LyricModern · 19157 min · 2 passagesDemanding

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Eliot's first great poem is a monologue by a man who cannot begin. The comedy and the pathos come from the same place: he has thought of everything except doing anything.

Identity Time Doubt

0 / 2 understood

Let us go then

Simile

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a ; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering Of nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a argument Of intent To lead you to an question . . . Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit.

Underlined words and phrases can be tapped for a note

Plain English

Let's go then, you and I, when the evening is laid out against the sky like a patient put to sleep on an operating table. Let's go through half-deserted streets, the muttering places of restless nights in cheap one-night hotels and sawdust restaurants with oyster shells — streets that follow you like a boring argument meant to lead somewhere, to an overwhelming question. Oh, don't ask what it is. Let's just go and make our visit.

Do I dare

Rhetorical question

For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with ; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have 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?

Underlined words and phrases can be tapped for a note

Plain English

Because I've known them all already — the evenings, mornings, afternoons; I've measured out my life with coffee spoons. I know the voices dying away beneath music from another room. So how should I presume? And I've known the eyes already, the eyes that pin you into a fixed phrase; and when I'm pinned and wriggling on a wall like a specimen, how should I begin to spit out the cigarette ends of my days? And how should I presume?

Test what you noticed

The Fragments · Modernism

A broken world, written in broken lines. Every answer comes with the reason and the line that proves it.

Start the lesson →

Go deeper

Identity — how other works handle it →

That's the whole thing.

Read it again slowly — it gets better the second time.

Choose another work→