As we continue our journey unpacking The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, you may enjoy listening to Anthony Hopkins read Eliot’s poem.
As was seen in the last post about the poem, time is a central issue for Prufrock.
It is only in the last five lines where he is contemplating having time to ask the question he wants to ask, and time for the decisions, indecisions, and revisions, where the two stanzas do not mirror each other.
And it is this matter that Prufock is most concerned about. Related to this, it is important to remember that he is feeling his age.
He has “seen the eternal Footman…and was afraid.” He declares “I grow old…I grow old…” Ironically, his affirmation that there will be time, stands in contradistinction to the pressure he feels about the overwhelming question that is nagging him. Perhaps he is lying to himself and there will not be time enough after all.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The rhyme is repeated again. It is difficult, if not impossible, to tell if the narrator is a bystander watching the women, or if he is still in a still state of contemplation simply commenting on the nature of the society of women. Likely he is still trying to decide if he is going to ask the question, and is simply distracting himself by watching the women coming and going and commenting on their behavior.
If the first stanza leads the reader downward into a melancholy and contemplative state, the second full stanza etherizes the city as a whole, and the third stanza draws attention to the certainty of time, then the next stanza highlights the tension of time, how it is both in the narrator’s favor, and working against him at the time time.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
In the first line of the stanza, the narrator gives affirmation to what he has already asserted to be true in the previous stanza. Then he repeats the tension of his indecision—“Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”—and reaffirms he has time to turn around and avoid what he is afraid to ask.
This time, however, he is insecure about turning around because of his balding head. He is embarrassed and insecure. Even with all his fine clothing, he is afraid people will see past that and see how thin he is.
Then he raises the question again, only this time as being even weightier: “Do I dare Disturb the universe?” With each attempt at inquiry he feels the burden of his question growing larger and more significant.
Finally, he acquiesces to procrastination one more time.
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