The Yellow Fog of "Prufrock"

THE YELLOW FOG OF "PRUFROCK" John Hakac The yellow fog stanza of eight lines in 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (11. 15-22) has been for many an ambiguous if not unmanageable part of the poem since it appeared over fifty years ago. In attempting to relate the passage to the implicit theme of Prufrock's weakened faith in civilization and his consequent inaction through timidity, dramatized by Eliot's emphasis on Prufrock's enfeeblement of love, one often feels thwarted by the technique of ellipsis and the thick psychological web of the poem. Noticeable too is the limited help found in critical discussions. A surprising number of the criticisms which offer analyses of the poem do not explicate at all the conspicuous yellow fog passage.1 Others imply by their characteristically brief and indecisive treatment of the passage that one had better not dally too long on a deadend venture. According to Grover Smith, for example, Prufrock's observation of the yellow fog is merely a way the man has of diverting himself for a few moments from the prospect of a visit.2 For George Williamson, the passage has more, but negative, importance. He sees the cat-fog image as suggestive of a desire which ends in inertia.3 Williamson's assumption that the outcome of the stanza s richly amorous emotional activity is inertia seems questionable. For inertia is a condition marked by an inherent inactivity, and the flowing motion of the passage, which rises to an energetic caper, calls for recuperation as the normal response. Thus, for some the stanza may end not with inertia, but with a credible fatigue and rest. If one studies "Prufrock" with an eye for detecting negative and positive values, it becomes apparent from a psychological viewpoint that the yellow fog passage, far from being a cul-de-sac or an oversized fragment,4 is the only section of the poem which is organically complete and which ends on a note of positive satisfaction. It appears to contain an apprehensible and useful essence with tenable connections to the entire poem. Prufrock gazes attentively at the evening fog. He seems to have entered into a good mood for the observation, detached from himself and almost objective about what he sees, objective in the sense that none of the timidity and anxiety incipient in his opening sally (H. 1-12) is present here. Subconsciously he associates the cat-fog's provocative behavior with what he most desires: love. The stanza can be read as a very normal, although subconscious and highly symbolic, 1TlIe studies of Leonard Unger, G. S. Eliot, Moments and Patterns (Minneapolis, 1956) and Eric Thompson, G. S. Eliot, The Metaphysical Perspective (Carbondale, ??., 1963) are two examples. 2T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays (Chicago, 1956), p. 18. ^Reader's Guide to T. S. Eliot, 2nd ed. (New York, 1966), p. 60. *Representative of most critical judgment is Elizabeth Drew's implication, in T. S. Eliot: The Design of His Poetry (New York, 1949), pp. 32-33, that it is one of the subordinate details, a fragment, used for developing the "ugliness and squalor of the common urban scene" with its "creeping, choking atmosphere of spiritual miasma." 52 The Yellow Fog of "Prufrock"53 description of the act of love.5 It is an animal, physical love. Earthy, as we shall note later, is perhaps an even better word. Sexual desire of some force is obviously not dead in the man. Three distinct phases of love are traceable in this unique, self-contained passage which stresses one aggressive and one passive partner. The fog, likened by Prufrock to a yellow tom-cat,0 woos, experiences a climax, and rests. The demonstrative rhetoric, remarkable for the break it represents in the subdued tone of "Prufrock," gives the passage its affirmative value. No other lines in the poem have the effective physical maneuvers and sexual connotations of these. In the wooing phase (H. 15-20), the yellow cat-fog "nibs its back," "rubs its muzzle," "licked its tongue," and "slipped by the terrace." The consummation (I. 20) is achieved with the quick "made a sudden leap," followed by the cozy rest...