Brooksian Reading of Prufrock

The obvious underlying paradox that supposedly governs the “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is strangely absent. In its place becomes a plethora of synecdoches—identifying the parts without the concrete acknowledgement of the whole. This knowledge in itself can be construed as evidence that the poem is about the nature of poetry and Brooks’ insistence that poetry revolves around paradoxical (ambiguous, metaphorical and ironic) language. The entire poem hinges on the absent lady and almost every stanza suggests or alludes to an empty central figure. It is a paradox of meaning in a poem impossible to paraphrase.

Just as Prufrock identifies himself indirectly with Polonius in stanza on Hamlet, earlier in the poem he aligns himself with a well-known biblical figure in King Solomon, who is the widely accepted author of Ecclesiastes (a book in the Hebrew Bible), which states: “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up…” (King James Version, Ecclesiastes 3:1-3). The idea that there is “nothing new under the sun” (Eccles. 1:9) emphasizes the bleak emptiness of Prufrock’s reflections and constructed realities. The poem memorably alludes to the words in the Bible saying, “And indeed there will be time…There will be time, there will be time/ To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;/There will be a time to murder and create,/And time for all the works and days of hands…” Prufrock, like Solomon, begins to fathom the world’s sheer meaninglessness. Yet, within the emptiness, Prufrock seems to find paradoxical significance in the mere awareness. Though it could seem a comfort to know there is an unoriginal time for everything, Prufrock also points out that it includes “time..for a hundred indecisions/ and for a hundred visions and revisions.” Ironically, in this stanza, Prufrock identifies with a wise biblical king. For most of the poem, Prufrock’s hyperconsciousness welcomes a peculiar suspension of space and time, yet the constant references to a much older literary tradition create ambiguity, not only in finding what I.A. Richards would call the “Total Meaning,” but also in pinpointing exactly where the governing paradox lies if there are so many (often initially overlooked) possibilities hidden deep within the poem.