Boredom in Eliot's poetry

[Aunty-lion]

Hi there,

I'm trying to get my head around an essay on Eliot. One of the essay questions relates to boredom as a recurring theme in Eliot's poetry, and this is the question that appeals to me the most. However, I am currently feeling a bit stuck. I feel like if I had one or two poems to study in relation to this question I'd be sweet, but its so hard to know where to begin when you have the Collected Works sitting in front of you!

I love Prufrock (especially the whole concept of 'human voices') and I'm sure that this poem would be relevant to my essay, but I don't know where else to look.

Any ideas??

Mauri ora!

[Dr. Hill]

Prufrock is very relevant.

[Virgil]

You're going to have to give me examples of boredom in Eliot. I know Eliot fairly well, so if you show me what you mean I may be able to give you some advice. You reminded me of this great Eliot line from one of The Four Quartets: "Distracted by distraction from distraction." :)

[David R]

Hey,

If you're writing an essay on Eliot and boredom you might do some research on the French Symbolist poet, Charles Baudelaire, who was a major influence on Eliot's work. There is boredom also in Baudelaire or "ennui" which is the french term. The dictionary definition is: mental weariness from lack of occupation or interest; boredom.

You say you have the collected works and dont know where to start - this surprises me as Eliot wrote so little poetry. You're right about Prufock - do you have the recording of Eliot reading this poem? His tone is boredom and ennui all the way through. I would also direct you to The Waste Land, in particular, part 5, What the Thunder Said, which seems to me to be very much about weariness:

Here is no water only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think

Again, the tone is boredom and ennui, if the substance isn't exactly.

[Paulclem]

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?


I think these two extracts from Prufrock are about boredom - There is a sense of stasis in the poem - it begins with an image of an etherised patient. You're waiting for something to happen, and so is Prufrock. He is too self conscious to be the catalyst to anything. Imagine, measuring out your life in coffee spoons!