TS Eliot - Prufrock - Gerontion - Ash Wednesday And Other Shoter Poems

T. S. Eliot was not, it must be admitted, a poet particularly concerned with cheering everybody up. While other writers were busy celebrating flowers, sunsets and the restorative pleasures of a pleasant country walk, Eliot was investigating spiritual exhaustion, fractured identities, the collapse of civilisation and the uncomfortable possibility that modern existence was one enormous social embarrassment. Fortunately, he was extraordinarily good at it.

T. S. Eliot: Prufrock, Gerontion, Ash Wednesday and Other Shorter Poems (1978), by B. C. Southam and published by Macmillan, offers an illuminating guide to some of the most influential, perplexing and magnificently unsettling poetry of the twentieth century.

At the centre of this literary expedition stands J. Alfred Prufrock, one of literature’s great monuments to indecision. Here is a man capable of transforming the simple prospect of attending a social gathering into an existential crisis of almost geological proportions. He worries about his appearance, his inadequacies, the opinions of others and whether he possesses sufficient courage to disturb the universe. Most people would simply have stayed at home and watched television, had the opportunity existed.

Then there is Gerontion, with its ageing narrator contemplating history, spiritual emptiness and the general disappointment of human affairs. It is hardly an advertisement for cheerful retirement, although readers who enjoy a little intellectual gloom will find themselves splendidly accommodated.

Ash Wednesday, meanwhile, explores religious longing, uncertainty, renunciation and the difficult search for spiritual renewal. Eliot’s language becomes rich with symbolism, allusion and philosophical complexity, demonstrating once again his remarkable ability to make a relatively short poem require considerably more thought than an entire railway timetable.

B. C. Southam serves as an invaluable guide through this fascinating literary territory, examining the poems’ meanings, structures, references and intellectual backgrounds. His critical approach helps illuminate Eliot’s often elusive imagery and reveals the intricate craftsmanship beneath verse that can initially appear designed to discourage anyone without three university degrees and a working knowledge of several dead languages.

The result is an engaging companion for students, teachers and general readers determined to discover what Eliot was actually getting at. It provides a welcome opportunity to appreciate the wit, irony, musicality and extraordinary originality of a poet whose reputation for difficulty has occasionally overshadowed the sheer pleasure of reading him.

Published by Macmillan in 1978, this volume belongs to an era when literary criticism was expected to explain difficult books rather than merely congratulate itself for being even more difficult.

Condition: Good. A previously owned copy showing the ordinary signs of age, reading and handling, but remaining entirely capable of assisting another generation through the bewildering corridors of modernist poetry.

Offered by Crappy Old Books, where we understand perfectly well the problem of indecision. Should you buy this book? Should you consider the implications? Should you disturb the universe? We would suggest purchasing it first and leaving the larger philosophical questions until after tea.

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