The Abstract Anxiety of T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats

Of all my posts, this is the one which seems like the least amount of a stretch: two modernist poets would, it would seem, have a great deal in common. Indeed they do: both are non-British writers who still manage to be respected as part of the British tradition, despite Eliot being American and Yeats Irish. Both experienced the traumatic horrors of World War I. Both chose to go by their first two initials. Okay, that last one is a little weak. But still true.

One of the things that struck me when reading some of their poetry was the way that two of their poems, Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and Yeats' "The Tower" carried overtones of a nervous anxiety which made me feel a little uneasy and confused. By looking into the texts of the poems, I hope to be able to more clearly articulate how/where this tone appears, and perhaps learn something about the poets besides.

The characterization present in both poems has probably the most pervading aspect of the anxiety. This is most obvious in "Prufrock" where our speaker is Prufrock himself, who writes this poem with the intention of winning his lady friend, but it really becomes a look into his conscious and subconscious mind, where fear, confusion, and worry take center stage. Traditionally, Prufrock would take a heroic role in this poem, but he is instead rather unorthodox. He describes himself as being bald, and dressed modestly, but after each assertion he tells us exactly what people would say of him, how they would whisper to themselves how his hair and body are thin (see Eliot lines 40-44). Prufrock is also uncomfortable around women. In a slightly odd turn, he notes the arms of women: "[a]rms that are braceleted and white and bare/([b]ut in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)" (Eliot 62-64). He also notes how those arms rest on tables and wrap shawls, and then distrustfully says "And then how should I presume?" (68). Throughout the poem this line is repeated three times, often surrounded by other questions. In fact, most of the poem consists of questions about any number of things.

Likewise, the narrator of "The Tower" seems to be nervous as well. His first lines of the poem are one question: "[w]hat shall I do with this absurdity-- O heart, O troubled heart--this caricature,/ Decrepit age that has been tied to me/ As to a dog's tail?" (1-4). He then continues by nearly stating how anxious he is: "[n]ever had I more/ excited, passionate, fantastical/ Imagination" (5-8). We see him later, in the second part, pacing the tower. As he looks round at all beneath him, he states that he would ask questions of everything he sees (see Yeats 24).

Anxiety is highlighted by the diction of both poets. "Prufrock" is famous for describing the "evening [as being] spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherised upon a table" (Eliot 2-3). Similarly, "The Tower" describes a "[t]ree, like a sooty finger, start[ing] from the earth" (Yeats 19). Also, the amount of rhyme is similar in both, although Yeats rhymes in an ABAB style rather than Eliot's AABB. The rhyming is very straight, and has a sort of sing-song effect in both poems. This element does two things: first, for me at least, it evokes an eerie feeling because of its similarity to children's rhymes; second, it seems to be an attempt on the narrator's part to place the large, unanswered questions of the poem into a frame, which might help him to understand it. There are also times in both poems where dashes are used to break off the narrator's speech. In "Prufrock," Prufrock is wondering about a discussion in which he would have "squeezed the universe into a ball/...roll[ed] it toward some overwhelming question," seeing himself as a Lazarus, "[c]ome back to tell you all, I shall tell you all--" and stops (Eliot 92-95). In "The Tower," the narrator says that Hanrahan "rose in frenzy there,/ And followed up those baying creatures towards-/ O towards I have forgotten what--enough!" (Yeats 71-3). These breaks is interesting in that it leaves the reader asking his/her own questions about what was left out, and its possible significance to the poem. Like the narrators, we now have confusing questions buzzing around our heads.

Both narrators describe their surroundings and its happenings in detail, even though they still have more questions than answers. These surroundings are frequently not described in pleasant ways, however. Prufrock personifies the yellow fog of the evening as though it were an animal, perhaps a dog or cat, writing that it "[l]icked its tongue into the corners of the evening" then "[l]et fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys" and in the end "falls asleep" (Eliot 17,19, 22). The narrator of "The Tower," true to Yeats' frequent inclusion of sketches of Ireland, mentions a Mrs. French whose serving-man cut the ears from a farmer and returned with them in a covered dish (see Yeats 25-32). Reading these strange descriptions, as readers we are not surprised to find that the narrators are confused, as it is an alien world that they inhabit, with a touch of cruelty.

And in case you're not willing to take my word for it, Michael Schmidt writes that Eliot's "Prufrock" is a fragmented poem, which fragmentation is only relieved by the rhyme and tone. It represents a snapshot into both the inner mind of the narrator as well as an examination of the narrator's surroundings. Most interestingly, Schmidt writes that "Prufrock" isn't even a love poem, it is an elegy: "an elegy not for what has been but for what might have been had the eloquently inadequate speaker been more equal to the social challenge of his world and more complete in himself" (Schmidt 605). 

The fragmentation and strangeness of the images in the poems create a discontinuous image that is abstract; and with the undertones of an unheroic, anxious narrator, we arrive at my theme of abstract anxiety. Most critics would agree that this is due to the influence of WWI on both poets; but that could be the subject of another post entirely. Suffice to say here that T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats were affected by their times in ways they expressed in their poetry, a deep knowledge of their times and the cruelty of life: "In a minute there is time/ [f]or decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse" (Eliot 47-8).
Sources:

Eliot, T.S. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. T.S. Eliot. 1920. Prufrock and Other Observations." Bartleby. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2012. <http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html>.

Schmidt, Michael. "The Lighting of the Lamps." Lives of the Poets. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. 597-611. Print.

Yeats, W.B. "The Tower." W.B. Yeats: The Poems. Ed. Richard J. Finneran. New York: Macmillan, 1983. 194-19. Print.