“…for a hundred visions and revisions” A Comparative Study of T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No.2 and Édouard Manet’s paintings
Abstract:
T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock represents the quintessential modern man – a fl neur figure,
filled with doubts and uncertainties, living in a shrinking, mundane world of
fragmentation. The name Prufrock itself is prosaic in nature. The identity of this
man is never clarified throughout the poem. His thoughts are not sequential, rather
disjointed. The premise of the poem is dark, with a tone of despair, set at a
slumbering pace, bringing out the monotony of mechanical modern living with a
single refrain after every stanza. In Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony the
uncertainties of Prufrock’s expressions find a voice. Using instruments like the
violins, trombones and drums, he sets the tone for the relentless upwelling of the
incalculable which seek to threaten us. With transient, mellow melody alternating
the grim tones, his composition creates the urge of the modern man to move past
his ambiguities and listlessness. Each of the movements contribute significantly, in
showcasing the despondence associated with a dissonant, fractured existence.
Édouard Manet, one of the most versatile painters of the 19th century, largely
considered to be an impressionist, is also considered by many to be a modernist
painter, for the “bafflingly detached, opaque” (Fried Michael,1992) technique he
employed in his compositions. Rarely do the figures in his paintings look directly
at the viewers. The sense of distance and alienation is expressed by the lack of
visual contact even amongst the figures in his paintings. Manet experimented with
a wide range of colour palettes, according to the subject matters he chose to depict.
In this paper I shall attempt to draw thematic parallels between Eliot’s poem,
Mahler’s Second Symphony and Manet’s paintings like Masked Ball at the Opera
(1873), The Dead Christ with Angels (1864) and Before the Mirror (1876) which
serve as critical commentary on the predicament of modern life.
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