Eliot's favourites among his French contemporaries weren't surrealists, but were rather the figures of St. John Perse and Paul Verlaine, among others. This does not mean Eliot had nothing in common with surrealist poetry, but the facts that both Eliot and the Surrealists owed much to Charles Baudelaire's can perhaps best explain any similarity "strangely evocative explorations of the symbolic suggestions of objects and images." Its unusual, sometimes startling juxtapositions often characterize surrealism, by which it tries to transcend logic and habitual thinking, to re

veal deeper levels of meaning and of unconscious associations. Although scholars might not classify Eliot as a Surrealist, the surreal landscape, defined as "an attempt to express the workings of the subconscious mind by images without order, as in a dream " is exemplified in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

The nightmarish theme continues as the reader explores the wet, cold and hostile streets of the city, a city which seems to many readers to be on the verge of reality, without ever crossing the line. The evening is "spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherized upon a table." With the assumption that the etherised "patient" is asleep, though not naturally and quite uncomfortably, the dream imagery and "corrupted" sense of reality are again evident. Some critics believe that Prufrock's inability to be a part of society is personified by this "etherised patient." Like a scene from an apocalyptic film, the streets are dark, dirty and half-deserted, leaving the reader to wonder why the world is as is described by Prufrock.

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is not generally described as a surrealistic poem, but if the definition of surrealism combines dreams, the un- or sub-consciousness' and symbolic meaning through objects and imagery, the landscape of the poem may fit this classification. The reader is taken on a journey through th

Some topics in this essay:
Dante's Inferno, Alfred Prufrock, Black Cat, Talking Michelangelo, Charles Baudelaire's, St Louis, Prufrock Prufrock, Eliot Surrealist, Andre Breton, Moreover Eliot, alfred prufrock, song alfred, love song alfred, song alfred prufrock, love song, andre breton, mind images, etherised patient,