that premature yellow death & doctrine: on T.S. Eliot

Eliot has always been one of those guys: I don't know what he's talking about 1/2 the time and thats precisely why he's so intriguing. Eliot & Pound. And part of the reason I'm intrigued by them is that they're so damn pretentious and I want to know why. And part of the reason I hate them is that they're so damn pretentious and I want to know why.

Let's take Prufrock. Dear old J :: really only 23 year old Eliot. I am 26 (not that I'm jealous that he had already produced masterpeices by my age and I don't know what the hell I'm doing) and would not at all presume to speak in the voice of an older woman. And yet he does it. Presumptuous prick. And he pulls it off. And here's why. That yellow fog. He writes of (what can safely been assumed as) London, yellow in its old age, in it weathered industrialization. It is tired, worn-out, dirty, and this energy may just give Eliot enough of that worn-out mentality to write this poem. Do I dare disturb the universe? Eliot pulls it off by creating in J an alter ego of sorts, how he will feel as an older man, because this Eliot at 23 of course dares to disturb the universe, each time he sets his pen to paper he attempts to disturb the universe.

And he does.

Let us go then you and I. Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. Time for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of a toast and tea. Do I dare? Do I dare? In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already. I am no prophet--and here's no great matter. That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all. It is impossible to say just what I mean! I do not think that they will sing to me. Human voices wake us and we drown.



Let us fear death by water.