Are We All Hollow Prufrocks? Or Can We Lead Meaningful Lives?

This sermon was delivered on Sunday, 22 February, 2015, by Doug Trenfield.

Are We All Hollow Prufrocks? Or Can We Lead Meaningful Lives?

I must’ve been 17, a few years into having a sense of my deepest self. I often felt alone in this, but I knew I wasn’t completely alone. I had a few people -- my twin younger sisters and my friend Ken -- with whom I talked about such stuff. But mostly those around me seemed absorbed by the trivial. Basketball games. Dumb movies. Silly homework assignments. Mowed lawns.

So I must’ve been 17, but in a sense new to myself and new to poetry. I wrote some, and it wasn’t completely awful. I am proud to this day that as a writer and as a reader I wasn’t too given to the maudlin, the cheap trip to the emotional jugular. I was 17, and sitting on the floor of Waldenbooks, at our mall, the Muncie Mall, in the poetry section (which was probably a half rack toward the back of the store) perusing volumes of poetry. I did this a lot. And still think perusing is a good way to find poems that fit you. Anyway, this particular evening, I found a slim -- about 120 page -- volume of poetry, T.S. Eliot: Collected Poems. I began perusing. As I recall, I turned right to “The Hollow Men”:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Whoa. Cool, I thought. Yeah, T.S., I hear ya’. Bunch of hollow men all around me. Talking trivial stuff. And it ended:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Very cool, brother T.S. Preach it.

I told my friend Ken about this cool poet, T.S. Eliot. Because I never thought of Ken as a hollow person, even in my most self-infatuated days. I swear, he made a lemon face. Ewwww. He had had to or was having to study him in his English class, and it was horrible, he thought.

And here's why this story is important. I found Eliot on my own. I had no idea nor nor care about Mistuh Kurtz -- the central character from a 19th century novel, Heart of Darkness, I later learned -- or what his death meant. He’s in the epigram:

Mistuh Kurtz -- he dead.
A penny for the old Guy.

Or that “the old Guy” was probably a reference to Guy Fawkes, a seventeenth century British revolutionary whom at the time I’d never heard of. I just thought, Hollow men, cool. And the images, so dark. And I believe I was affected by the musicality of the poem, though couldn't have described it. Ken, a literature loving guy, read him under duress, probably with some expectation of being able to articulate all the allusions even if they didn't mean anything to him.

I’ve told that story many times to reluctant readers of poetry. I never taught advanced English classes, which I was fine with. I think I had a greater talent for helping students find good reasons to have literature in their lives than I had for helping students pass AP exams. And I’m telling you this story because I’m guessing most of you -- most -- don’t really like poetry, but you probably have a vague and unpleasant recollection, like that of having a cavity filled when you were 10, of Prufrock, and you might even recall that he’s in a poem by T.S. Eliot. And there’s a good chance that you, like my buddy Ken, didn’t like that poem or Mr. Eliot, and when you saw the first part of the title of this sermon in the newsletter, “Are We All Hollow Prufrocks?” you very likely thought, well, it’ll be good to see so-and-so, and maybe the snacks’ll be good. But I’m here “to tell you all, I shall tell you all” that there will be no explicating, scansion, or deconstruction going on here. I’m going to tell you about my 41 year relationship with Prufrock and the poem Brother Eliot wrote about him. Well, yeah, there’ll be a little analysis. How could there not be? But I promise you won’t need to take notes, and none of this will be on the test. And it looks as though the snacks today are pretty good.

Back to 17 year old me sitting on the floor at Waldenbooks. I bought that book, T.S. Eliot: Collected Poems, 1909-1962. If you remember Eliot at all, you know most of his poems are very long -- “The Hollow Men,” coming in at four pages, was one or the shortest --  so I saved the longer ones to read at home. At home, I discovered Prufrock.

I think it’s important, when discussing a poem, to have heard it, or to have read it aloud, recent to the discussion, so even though it’s long -- about seven minutes -- I’d like to read it aloud to you. You have the text. Scan as you listen, or just listen. Up to you. I’ll skip the epigram, but if you want to brush up on your Italian, have at it. It’s from Dante’s Inferno, I understand.

            The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock
                        T.S. Eliot

            S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
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;
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.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
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?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
               And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
               And should I then presume?
               And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head
               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
               That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
               “That is not it at all,
               That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

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.
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.


When I first read “Prufrock,” I didn’t know much, so many of even the most accessibe I’d heard of Hamlet, but I know I hadn’t read or seen it, and I wasn’t a careful enough reader that I would’ve researched it. And besides, the depth of that allusion, even if I could’ve articulated what it “meant,” according to some English teacher, would’ve been lost on me.

It wle allusions were lost on me. “I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be”? I’m suras Prufrock’s failed attempts at connecting with women riveted me at 17. That I could relate to:

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, . . . .
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question, . . .
If one, settling a pillow by her head
               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
               That is not it, at all.”

Don’t you see? Prufrock was deep.  And so was I. He could’ve “squeezed the universe into ball” and rolled it “towards some [unspecified] overwhelming question.” No hollow man he, nor I. We were deep, but no one (not the females we were attracted to, anyway, and that’s all that mattered) got us. Grokked us. Yeah, if we were to speak, Prufrock or me, what was really on our minds, we’d’ve gotten, “That is not what I meant at all; that is not it, at all.” Damned hollow people. We were better than that, Prufrock and me.

But now. You see, I aspired to be a great writer. I even imagined the documentary that would be made about me late in my life. Oh, not a whole documentary, goodness no! Just like, maybe, a segment on Sixty Minutes, you know? I imagined, as I walked back to my high school, mid-morning, after skipping Mr. Melby’s class, how my high school would look in the documentary. So what happened? Why didn’t I become a great writer? When I talk about this, I often invoke a story told by Frank McCourt, author of the best selling memoir and his first book Angela’s Ashes, that he told in his third book, also a memoir, Teacher Man. When asked why he waited so late in life to begin writing, he said, “I was busy.” And while there’s truth to that, it’s a bit o a ruse, a distraction. Like Prufrock, I hesitated. I did not dare to eat a peach. And I rarely squeezed the universe into a ball and rolled it toward some overwhelming question. I rested in Prufrock’s refrain, “There will be time.”

But now. I hear this poem differently. I’m 58. I’m retired from teaching. I never became a great writer. As yet, 60 Minutes has shown no interest in my life’s story. I now see a different dimension to Prufrock’s lament. I thought I’d be a Hamlet, with a life that mattered on a large, public stage. (Let’s set aside for our purposes that Hamlet’s life was thrust into importance largely by forces beyond his control.) Or that the mermaids would sing to me as they did Odysseus, that my life would matter enough that mermaids would try to deter me from my purpose. But I, like Prufrock, now “hear the mermaids singing each to each,” but, “I do not think they will sing to me.”

Eliot was 27 when he published “Prufrock.” A young man, with hope for an important life, and indeed in pretty broad circles -- poetry, drama, criticism -- his life was an important life. Bully, Mr. Eliot. He might’ve looked at his character Prufrock, or the chorus of hollow men in “The Hollow Men,” jealous of “Those who have crossed/ With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom” -- the people of action, the movers and the shakers -- with disdain. I did, at 17. And probably at 27 as well. But not now, at 58. I don’t really care what Eliot thought. (I’ve always believed, as a literary critic [and we are all literary critics when we read, but those who get the job title just know more than the rest of us], that some critics put too much emphasis on what a writer meant. Poo. Call him and ask him. Asking that question is like asking me what I meant for my son Mike to be at age 25. I could answer, but it doesn’t change who Mike is.)

To the question that is the title of this sermon -- Are we all hollow Prufrocks? Or can we lead important lives? -- I guess my answer is, Yes. We are both. Well, not hollow. (I wrote this title weeks ago.) But, yeah, we’re Prufrocks. Even those who’ve become great writers or well-known for anything have Prufrock in them, I think. And I think regardless of our fame, in our circles of influence we are all important. The circles of our concerns -- maybe not. I mean, those circles get awfully big, like universal, or multiversal (something Steve might be talking about next week when he talks about the Pale Blue Dot). Even to say those circles dwarf us is to aggrandize our existence. But in my family, in my community, we are all players. This perspective, that the universe is at once too huge to fathom and too small and delicate to not be taken seriously, has changed me. I may write one day, and I may not. But I will, I hope, treat each moment and being I encounter with the love and respect they deserve.

At 58, I love Prufrock. He’s my brother. I want to walk along the beach with him, with our trousers rolled, and talk about . . . the ocean. How best to hang a door. Philosophy. Whether the Yankees are the Evil Empire. Why he converted to Anglicanism from UU-ism, and how his family felt about that. I want to grow old with Prufrock. Share dreams we fulfilled, want to fulfill, and will never fulfill. And I want to do things with him. Maybe we could take up fishing. Or volunteer together somewhere. Or work on someone’s political campaign. We could “swell a progress, start a scene or two,/ Advise the prince.” Be an easy tool -- but proudly, because that is what we have to offer.