Grumble, Grumble, Grumble

I haven't felt up to posting anything lately, drearily counting down the days, until I have to cut loose (wake up) from my fantastic dreamland of university and go on waiting, living the unlived life--but at the behest of Dr. J earlier today, I agreed to repeat some of my blog posts for Professor Kuin's Writer / Critic class for readers of this blog. Everything I've ever written for this course has been rambling madness somehow turned into intelligible, coherant thoughts. I have decided for this first post to replicate one of my more recent posts on T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Ecclesiastes and the eldritch experience of hearing it playing in my imagination (yes I sound wacko!):

"He Hath Made Everything Beautiful In His Time" (Mar. 10 2006 @ 12:39 AM)

Reading Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” again tonight, I was struck by how much it sounded remarkably (and perhaps also, ironically) like the cryptic wisdom of Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher from the Bible. The first time I came to recognize this was, however, also, simultaneously, when I first began to experience and hear the poem emanating from the page (in my own head) like an old radio broadcast—an eldritch experience while reading, hearing human speech warbling out of the pages like old radio speakers, saturating every word, as well as our own acoustic, audile experience, with an impressive gritty metallic twang, white noise and howling feedback. Always the poem reads and drones like a song, more than likely jazz, with that snazzy choral hook, “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michaelangelo.” The polyphonic resonances of the words hums in my ear, and I listen, enthralled as Eliot’s poem reverberates like a radio tune broadcasted from the page into the living rooms of our hearts and minds.

Eliot’s waxing poetic with biblical language from Ecclesiastes that I believe I recognize in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” came to me in that same way we have heard sometime in the past a tune we knowingly hum to, but which we do not consciously realize. The lyrical, almost hypnotic, syncopations of Eliot’s “There will be time, there will be time,” drone in my head with that same melodic, singsong tune like a broken, biblical record playing Chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes. Take the most recognizable lyrical passage of this book:

1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2 A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 A time to get, and a time to lose; A time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 A time to rent, and a time to sew;
8 A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
9 A time to love, and a time to hate; A time of war, and a time of peace.
(Eccl 3:1-9)

At times the language is more cryptic, disguised and harder to place when I continue listening to this beautiful, lyrical poem. Sometimes Eliot seems very aware of this, purposely playing with his reader and provoking them like those old Anglo-Saxon (Old English) riddles: inanimate, personified objects teasing their readers to figure them out with puns and double entendres. He waxes poetic with the pages of Ecclesiastes while putting on his reader at the same time:

And I have known the eyes already, know 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?

Sometimes the language isn’t exactly word-for-word adaptations of phrases, per se, but shows to the reader Eliot imitating the versatile spirit and / or thumping beat of Solomon’s speaking words of wisdom. He lives, writes and speaks distinctly in the poem for us through the voice of the writer of Ecclesiastes: reviving Solomon or the Preacher, employing his very style of writing. Compare:

The wise man’s eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness; and I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all. Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity. (Eccl. 2:13-15)

With Eliot’s:

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.

Like our first encounter with the wisdom of Solomon, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” plays for us like a tune (on the radio or gramophone) first with that abrupt, ripping crackle of words, but then the music of Ecclesiastes recedes into the background softly guiding and amplifying Eliot’s beautiful, loving hymns of praise.