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October 15, 2004
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like a broken record

Fri Oct 15, 2004, 10:19 PM
Those words have haunted me since last fall, maybe even before that.  In earlier years, Kim was fortunate to recieve her English education under more worthwhile professors than myself, and gained a huge appreciation for the work of T.S. Eliot and other modernist poets.  As a kid, I'd always assumed he was a novelty writer because of Cats, and was surprised to discover in school that most of his poems were actually quite cold and bitter.

Kim has explored his poetry at length, but the single piece that has clung to me, stuck in my mind like a dirty shirt, is "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", the monologue of an aging, dissatisfied man who has seen his hour of potential glory pass, a man who "could have been a contender".  The truly unsettling part of the poem however, is the last stanza; beyond the nervous contemplation is a glimpse of a distant dream, an almost Coleridge-esque fantasia torn from a sleeping mind.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.


I don't know why these haunting words stay with me... maybe it's because of the lack of consolation that they offer, the promise of a plunge into the abyss.  Maybe I'm just an intellectual poseur, a 'groupie' trying to validate my identity and existance by appearing to have meaningful thoughts.

For some reason I really want to an Octopus-themed picture on this.  That moment where Otto finally snaps-out of the spell he had been put under and asserts his responsibility, drowns his books....

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.


..bweh.  I need sleep.

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:iconwashipuppy:
That one has always been one of my favorites. I'll be honnest, I'm not entirely fond of T.S. Elliot as a poet (Except mostly for 'The Hollow Men', probably due to an illustration project based on it), but I've always loved the feel of 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' in all it's slightly bitter, worn glory. The lines that always stood out to me most, asside from the stanza you mentioned, were "I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas" and the line before the last part - "I have heard the mermaid's singing, each to each / I do not think they will sing to me". The claws had me confused for a long time - it seemed to be a really out-of-the-blue line in the poem, moreso then everything else. But, like every seccond scholar in the world, I gained an interpretation eventually.

But I shouldn't really be posting about my thoughts on the poem ^^; I think the connection is there, and it's a good idea. Could definitely work ^_^ and I hope you manage to draw it.
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:iconyang:
Yeah, it's the whole 'Hamlet' thing...


Kind of funny. "The Hollow Men" opens with a quote from Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"... in Apocalypse Now, which was based on that novella, the insane colonel Kurtz recites "The Hollow Men" and other references to Eliot's somewhat nihilistic poetry are made.
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