{"id":530,"date":"2022-07-02T12:22:23","date_gmt":"2022-07-02T12:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/?p=530"},"modified":"2022-07-02T12:28:11","modified_gmt":"2022-07-02T12:28:11","slug":"an-image-of-the-modern-world-through-the-poetry-of-eliot-and-yeats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/?p=530","title":{"rendered":"An Image of the Modern World through the Poetry of Eliot and Yeats"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The poetry of T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats is harmonious in its attempt to capture the chaotic state of their modern world. The poets do not appear to present two separate senses of the era, but to write in conversation with one another, co-creating a picture of their time that can be seen through the declining state of mankind, questions of Christianity, and an overall sensation of the end of the world. For both poets, there is a recognition of increasing loss, as if the valued aspects of human life are beginning to spin and funnel through an eternal disposal, dissolving as they pass through the center of this dark and undefinable vortex; and it is this inability to define the origin and the end of the disaster that ultimately enables a definitive picture of a senseless modern world. T.S. Eliot first presents this state as an \u201coverwhelming question\u201d in his 1915 poem, \u201cThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.\u201d Yet, rather than defining the question and attempting an answer, he invites the readers to experience<\/em> it instead. \u201cOh, do not ask, \u2018What is it?\u2019 \/ Let us go and make our visit\u201d (Eliot 11-12). Thereby, transporting the reader into the chaotic sensation and imagery of the world. Thus, in the following paragraphs, this essay will highlight experiential moments centered on the state of man, Christianity, and the end times within Eliot\u2019s \u201cThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock\u201d and \u201cThe Hollow Men,\u201d along with Yeats\u2019 \u201cThe Second Coming\u201d and \u201cByzantium,\u201d in an attempt to construct the poets\u2019 sense of their modern world\u2014the fears, the emotions, and the yearnings of their overwhelmingly disturbed generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eliot\u2019s famous depiction of the empty, numb state of man is very apparent in \u201cThe Hollow Men,\u201d but also evident in \u201cThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock\u201d where he introduces an idea of emotional numbness. \u201cLet us go then, you and I, \/\u2026\/ Like a patient etherised upon a table\u201d (1-3). This scene is congruent with his invitation to experience the modern world, and it reveals the poets expression of the necessity to turn off all the faculties of reason and logic in order to experience and understand the state of the world. Thus the poet subtly explains that it is not at all an understandable state, but entirely senseless. In \u201cThe Hollow Men\u201d he furthers this depiction by presenting the state of man like scarecrows in a dry field. \u201cWe are the stuffed men \/\u2026\/ Headpiece filled with straw\u201d (1.2-4). Here, the reader gathers that not only is man numb and void of an ability to reason, but he is altogether empty, void of everything that makes him human. Yeats appears to concur with this interpretation of the state of man, but adds to it slightly in \u201cThe Second Coming,\u201d stating \u201cThe best lack all conviction, while the worst \/ Are full of passionate intensity\u201d (Yeats 7-8). And in \u201cByzantium,\u201d he calls mankind \u201cAll mere complexities\u201d (7). Agreeing with Eliot that most men altogether lack reason and thought, he then observes that the worst of men seem to have an increase of malevolence through the presence of wicked emotion. It appears, through the understanding of these poets, that those who should be cognizant and defending humanity are virtually dead\u2014dead in mind and soul. Yet those with the desire to exploit humanity are the only ones with some form of life within them, creating the chaos within the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aiding in this picture of chaos are principles of the Christian faith which, until this era, served western mankind as a tool through which to make sense of the world\u2019s mysteries. Now, the poets draw attention to the fact that even this aspect of life seems to fall apart in the debris of modern experience. Eliot, in both poems, evokes a sense of King Solomon\u2019s conclusion on the meaning of life through subtle references to the biblical book of Ecclesiastes. In \u201cThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,\u201d he parallels Solomon\u2019s doctrine that there is a time for everything: \u201cThere will be time to murder and create,\/ And time for all the works and days of hands\u201d (28-29); and in \u201cThe Hollow Men\u201d he refers to the voices of the hollow men as \u201cquiet and meaningless\/ As wind in the dry grass\u201d (7-8), a notion which seems to echo the first clause of Solomon\u2019s conclusion, that life is altogether meaningless like grasping for the wind. However, it is evident the poet finds no comfort from the connection, as the speculations and attempts to make sense continue to grow in complexity through the end of both poems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, in \u201cByzantium,\u201d Yeats refers to the biblical moment in which God calls Moses to liberate the enslaved Israelites, where Moses experiences the divine presence through a burning bush. In Yeats\u2019 poem it is represented as \u201cThe flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,\/ Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame\u201d (26-27). This biblical moment is usually characterized by an idea of human purpose and divine benevolence, yet Yeats removes such sensations from the moment in his poem and replaces them with an experience of \u201cAn agony of trance,\/ An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve\u201d (31-32). By relating the presence of God to the sensation of \u201cagony,\u201d Yeats highlights the depravity of the state of the modern world, recognizing either a blindness toward purpose and divine benevolence, or a suspicion that mankind may have been wrong about it all along. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthering these poetic notions of Christianity in the modern world is the overwhelming sensation of the end of time, to which both poets refer through biblical terms. In the last stanza of \u201cThe Hollow Men,\u201d Eliot includes a line from the Lord\u2019s Prayer \u201cFor Thine is the Kingdom\u201d (5.10), alternating it with an image of an obscure and undefinable \u201cShadow,\u201d thus indicating the difficulty of faith in the corruption of the modern world. Following this notion is Eliot\u2019s conclusion, \u201cThis is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper\u201d (5.27-31). Whimpers, however, do not come from faith and conviction, but from a sense of unsureness and defeat, like the overall sense of the state of mankind during this period. Yeats adds to this idea in \u201cThe Second Coming,\u201d when he emphatically declares as one possessing faith, \u201cSurely some revelation is at hand; \/ Surely the Second Coming is at hand\u201d (9-10). Yet he reverses this sense by recognizing an origin of the monster \u201cSpiritus Mundi\u201d (12), the horrific spirit of the age, from which \u201cThe darkness drops again\u201d (18). In seeking answers from religion, the poet again finds only confusion, and is left with the dark and indifferent sensation that \u201cnow I know \/ That twenty centuries of stony sleep \/ were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle\u201d (19-20), referring to the birth of Christ and the birth of Christianity, thus expressing doubt in this religion as he observes many horrors that arose throughout history as a result of it, and particularly the horrors of his own era. The ends of the poets\u2019 conclusions are doubt, indifference, and confusion\u2014the makeup of the state of mankind, the state of religion and all other attempts to make sense of the chaos, and the ultimate indication that whether or not the end of life has actually come, the end of life as it was once known has most certainly arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

October 17, 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works Cited:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eliot, T.S. \u201cThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.\u201d The Waste Land and Other Poems. <\/em>Harcourt Brace & Company, Orlando, 1934. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eliot, T.S. \u201cThe Hollow Men.\u201d AllPoetry.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeats, W.B. \u201cByzantium,\u201d \u201cThe Second Coming.\u201d The Poetry Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The poetry of T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats is harmonious in its attempt to capture the chaotic state of their modern world. The poets do not appear to present two separate senses of the era, but to write in conversation with one another, co-creating a picture of their time that can be seen through the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[492,224,505,62,494,503,509,499,501,502,246,498,496,507,508,504,500,497,493,495,491,506,489,490],"class_list":["post-530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-critical-analyses","tag-byzantium","tag-chaos","tag-christian-faith","tag-christianity","tag-eliot","tag-empty","tag-end-times","tag-j-alfred-prufrock","tag-modernism","tag-numb","tag-poetry-analysis","tag-prufrock","tag-t-s-eliot","tag-the-end-of-time","tag-the-end-times","tag-the-hollow-men","tag-the-love-song","tag-the-lovesong-of-j-alfred-prufrock","tag-the-second-coming","tag-ts-eliot","tag-w-b-yeats","tag-waste-land","tag-wb-yeats","tag-yeats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=530"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":595,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions\/595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}