Critical Analysis of Two Love Poetry
Both Eliot and Edna write on the subject that borders on love. While Eliot believes in the concept of a love song; in his anti-semitic approach, he thinks that love is not enough. The title of T. S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” shows that this is not a traditional love poem. He writes the poem in 1909 while he was a graduate student at Harvard. The poem possesses characteristics of most love songs such as repetition, rhyme, and rhythm. It also focuses on the womanly love that eludes Prufrock. On the other hand, Edna Saint Vincent Millay survives the modernist period and writes the poem “Love is Not All” --- a typical poem with a mixture of two types of sonnets. Born in 1892, Rockland, Maine, Millay exemplifies the poet's views on love through her message that love is of secondary importance because it cannot provide for physical needs. “Love is not all; it is not meat nor drink” (739). However, the speaker is uncertain if she would give up love for bodily comfort. This message is emphasized also by the use of poetic devices, including rhyme, repetition and alliteration.
"Love Is Not All" by Edna Saint Vincent Millay takes the form of a sonnet, with fourteen lines of rhyme. She points out all that love cannot do. Love is neither food nor sleep. Love cannot shelter a person. Love cannot heal; the speaker stresses each incurable ailment by repeating the letter "B" in "breath... blood... bone" (739). Millay also repeats "not" and "nor" as she lists every way in which love is lacking. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is a narrative; presenting a moment in the life of the title character in the form of a dramatic monologue. The poem centers on a balding, insecure middle-aged man. He expresses his thoughts about the dull, uneventful, mediocre life he leads as a result of his feelings of inadequacy and his fear of making decisions. Unable to seize opportunities or take risks (especially with women), he lives in a world that is the same today as it was yesterday and will be the same tomorrow as it is today. He does try to make progress, but his timidity and fear of failure inhibit him from taking action. “I grow old…I grow old…” (945).
Looking at the background of T. S. Eliot, I believe that the setting of his poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, takes place in the evening in a bleak section of a smoky city. This city is probably St. Louis, where Eliot (1888-1965) grew up. But it could also be London - where Eliot moved in 1914. However, Eliot probably intended the setting to be any city anywhere. Eliot focuses on the theme of Loneliness and Alienation. “we have lingered in the chamber of the sea…” (946). Prufrock is a pathetic man whose anxieties and obsessions have isolated him; Indecision: Prufrock resists making decisions for fear that their outcomes will turn out wrong; Inadequacy: Prufrock continually worries that he will make a fool of himself and that people will ridicule him for his clothes, his bald spot, and his overall physical appearance; and Pessimism: Prufrock sees only the negative side of his own life and the lives of others.
In the opening line Millay established the debate or argument which is typical of a sonnet by declaring the statement “love is not all”. It is a statement of which the reader can agree or disagree. Millay through the first two quatrains explains all the ways in which “love is not all”. She elaborates about all the physical aspects of survival that love cannot provide. Her first examples are that it is not “meat nor drink” (739). In this statement Millay is conceding that a person can’t live on love alone. A person has to have nourishment and water for the physical body to survive and love cannot replace that. She also stresses other basic needs in live that love cannot replace. e.g. love is not “slumber nor a roof against the rain” (739). Millay continues to establish other physical aspects of health of which love cannot supply. Love can’t function like the vital organs such as kidneys, liver or lungs. Love cannot “fill the thickened lung with breath” or “clean the blood”. If a person has health problems with vital organs, love won’t be able to keep that person alive. Love can’t set a fractured bone. There are some aspects of life that require medical care in order to heal and survive. Love can’t do it all by itself.
The negative form and the arguments pile on the reader, creating a compelling picture of why love is unnecessary. The speaker then abruptly stops using the negative. He ends the octave by saying "yet many a man is making friends with death / Even as I speak, for lack of love alone" (739). The switch draws attention to these two lines, which foreshadow the final idea of the poem: that perhaps love is more important than bodily comfort. The negative form is not used again until the sonnet's last sentence. The speaker focuses on his own opinions by considering whether he would trade love for physical comforts. At first, the speaker seems willing to trade his love, as indicated by “it well may be…I might be driven to sell your love for peace”. However, the speaker acknowledges the power of love in an emotional discussion of pain and desire.
Both Eliot and Millay in their poetic work describe the efficacy of love. Millay’s “Love Is Not All” remains thoughtful about the vitality of love. Unlike many modernist poets, who reject older ideas, Millay successfully fuses romantic opinions with a more realistic view of love’s power. She ends on the note that if a person doesn’t have love, there isn’t much to live for. Also, T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” sanctions and endorses love by writing if music be the food of love, play on.
Works Citied
Madden, Frank. Exploring Literature: Writing and Arguing about Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. pp. 739. Print.
Effinger, Sandra. "Love Is Not All" by Edna St. Vincent Millay. 17 Nov. 2008
Millay, Edna St. Vincent. “Love Is Not All: It Is Not Meat nor Drink.” Living Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. John Brereton. United States: Pearson and Longman,2007.790.
Madden, Frank. Exploring Literature: Writing and Arguing about Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. pp. 942-946. Print.