Eliot- The Portrait of a Lady (Part-1)

English Literature: Views & Reviews: Eliot- The Portrait of a Lady

Eliot- The Portrait of a Lady (Part-2)

"Portrait of a Lady" is another very significant poem of his collection. It is clear that the title of the poem has been taken from Henry James' celebrated novel The Portrait of a Lady. The poem offers a sharp contrast to the poem discussed above. There is marked complimentation between the ideas expressed in the "Love Song" and "The Portrait". However, the perception attributed to these two poems merge into one complete aesthetic unity. J.C.C. Mays rightly observes that "same story told by two voices merge, allowing more to a different but complimentary point of view" (112). May view fully expresses the thematic interdependence existing between these two major poems.
The narrator relies heavily on the atmosphere and the delineation of urban surroundings to illustrate inertia and mutual alienation. The season imagery also plays a dominant role in the caste of imagery. The speaker of the poem visits an elderly woman on four different occasions. the speaker meticulously specifies the months – December, April, August and October, to show the advancement of time and action.
The narrator relies heavily on the atmosphere and the delineation of urban surroundings to illustrate inertia and mutual alienation. The season imagery also plays a dominant role in the caste of imagery. The speaker of the poem visits an elderly woman on four different occasions. the speaker meticulously specifies the months – December, April, August and October, to show the advancement of time and action.
The poem expresses among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon (L.1) which makes the first line of the poem "Four waxed candles in the darkened room" (L. 4) recreate the urban atmosphere of "The Love Song" and "four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead" (L. 5) create the atmosphere of "Juliet's tomb" (L. 6). The reference to Shakespeare's Romance and Juliet accounts for the reenactment of the theme of life in death and death in life. Juliet in the play was taken to be dead whereas she was only in coma. The metaphorical contents of the December image are justified by the image of Juliet's tomb and it recolours the thematic implications of the allusion in Shakespeare. The succeeding time further ratifies the symbolic magnificence of the allusion when the speaker says :
Prepared for all the things to be said or left unsaid.
(L-7)
In the second stanza begins with the image of Lilac symbolizing love and friendship. It is again ironical that neurosis pervades the milieu:
I keep my countenance.
I remain self possessed.
Except when a street plano, mechanical and tired,
Reiterates some worn out common songs.
With the smell of hyacinth across the garden.
Recalling things that other people have desired.
Are these ideas right or wrong.
(Ll. 77–83)
The pervasion of melancholy and inertia continues to dominate the perception even in the October where the lady has nothing but a false hope to life with. She says:


You hardly know when you are coming back.
You will find so much to learn.
My smile fells heavily among the bric a brac.
(Ll. 90–92)
The lines quoted above ratify the parallel between the Prufrock and the Lady in the poem who is equally sensitive. Eliot also constructs a parallel between the Lady in his "Portrait" and Isabel Archer. Eliot obliquely brings into prominence the features of the Isabel and then he transplants the character into a new soil. Eliot's Lady is a sensitive intellect but the most striking covalency is observed when we realize the characters as independent. 'The independence of Isabel', says Arnold Kettle, 'is the quality about her most often emphasized' (p. 22). It is a conspicuous aspect of the poetic technique of Eliot that he transplants the character in a new soil and creates a new metaphor. The independence of the Jamescan character when planted in a new soil results into the scepticism and neurosis expressed in fake optimism:
We must leave it now to fate
You will write at any rate
Perhaps, it is not too late.
I shall sit here serving tea to friends.
(Ll101–104)
"Portrait of the Lady" thus becomes a milestone in the development of Eliot's poetry and the treatment of woman. The Lady in the "Portrait" grows into a complete metaphor which enshrine the vision of the poet. The loss of vitality and the lack of action together make her a living metaphor of life in death and death in life. The flower images further strengthen the meaning and motif as the vitality is realized only at sensual level and life ceases to exist beyond the limits of sensuality. The view of Grover Smith capture attention. He rightly points out:

By penetrating to the depth of the lady's lonely and empty life, the
young man has committed a psychological rape : this is for worse than
fornication, for he has not respected her human condition. (p14)

Works Cited
Eliot, T.S. Collected Poems 1909–1962. Calcutta : Rupa and Company, 1994.
Mays, J.C.C. "Early Poems : from Prufrock to Gerontion". The Cambridge Guide to T.S .Eliot, ed. A. David Moody, London : Cambridge University Press, 1994, 108–120.
Smith Grover. T. S. Eliot : Poetry and Plays, Chicago : University of Chicago, 1951.

Eliot' The Love Song of J. Alfred Prurfock

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is one of the most anthologized poems of T.S. Eliot. Technically, as well as thematically, the poem marks a complete break away from the Victorian poetry and relics of Romanticism that can be witnessed in the early poems of W.B. Yeats. In the poem, the protagonist J. Alfred Prufrock, endures sudden variation and moods depicted ironically. These are the moods of cynicism, repulsion and disillusionment. The irony is manifest at its best through the antithetic impulses of initation and withdrawal. The images of urbanity invite a reader's attention. According to Peter Acroyd the images used on the poems ("The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Portrait of a Lady") are the images inspired by Eliot's stay in Boston. Tracing the origin of the image and characters used in Prufrock, Acroyd says that "it was the life of Boston" and the "people who came close to shifting him altogether" that the poet "incorported into the two great poems of his early maturity" (Acroyd, 39). The most important aspect of the poem is the unique fusion of the character and the urban setting. Eliot himself confesses that 'we cannot isolate' the character 'with the environment' (Aeroyd, 39). It is interesting to note that the atomsphere and the character have been so completely fused together.
Women in the poems also have two distinct origins. On one hand, it serves to define and delineate the psyche of the protagonist and on the other hand, it helps us visualizing the whole atmosphere of the poem. The poem advances upon the resonating node and anti nodes of these two main sources of the emotion of the poem.

The paradoxical strain between the inner and the outer of the protagonist becomes clear in the opening lines of the poem.

Let us go then, you and I
When the evening is spread and against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon the table
(Ll 1 to 3)
In the succeeding line Eliot brings into prominence the urban backdrop against which the action of the dramatic monologue is set. The images like "restless nights in one night cheap hotels" (L. 6) and "streets that follow like a hidious argument" (L. 8) confirm the urban background supporting the lack of certitude and spiritual hollowness of the protagonist. Women appear in the monologue immediately after the first stanza of the poem.
The line quoted above present a generalized picture of contemporary society and the women in these lines are aptly metaphorical to the intellectual vacuum pervading the society. Austin Warren rightly puts in when he say:
The background of the drawing room, the women talking of
Michelangelo, represent the art chatter ocultivated
who talk of the art of the past, who a
They and Prufrock represent air effect, and decadent
and decayed world in which women and men talk, instead
of acting and loving.(p291)
The views of Austin Warren make clear the meaning inherent in the metaphor. The urban images employed to illustrate the picture of a cat emerging as the evening.


The yellow toy that rubs its back upon the window panes.
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes.
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains.
(Ll 15-18.)
Eliot brings forth the idea of inverted divinity and correlates it with destiny. The image of cat imparts new metaphorical shades to the women in the life of the protagonist who represents an eternal conflict subsisting between a sensitive intellect and a group of hostile forces operating upon the destiny of the protagonist. The protagonist mocks at himself and say:

Do I dare
Disturb the universe ?
In a minute there is time,
For decision and revisions which a minute will reverse

F.R. Lewis rightly observes that through Prufrock Eliot expresses "a modern sensibility, the wave of feeling, the mode of experience of on fully alive in his own age" (Bearings, 75). The reverberation of the decisions and revision oblige him a hallucinatory perceptions and ratify the pervasion of evil forces and omnipotence of inverted divinity realized through hallucinatory perceptions and expressed in surrealistic images;

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea.
By sea girls wreathed with sea weed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
(Ll. 129–131)
"The Love Song of J. Aflred Prufrock" sets into being a privileged treatment of women that represents and illustrates a larger aspect of human destiny comprising all forms of superior forces, social, as well as cultural. "The Love Song of J. Aflred Prufrock" sets into being a privileged treatment of women that represents and illustrates a larger aspect of human destiny comprising all forms of superior forces, social, as well as cultural.
Works Cited
Eliot, T.S. Collected Poems 1909–1962. Calcutta : Rupa and Company, 1994.
Lewis, F.R. New Bearings in English Poetry. London : Chatto and Windus, 1959.

The Poetry of T.S. Eliot

The new post in my blog, aim at a critical scrutiny of the poetry of T.S.Eliot. it is unambiguous that Eliot is the most prominent figure as far as the English poetry is concerned, yet the fact can’t be denied that the poetry of Eliot suffers a possibility of misinterpretation chiefly due to richness of allusions and references. The forthcoming posts in this blog aim at line by line analysis of the major works of Eliot. It is unfortunate that the poet has always been alleged for the maltreatment of women in his poetry, thus the special attention has been paid on the exploration of the symbolic worth of the women in the poetry of Eliot

Thomas Sterns Eliot was born on 26 September 1888 in St. Louis in Missouri in the family of a Calvinist. He was the youngest of the seven children of his parents – Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Champe Sterns. It is important to note that the family of Eliot played a vital role in shaping the ideas and ideals that determine the essentials of his literature. The conservative inclinations of Eliot that play pivotal role in his life and works can be traced back to his grandfather W.G. Eliot who laid great emphasis on the role of law and religion in shaping the society and maintaining its morals and standards. Eliot acknowledges his debt to his grandfather when he says that 'the standard of conduct was that which my grandfather had set'. He further confides that the "moral judgements" and the 'decision between duty and self indulgence were taken as if like Moses', his 'grandfather had brought down the labels of law, any deviation from which would be sinful' (Acroyd 3).

Eliot's childhood was very happy, however, there are shades of dissatisfaction and reservations against the strict rather oppressive land of upbringing. The combined influence of Unitarianism and Calvinism exercised some very complex influences in the mind of the poet. It can be observed easily that the paradoxical influences of Calvinism and Unitarianism operate on his mind all through his poetic career.

Harvard years constitute another major influence in the mind of the poet. In Harvard, Eliot come in contact with Santayana and Babbit who consolidated the foundation of classicism. These years witnessed the flowering of Eliot's intellect. On Babbit's inspiration, Eliot learnt Sanskrit and Pali and studied Indian philosophy, which shaped his intellect. Besides Indian classic writings, Dante is the most conspicuous influence on the mind of the poet. He completed Graduation in 1909 and Post Graduation in 1910. He left for Paris to study French literature and came close to the works of Ezra Pound, which is another significant influence on him. He returned to Harvard and enrolled himself as a student of philosophy.

Eliot reached London 1914. The literary scene in England was chaotic and fragmented due to absence of any governing literary principle. Early modernist dominated the literary scene whole situation was dominated by T.E. Hulme and Ford Maddox Ford. Eliot's first collection of poems Prufrock and Other Observations appeared in 1917. The collection has twelve poems and the title poem of the collection, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is the most important and well–known poem of the collection. It was followed by Poem 1920. It is clear from the title itself that this collection appeared in 1920. This collection has twelve poems. One of them is "Gerontion", a milestone in Eliot's poetic career. The publication of Poems 1920 was followed by the emergence of The Waste Land which proved to be a historic event not only for Eliot but for the whole tradition of English poetry. The poem metamorphosed English poetry by adding new dimensions to it in terms of technical innovativeness and thematic boldness. The poem also illustrates Eliot's ideals of form and function of poetry in the larger perspective. The Waste Land illustrates Eliot's ideals and predilections of poetry to perfection. Eliot's formed a group with the publishing house – Faber and Gawyer that later became Faber and Faber. Another significant event took place in the life of Eliot that in June 1927. He was confirmed in the Church of England and in November in the same year, he was granted citizenship of Great Britain. The poems revealing Eliot's spiritual doubts and conflicts were published during this period. "Journey of the Magi" was published in 1927, it was followed by "A Song of Simeon" (1928), "Annmula" (1929) and "Marina" (1930). Eliot's poetic career came to a planned end with the publication of Four Quartets. The long poem like, The Waste Land, is divided into four parts. "Burnt Norton" is the first part of the poem. It is followed by "East Cooker". "Dry Salvage" and the last part of the poem is "Little Gidding". Four Quartets offer a sharp contrast to The Waste Land from the point of view of thematic evolution. The Waste Land represents the culmination of the theme of spiritual hollowness whereas Four Quartets is the poem about the recovery of spiritual bliss.
Eliot, in his critical writings, has been expressing his deep inclination towards drama. The predominance of dramatic objectivity in poetry has always been a critical parameter of defining significance. The predominance of object makes clear Eliot's inclination towards drama. The first play written by Eliot was The Rocks which was performed at Sadler's Wealth Theatre from 28 May to 9 June 1930. Eliot, thereafter, was commissioned to write Murder in the Cathedral in 1935 for Canterbury festival. Eliot's next play – The Family Reunion was performed in 1939. The Cocktail Party (1949) was a great success. His later plays are The Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman(1958).
During the late forties, Eliot's status as an International intellect grew enormously. He was involved in delivering lectures in England and America. He received a number of awards and fellowships. In 1948, he was awarded the Order of Merit, the highest British decoration, and the Noble Prize. The happiest moment in his life came on 10 January 1956 when he married Valerie Fletcher who had, for long, been a devoted Secretary to him. Eliot admits that without the satisfaction of a happy marriage, no achievement, no honour could give me satisfaction (Acroyd 175–176).
Eliot fell sick during the winter of 1962 and the recovery was slow and difficult. He died on 4 January 1965.

References:
Acroyd, Peter. T. S. Eliot, London : Cardinal, 1984.