Recurring images of time, romantic disillusionment and memory reveal the inherent tension between the actual and the possible in Eliot’s poetry. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock dismantles idealistic romanticism and exposes the pessimistic perspective on life, love and time that is central to modernism. At the time of writing, in 1911, Eliot was twenty two years old, and was battling with a lack of lyrical inspiration. For this reason, critics have argued that Prufrock 's romantic hesitations are a version of Eliot’s poetic anxieties. Rhapsody on a Windy Night has a similar mood and setting to The Love Song, with the former additionally presenting how memory links the actual and the possible. Time is a theme that recurs in many of Eliot’s
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Beginning with the evocative simile; “Midnight shakes the memory / As a madman shakes a dead geranium”. The reason this madman shakes a dead geranium is that he has a blind faith in the possibility that doing so will bring it back to life. Eliot’s simile personifies midnight and suggests that it naively tries the possibility that by shaking memories of “twisted things,” it can somehow bring back the actual experiences that the moon has “dissolved”. He creates textual integrity, “The reminiscence comes / Of sunless dry geraniums”, the rhyme enforces the memory of the reader and reminds us of the tension between actual experience and possible memories so that we can cynically condemn the moon for surrounding herself with olfactory pleasures from her memories, “Smells of chestnuts… female smells… cigarettes… and cocktail smells”. “Memory throws up high and dry / A crowd of twisted things.” The word twisted is repeated through this poem in a haunting fashion, connecting the image of memory with “twisted things”. The personified lamppost, which is a symbol of the possible, commands the protagonist to “Put [his] shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life” to which the narrator responds, in memory, “The last twist of the knife”. Eliot’s use of rhyme and his commitment to continual refinement of words and images impart a textual integrity that helps intensify the contrast between the actual and the possible in the recurring images of
Beginning with the evocative simile; “Midnight shakes the memory / As a madman shakes a dead geranium”. The reason this madman shakes a dead geranium is that he has a blind faith in the possibility that doing so will bring it back to life. Eliot’s simile personifies midnight and suggests that it naively tries the possibility that by shaking memories of “twisted things,” it can somehow bring back the actual experiences that the moon has “dissolved”. He creates textual integrity, “The reminiscence comes / Of sunless dry geraniums”, the rhyme enforces the memory of the reader and reminds us of the tension between actual experience and possible memories so that we can cynically condemn the moon for surrounding herself with olfactory pleasures from her memories, “Smells of chestnuts… female smells… cigarettes… and cocktail smells”. “Memory throws up high and dry / A crowd of twisted things.” The word twisted is repeated through this poem in a haunting fashion, connecting the image of memory with “twisted things”. The personified lamppost, which is a symbol of the possible, commands the protagonist to “Put [his] shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life” to which the narrator responds, in memory, “The last twist of the knife”. Eliot’s use of rhyme and his commitment to continual refinement of words and images impart a textual integrity that helps intensify the contrast between the actual and the possible in the recurring images of