's the nine and a half. I like that. Yeah. 1:04:26 Erin: The in between number, because they couldn't decide which one or the other. You want to read the next stanza? 1:04:32 Wes: Sure. And would it have been worth it after all, after the cups, the marmalade, the tea, he among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me. Would it have been worthwhile to have bitten off the matter with a smile? To have squeezed the universe into a ball, to roll it towards some overwhelming question? To say, I am Lazarus, come from the dead, come back to tell you all? I shall tell you all. If one settling a pillow by her head should say, that is not what I meant at all. That is not it at all. I like your way of putting this. The Monday morning quarterbacking and asking. So now he's imagining the rejection and whether it would have Been worth it. He's doing the risk reward analysis here, but it's too late. We're still trying to figure out what is so monumental about this that he can't do it. So here he's fantasizing about a moment, I guess, which is, know, ultimately humiliating. I mean, this phrase, squeeze the universe into a ball, which again, gives you the idea of the stakes is really, it seems to be some version of screw your courage to the sticking place. 1:05:43 Erin: Well, it's from. To his coy mistress. 1:05:45 Wes: Oh, right, yeah. Give us that line as well. 1:05:48 Erin: Let us roll all our strength and all our sweetness up into one ball. 1:05:52 Wes: Let us roll all our strength and all our sweetness up into one ball and tear our pleasures with rough strife through the iron gates of life. Thus, though we cannot make our son stand still, yet we will make him run. Wow. 1:06:07 Erin: Yeah, wow. 1:06:08 Wes: When you read that next to Prufrock, that is quite something, right? 1:06:13 Erin: Yeah, well, that's what I was saying last time, that this is almost like a direct answer, it seems like, to that, or hopefully the other way around, that you read Prufrock first and then you get the remedy, the antidote. 1:06:28 Wes: This is carpe diem, right? And this is tear our pleasures with rough strife. This is willing to be. To inhabit that sexual plane and to inhabit the aggression inherent in that. You know, here in Marvel as well, there's the idea of doing something to the cosmos, doing something to the universe, to life itself, the iron gates of life, and affecting the sun itself. So this idea of this cosmic dimension to love, it's interesting, I guess the rolling up our sweetness into one ball is sexually evocative, right? And in this case, it's not about that pairing of lovers. It's about just him and the universe. 1:07:15 Erin: The Lazarus image or a reference, I looked that up and it could be two Lazaruses or Lazari. And I think I like the second one better. So there's Lazarus that Christ actually raised from the dead, but then there's the beggar Lazarus who returns in place of the rich man who was not allowed to return from the dead to warn them about hell. So basically, like this Lazarus is almost like a Jacob Marley figure come to warn Scrooge about hell or something. Something. 1:07:48 Wes: Okay, so what does it mean in this context? It's as if he's saying that the moment of the proposal would have been a moment of prophecy. Is that right? 1:07:57 Erin: Oh, I guess so. I guess I was thinking of this as post prophecy, that the action of doing this would have been like a death. But you're Right. That doesn't make any sense. It's that the moment of proposal would be to inform. Oh, oh, maybe to say, I'm not dead, I'm here. You've been thinking of me as a dead person, person, as a non entity, but I'm actually alive. 1:08:20 Wes: Yeah. This is really interesting. I thought I had thought this through, but it's as if he has to convert or convey something of the divine to people who have lost that sensibility, that. That's his task almost. Right. Some sort of religious conversion to not 1:08:41 Erin: being mean to him anymore. That's my message to you, is please be nice to me. 1:08:48 Wes: The Lord did say that you shall love me. And the other Lazarus, right. He's. 1:08:57 Erin: It's one of his miracles. Yeah. But Lazarus was loved by Christ. Like, he was a really good friend. Christ particularly liked Lazarus. They were very close. So he heard he was dying, and Christ got there too late. He was already dead. So they said, you know, forget it. You got here too late. You came. I can't. I'm doing all this from memory. I hope I'm getting it right. 1:09:17 Wes: But, yeah, that sounds right. 1:09:18 Erin: So Christ was like, that's okay. I can make this right. The reason why I don't think it's that is because Prufrock doesn't seem like someone who would equate himself with someone who was loved by Christ or for whom special favors were used to restore him. It seems more like he seemed behind the veil and has come back. Well, in the case of the first or the rich man, Lazarus, that he comes back to help other people. But in this way, it seems like Prufrock is seeing it as a kind of a curse or that his message is going to be something that the woman is uninterested in. So it's not going to be this revelation that's going to cause people to turn from their ways. It's going to be that he's going to make this big proclamation and it'll be a big revelation. And then she's going to say like, so what? 1:10:03 Wes: So in the story. So he intentionally shows up late. And then the sisters of Lazarus, one of them is named Martha, which I 1:10:11 Erin: love Martha and Mary. 1:10:14 Wes: Martha says, my brother wouldn't have died if you had come here on time. And Jesus, that's when you get the I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. And it's on her affirmation. Of belief that the miracle is performed. Right. Didn't John the Baptist actually prophesy something like this? Or am I imagining that? 1:10:39 Erin: Oh, maybe. 1:10:39 Wes: Okay. Like it's one of his signs or something. So in any case, it's a proof of his divinity. Right? 1:10:47 Erin: The raising of the friend Lazarus. That seems like too grand a thing for Prufrock to acquaint himself with or to associate himself as. So it seems like it would be the first one. Obviously both of them technically are in it. You can't evoke one and not the other. 1:11:02 Wes: If Lazarus is the one doing the preaching here. Look, I was raised from the dead. It's a good reason for belief. I'm trying to fully make sense of this metaphor, but I haven't. Or this illusion. 1:11:15 Erin: Yeah, I guess it's the fact that he comes back with a message too. But I guess there's also the idea of Lazarus being. Martha is one of my favorite people in the Bible because she's great, she's very Mediterranean woman, but she explains to Jesus like he's been dead for a while, he's going to see, smell. And that always struck me as being very real and gross, you know, when I was a kid. So maybe. So maybe Prufrock is saying that when he comes back from the dead here to tell this woman how he feels, he's going to smell. Or you know, like he's. In other words, he's a musty old bachelor maybe, and he can't come back from that. 1:11:50 Wes: Yeah, I think that's it. It's a second chance. You know, Lazarus had a second chance at luck and this is supposed to be his second chance at love. It's another reference to being a middle aged person trying to propose. 1:12:04 Erin: Okay, well, let's kill Lazarus again and move on. Yes, let's do it now that he was killed in the first place. But I don't know. 1:12:09 Wes: I do want to say just I love the whole settling a pillow by her head and just sort of the very casual, you know, that's not what I meant at all. It's not just rejection, but it's the feeling that it's not important to her and that there's been this miscommunication and 1:12:26 Erin: would it have been worth it after all? Would it have been worthwhile? After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, after the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor and this and so much more, it is impossible to say just what I mean, but as if a magic lantern Threw the nerves and patterns on a screen. Would it have been worth while if one settling a pillow or throwing off a shot and turning toward the window should say, that is not it at all. That is not what I meant at all. 1:12:56 Wes: So after the sun sets and dooryards and sprinkled streets. 1:13:00 Erin: So this is further imagining that he's. It's later in the evening, I guess people have left. Maybe they're still. He's imagining that they're still talking about this. And he's had to expose himself to her in some way by this sort of X ray metaphor and explained all of his thoughts. And she's thrown off this shawl that's around her arm and walked away from him, perhaps across the floor. Or he's walked away from her, so now he's the subtext of this drink. Everybody at home is. She's rejecting him and saying, I had no idea you felt this way. And well, gee, Prufrock, this is very sudden and I don't feel the same way about you, and blah, blah, blah. And he's had to explain all of his feelings and so now there's this break between them and he's humiliated and can never go back there. That's what I'm imagining. 1:13:46 Wes: I put in all this effort. Sunsets and door, you know. Yeah, yeah, I took you out to see a sunset. This is how you repay me. Novels did he have to actually read? I'm reading War and Peace Prufrock. Up late, all night till 6am Just trying to cram the novel so that he can talk to her about it. Yeah, yeah, you mean. I read War and Goddamn Peace all night and it got me nothing. Yeah, Love the image of the magic lantern showing the nerves and patterns on a screen. The sense of having his innermost being exposed and then nerves is ambiguous between just his nervousness and possibly his fear and cowardice on the one hand, and then just the inner workings of. Of his body, his brain, his mind, to be so exposed. So in the moment, this. This gives us some more insight into. Right into what's at stake with the moment of the proposal and why it seems to be of cosmic dimensions. It's because it's. In the ultimate self exposure. There's. There's a whole universe inside him patterned in. In nerves. And to. To propose is to reveal that. To put the. That, you know, to show it almost like a movie. The rejection would be a core rejection of his core being the fact that 1:15:09 Erin: it's revealing to her. It reminds me of. I don't know if this. This is predicting, like an mri, I don't know if it would. Would line up with an MRI or CAT scan or whatever. But, like, you know, when you. When they take brain scans and then poke you or. Or hurt you, some part of your body, and then you watch the brain light up in that region, you know, that's. That's kind of what I'm. What I'm thinking of. That he wouldn't be able to hide how much she's hurting him in that moment would be very obvious. And that image of the brain or the. Wouldn't be an MRI for Elliot, obviously. It wouldn't be the brain, necessarily, but some sort of dissection movie or something like that, but that cranial sort of circle of the night sky lighting up in one particular region. Cosmic, I think, is the word you used. 1:15:52 Wes: Yeah, I think it's good because it gets us back to the being being sprawling on a pin right on the wall. These things are related because in both cases, he's kind of like a scientific specimen there for study. In both cases, it's that there's that pigeonholing quality where, you know, if you reduce people to their brains and nerves and things like that, it's. There's a. Or to their physicality, their animality. It just becomes a. Become a more mechanical product of those forces or of one's character. There's this moment of vulnerability and ultimate exposure here. And again, it's not unrelated to the pigeonholing stuff that's happened before. And so it gives us a little insight into what the stakes are, that this involves potential humiliation. And we're getting a little bit here about what humiliation really means. This ultimate powerlessness, this ultimate deprivation of freedom and spontaneity. The irony, of course, is that he deprives himself of that freedom and spontaneity up front if he doesn't propose. But the fear is that he will be deprived of it if he does. All right, shall we move? 1:17:00 Erin: Yeah, let's do it. 1:17:02 Wes: Almost there. No, I am not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be Am an attendant lord one that will do to swell a progress Start a scene or two. Advise the prince, no doubt an easy tool Deferential, glad to be of use Politic cautious and meticulous Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse at times. Indeed almost ridiculous. Almost at times. The fool. He actually sounds like Polonius here. Right? That sort of list of things. Neither a borrower nor lender be, Blah, blah, blah. 1:17:38 Erin: Yeah, this is politic. Cautious and meticulous. This is a little bit of iambic pentameter here, I think. I think he's doing a little ventriloquism with Shakespeare here. 1:17:48 Wes: Yeah. See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue. Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast and their adoption tried. Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel. But do not dull thy palm with entertainment of each new hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, bear it that the opposed may Beware of the. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice. Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not express'd in fancy. Rich, but gaudy. For the apparel oft proclaims the man. And they in France, of the best rank and station Are the most select and generous Chief of that. Neither a borrower nor lender be. For loan oft loses both itself and friend. And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all, to thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day. Thou canst not then be false to any man. Farewell, my blessing. Season this in thee. So this is Polonius to Laertes. And Hamlet, before he's about to take off. He's going abroad to college. Is that what's going on? Why is he sending. Why is Laertes off? It's for school, right? 1:19:09 Erin: I think it is, yeah. I left, but I think it is. 1:19:13 Wes: I know that's lengthy, but just to give some of the flavor of that and the similar flavor here. 1:19:18 Erin: This is a very important stanza to me in this poem. I really like it because I think there's nothing sadder than saying I'm not even. It's something that I'm actually very interested in this idea that you're so pathetic. That you're not even the main character in your own line life. You know, and you're not even the most indecisive character in history. You're the secondary character. 1:19:41 Wes: You're not heroically indecisive. 1:19:43 Erin: Right. 1:19:43 Wes: You're just overly cautious. 1:19:45 Erin: Not even that. You know, I'm not the Mary. I'm the Rhoda, which I always wanted to be the Rhoda. But that. But that's. It's very sad when you're the. You know, when you're the supporting player who's in your own life. Who's providing funny punchlines and ways to move the B plot forward. 1:20:03 Wes: Yeah. Swell a progress. 1:20:05 Erin: Right. That makes me sad for him because I actually do understand this. I don't understand much else going on here on a personal level, but I understand this one. 1:20:12 Wes: Yeah. Well, it's the idea of deference here. Right. So for Hamlet, what is it about? It's more about tortured existential angst and almost the lack of certitude about whether his suspicions are warranted and sort of a lack of confidence about whether his suspicions are warranted. So here, by contrast, it's just deference. It's just I'm a follower. 1:20:37 Erin: Yeah. Here to serve. 1:20:39 Wes: Yeah. And that will get you friend zoned 1:20:41 Erin: every single time, whereas the other one will get a girl to kill herself over you. 1:20:46 Wes: Right, right. Hamlet was a bad boy. That's what the Ophelia is like. 1:20:51 Erin: Like, you're tearing me apart. 1:20:55 Wes: And then the fact that it's kind of presented as high sentence, like someone who's kind of pompous and presents all of this as a kind of wisdom, but it really comes across as obtuse to the nitty gritty of life. And that's the foolishness. So there's a further element of humiliation here, which is that it makes me think of again, of Guido and the preemptive absolution and presenting yourself as a good person, as a good guy, nice guy, when that misses the point. And that in fact, you have to get beyond that to make a move. Okay, good. I grow old. I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. 1:21:36 Erin: Well, I think that's self explanatory. 1:21:41 Wes: So he's going to be walking on the beach. Right. So I think that's a good reason to have your. 1:21:45 Erin: Yeah, that's just practical. Like what? Old people are afraid of tripping over themselves so they have to roll up their trousers. I've never heard of that before. Before I've heard of old people wearing pants that are too short for them. 1:21:54 Wes: Yeah. I don't know if it's a reference of some sort to something old people in particular do or if it's just the fact that he's. There's an old man walking. 1:22:02 Erin: Oh, I get it. I get it. 1:22:03 Wes: Barefoot on the beach now. 1:22:04 Erin: I was associating a conditional relationship here. Never mind. I've been reading this wrong this whole time. I was like, I was thinking that because he's growing old, he has to. Nothing. This is embarrassing. I've just been reading this wrong for 16 years. That's all right. 1:22:18 Wes: He has to wear the trousers. 1:22:20 Erin: Yeah. Like old people wear their trousers rolled. I don't know. 1:22:23 Wes: Well, no, I think that might be it. I mean. No, I think that actually might be. It can be just a kind of an old man thing to do. I think that's entirely possible. But it can also be the walking on the beach. 1:22:33 Erin: Well, it's also an old man thing to part your hair behind. Well, let's. 1:22:37 Wes: Yeah, exactly. These are all old men. I think you're right. These are all primarily. These are old men kinds of things to do. You want to read the next part? 1:22:44 Erin: Yeah. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. So the comb over is a consideration here. 1:23:02 Wes: Mermaids are definitely not into that. 1:23:07 Erin: Eating a peach. I don't know. Because of dentures or. 1:23:11 Wes: Yeah, no, exactly, exactly. Yeah. 1:23:13 Erin: And then the. The white. White flannel trousers have to be rolled up to walk on the beach. 1:23:17 Wes: Not a bad. I don't think that's a bad look myself, but. 1:23:19 Erin: No, neither do I. 1:23:20 Wes: You could be a sexy old man. The most interesting man in the world. 1:23:25 Erin: Oh, yeah, There you go. And he's heard the mermaid singing, so he's. He's heard the magic. But then they're not going to sing to him, so that sucks. 1:23:32 Wes: Why is it mermaids here? 1:23:34 Erin: Sexy ladies with seashell bras? Is that what it's about? Those sexy armed mermaids? 1:23:41 Wes: We get these mythical creatures. I guess part of it is the unobtainability of the mermaid. They're not just women, but women as unobtainable. And I don't know, do mermaids really hang out with mermen or is that just a Disney thing? 1:23:55 Erin: I think they just hang out with each other in coves and comb their hair with forks. 1:24:01 Wes: It's like the Amazonians, you know, in a way they're not in need of men. And then there's this happen. Half fish quality and something primitive and regressed in the sense of having returned to the ocean or not fully emerged from the ocean. Like human beings. 1:24:16 Erin: They're half ragged. 1:24:17 Wes: Yeah. Submerged in this kind of realm of fantasy. The suggestion seems to be that this is part of what's been going on is he's been thinking of ordinary real life women in terms of this fantasy. I guess we'll understand this better when we read the next stanza. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves. Blown back when the wind blows the water white and black we have lingered in the chambers of the sea by sea girls wreathed with seaweed, red and brown. Till human voices wake us and we drown. Very sad and great. It's a nice little inversion here with the idea that to be asleep in this fantasy, to be asleep in the sea is to be able to survive it and breathe it. It's waking up that will actually kill you when you would expect, of course, the reverse to be the case. I mean, the lingering in the chambers, of course is a reference to lingering in the chambers of the women for tea and all that. You're transformed into this fantasy. 1:25:22 Erin: It's like a teenage boy who plays video games 14 hours a day, day being submerged in the fantasy. And then unfortunately, the spell is broken when mom calls you down to dinner or tells you to do your homework. And that's what's going to kill you. 1:25:37 Wes: There's a book by Douglas Adams, the guy who wrote the Hitchhiker trilogy. I forget which book this is, but there's this idea that you, in order to fly, all you have to do is jump out of a window and then forget that you're falling. And if you want to breathe underwater, all the you have to do is to not be awake to the fact that the water is water, that you're in water. And somehow it's to be realistic about these things which drowns you. You can survive it by being oblivious or something. 1:26:05 Erin: Yeah, no, I like that because that's like a self forgetfulness, which is what Prufrock is incapable of. But the mermaid's voice puts you in a trance, though they're not singing directly to him. I don't know. Is that a thing that the. You know, I'm thinking of the sirens. 1:26:19 Wes: Yeah, it does seem to be a siren provoke the sirens, definitely. Who, if they were singing to him, of course it would be a trap and it would be the thing that would lead to his destruction, their seduction. But yeah, in this case they're not going to sing to him. And that's not going to be the way things go down. 1:26:36 Erin: Do we have anything else to say or should we? 1:26:38 Wes: I'm still trying to think about what it means for human voices to wake us. And it's interesting, of course, that the last stanza. It's suddenly us again. Us and we. After quite a while, it begins with you and I. And I think it's I for almost all the rest of the poem. Right. Here he is back with this imaginary companion which could be himself, of course again, it could be all the men who fall into this category. I think there is a connection to the sirens, right? So if the sirens had been singing to him, then. Then he would be lured to his own destruction. And in this case, they're not actually singing for him. And in the case of the sirens, they lure you into a kind of fantasy that will end up drowning you. I guess that's a comment on. Or it expresses a concern about female seduction and what it means. But again, here it's another reversal in which he's been in the water. You know, he's been in the chambers of the sea, waiting, not acting. And now that he's old and on the beach, that's, in a sense, what it means to drown. To have woken up. To have woken up is just to be at the end of his ways and days without being romantically tied to anyone. So ironically, it's the. You know, with the sirens, you get seduced into making a move, and that's what kills you. He was lured into. Somehow seduced into the friend zone, seduced into being in the proximity of women, moving towards them enough to share drawing rooms with them, but not to go any farther. So that's a seduction into friendliness in a way. And in the same way, it's predicated on illusions about women and feminine charms, right? So we get with the seaweed red and brown. They're wreathed with seaweed red and brown. It makes me think back to arms and hair and things like that. So in both cases, it's a objectifying kind of illusion about what women represent and what it means to idealize them, what it means for relating to them to be something of cosmic importance that requires screwing up the universe into a ball in order to. To make a move. It's to give them more significance than they actually have in fantasy. And a psychoanalyst would call this transference or would call this. This sort of idealization would have something to do with an attempt to read something maternal into the feminine. And to have a relationship with a woman be evocative of an early relationship with a maternal caretaker, let's say. So that's one angle on this and why the stakes get so high. And so you transfer your early childhood feelings from mother to sexual object. You know, according to this theory, women and men do this, and it messes up human sexuality because it's weird in various ways. It's not only incestuous to associate love objects with your parents, but it's also evocative of, like this return to the sea, right? It's evocative of the womb. And it's evocative of merger. It's evocative of a time when you are not fully separate from the love object. And so that you disappear into it, you're destroyed by it, destroyed by your love. And so in this case, you know, the fantasy is to idealize women and imbue them with these qualities. In the case of the Sirens, you are seduced to your death because of that. In his case, he's seduced into inactivity because the stakes are too high. And what it means to drown is actually not to be related at all. Again, to be on the beach. Old. 1:30:27 Erin: Yeah. And so he dies a solitary figure. What I get from this is he's no longer even going into the drawing rooms with the women. He's completely alone and has unmoored himself completely from society and real relationships with people to the point where hearing a human voice and entering into that community causes death to him. 1:30:46 Wes: That's interesting. Interesting. 1:30:47 Erin: Yeah. 1:30:48 Wes: Okay. Well, that cheered me up. I was having a difficult day. And there's nothing like a beautiful poem like this to bring you out of that, to wake you up. 1:31:02 Erin: We'll revive you in the Postscript. That's a little advertisement for our Postscript. 1:31:06 Wes: Don't wake me with a human voice, because you know what? That does. All right, so thank you, thank you, and thank you to everyone who listened to this episode. I just wanted to say that if you're listening to this on the feed for the Partially Examined Life, you're not yet subscribed. And if you like us, a rating or review would help a lot. 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