Self-Actualization in The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock by T. S.

Eliot Merve zelik

The aim of this paper is giving information about Thomas Stearns Eliot and his career as a playwrith, poet and literary critic and explaining one of his poems The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in terms of self-actualization.

1. The Career of Thomas Sterns Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) was born in the U.S.A and studied at Harvard University. Beign under the influence of Irving Babbitt at the university, Eliot got influenced by the huge interest to Elizabethan and James I. Era literature, Italian Renaissaince and mystic Indian philosophy. He wrote his dissertation on F.H. Bradleys idealist philosophy. After World War I, Eliot went to France and Germany and studied philosophy and literature there. Then he came to England and studied Greek philosophy. He worked as a teacher in London. He also worked at a bank until 1925. Then he would say those jobs distracted his focus on literature and if he had not had to work, he could have spent much more time on his works. He also worked at a publishing company called Faber and Faber. He published his first poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in 1915, and he compiled all his poems in a book in 1917. In 1922, his poem, The Wast Land was published in The Criterion in England and The Dial in America. Eliot compiled the other poems, which were written in the years between 1909 and 1925. As a playwright and poet T. S. Eliot started his career as a literary critic with The Sacred Wood and Homage to John Dryden in 1920. Eliot compiled his later works in For Lancelot Andrews and Selected Essays in 1923.

Like Hulme and Ezra Pound, Eliot took a stand against Romanticism. He was influenced by 19th century French writers, Jeles Laforgue, Theophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire. Also French sembolists like Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stephane Mallarme had an impact on Eliots poetry. Eliots poems until 1922 and the followings can be divided into two groups. In the first group, his poems are shot through with the themes of the collapse and corruption of Western morality. In the second group, the poems are the outcomes of his chasing of spiritual tranquality after he joined Anglican Church. He was really affected by Dantes poetry, Bible and religious literature. In the poems after 1930, the religious doubt had an effect on his poetry. He laid an emphasis on the relationship between time and eternity in Four Quartet published in 1943. Eliots criticism should be first understood as the work of a poet. Eliot as a literary critic is in favor of J. Donne against Milton and Hopkins against Tennyson. It can be accepted as setting a new order in English literary history. Eliot is also a great poet in contemporary poetry considering that he followed the unity of feelings and thoughts in English poetry and also in his poems. Except his poetry and critical works, Eliot also has plays whose themes are generally based on religious and moral issues. Murder in Cathedral, The Family Reunion, The Coctail Party, The Confidential Clerk and The Elder Statesman are among them. He shows a great art and proficiency in language in those works. Eliot drew the attention of contemporary critics with his reform and change in poetic language and he affected the poets in his time and the others after him. He was awarded with Nobel Prize especially thanks to his thoughts and achivements in literary criticism. Besides, he has a remarkable place in literature.

2. The Background Information

According to Plotinus, the founder of Neo-Platonism, to understand something, the knower should be all the way similar to this thing; the eyes are not created for a particular experience and ears are not created for a different experience. To know the God, humans should benefit from his spiritual and divine aptitude and their personality should be totally like the Divine. Therefore, to understand the term, self-actualization first what is reality for Eliot should be defined and then the process of reaching the reality humans should undergo must be evaluated. So, the term, self-actualzation is both metaphysical and epistomological. Self-actualization is "the tendency to actualize itself as fully as possible is the basic drive...the drive of self-actualization1 according to Kurt Goldstein and Carl Rogers explains self-actualization as "the curative force in psychotherapy - man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities...to express and activate all the capacities of the organism.2 According to Freud, the human psyche has three parts; id, ego and super-ego. Therefore, selfactualization appears when there is a balance between conscious mind and subconscious. Furthermore, Carl Jungs outgrowning term can be interpreted as actualizing ones self because it is kind of reaching another consciousness level. According to Jung, the dilemma of an individual in nineteenth century is caused by evaluating and approaching the reality onesidedly just with mind not emotions. The centre of universe and the source of dignity are not the God but humans according to the nineteenth and twentieth century understanding. The aim of individuals life, which is the existencialist process, is actualizing the ones self. Since the Christian civilization started to be corrupted, literature started to take the place of religion and morality and the subject matter of literature because the tool of decribing and interpreting the existing values and creating new values in replacement of the old ones. Moreover, contemporary writers and poets were promoted to the prophets position or in another term, a sacred position. In humanist context,
1

Kurt Goldstein, quoted in Arnold H. Modell, The Private Self (Harvard 1993) p. 44 Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person (1961), p.350-151

writers and poets started to deal with the term self-actualization of an individual acccording to their own perception.

3. James Joyce and E.M. Forster as Eliots Contemporaries James Joyce creates an all-round character in Ulysses. In the novel, Joyce uses the stream of consciousness technique as a peculiar feature of modernist movement. Sarcartically examining an all-round character in the novel, Joyce points out an individual should have a perfect balance between soul and body, and emotions and mind. Also, E.M. Forster, in Howards End, shows that self-actualization of an individual is just possible setting a miraculous connection between body and soul, human and nature, and past and present. Margaret, in Howards End, appears as a uniting force bringing all the characters together and if any person, who is not able to be a uniting force among the people from different classes, has to be stuck in between being a saint or remaining as an animal.

4. Eliots Literary Approach In the nineteenth and the twentieth century, the Romantics believe that humans are good in born and an individual is both the creator and measurement of his own values. The Romantics believe that people are in an organic relationship with nature and they go through the reality and goodness. T. S. Eliot started his career in literature opposing humanist culture and basics of romantic literature as a product of humanist culture. Benefiting from the similarities between F. H. Bradley and S. Kierkegaars Christian existentialism, Eliot created his own philosophy of life and art. Developing the God-human-art terms, he rejected the humanism, which accepts an individual an only source and the creator of his own social and moral values, and underestimating cultural heritage and history, and traditions.

According to Eliot, the subject (the knower) and the object (the known) in the time and the place are totally separated from each other. Eliot says, We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.3 And he also expresses the contradiction of understanding the time, saying: What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.4 To Eliot, time and place are relative and all we see and think is just the visions. Eliot believes that dualism in time and place is unavoidable. Everything is just an imagination or vision and everybody has relative consciousness levels.

1. The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock In his poem, The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock, the pathetic situation of an individual is caused by his alienation from himself and the society, and his separation from the God. The psychological illness of a modern person as an outcome of a corrupted society is seen as a result of corruption in his personality. The person who suffers from the corruption and separation in his personality cannot create a logical, coherent and objective world view. According to Eliot, a modern person cannot reach the real existence and get in touch with the God. There is not a real love in the poem even though it is called as a love song. There is just an unfulfilled love promise because of Prufrocks reluctance and hesitation. Prufrock is stuck in his ego. Like an object without free-will, he is lost in chaos and uncertainty of the world. For Prufrock, the reality is just an emotional experience. Distorting all kinds of physical and mental reality from the reality, Prufrock creates his own reality on the grounds of his emotional conscious. So Prufrock subjectivises everything.

3 4

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/t_s_eliot_4.html#ixzz1eH6HdXbk http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/t_s_eliot_4.html#ixzz1eH6HdXbk

As it is mentioned above, one of the influential writers for T. S. Eliot is Dante. Also, in the very beginning of the poem, there is an extract from the first part of Dantes Divine Comedy, Inferno. The English version of verses: If I believed that my answer would be To someone who would ever return to earth, This flame would move no more, But because no one from this gulf Has ever returned alive, if what I hear is true, I can reply with no fear of infamy. Dantes Divine Comedy represents a journey of soul towards God and purification. The poem is in a form of a dramatic monologue. The dramatic monologue, Prufrock says: let us go then, you and I,, here he does not call another person as you, he calls his inner personality; he calls his personality to the unity. There is duality in his personality. In the beginning of the poem, the setting is indoors but towards the end of the poem he is in the sea. It shows how much he is far away from the society he lives in. At the first place, he is at home, alone and isolated from the society. Then monologue keeps on like a patient etherised upon a table, there is a patient here but getting rid of the illness starts with defining it. So, Prufrock should first define his illness. Prufrock is passive and reluctant. There is a chaos both in the world and his personality. Therefore, he likens the streets to an argument: streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent. The phrases, a patient etherised and streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent reflect Prufrock solitude, fear, depression, melancholy and desperation. Then the monologue continues to lead you to an overwhelming question. . . oh, do not ask, "what is it?". Here we can assume that he has already gotten his answer in the beginning. Eliot implies the similarity between Dantes Guido and Prufrock. Both of the characters feel the grief of inferno but with one difference, Prufrock feels this grief in the world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. 2. 3.

Bush, Ronald., The Modernist in History, Cambridge University Press,1993 Gordon, Lyndall., T. S. Eliot An Imperfect Life, Norton Company, New York, 1998 Herbert, R.W. Horton, Edwards, W., Freudianism and Other Currents, Backgrounds of American Literary Thought, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofis, 1967, p.337

4.

Jain, Mamju., A Critical Reading of the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot, Oxford University Press, 2002

5.

Jung, Carl., Introduction, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Richard Wilhelm, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Worlt Inc., 1962, p.85-91

6. 7.

Kurt Goldstein, quoted in Arnold H. Modell, The Private Self (Harvard 1993) p. 44 Langbaum, Robert., The Modern Spirit: Essays on the Continuity of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Literature, New York:Oxford University Press, 1970, p.5

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Moody, A. David., The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot, Cambridge University Press, 6th Printing, 2004

9. 10.

Rogers, Carl., On Becoming a Person (1961), p.350-151 Plotinus, Plotinus: Six Enneads, Fifth Ennead, V, 5,

http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Ennead5.html