Vorticism

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF EZRA POUND’S IN A STATION OF THE METRO AND
T.S. ELIOT’S THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

MAHRUKH BAIG
M.Phil Applied Linguistics,
“Lecturer English”
University of Management and Technology,
Lahore, Pakistan.

ABSTRACT
Pound and Eliot’s satiric criticism on the new morality of the modern world is skillfully achieved in their famous poems, “In a Station of the Metro” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. This research paper is aimed at a comparative analysis of these poems, with particular regards to their thematic concerns and stylistic features.
Key words: American Literature, Satiric criticism, Comparative analysis, Critique of the Modern World,
Existentialism

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Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, two of the most prominent and prolific literary figures of 20 century
America, had seen all the limits of misery and despair in the world. They had been ‘in many a land’ to realize that there was ‘naught else in living’. The backdrop of the World Wars and 1930s Great
Depression reflects an extreme sense of loss, dejection and melancholy in their literary output.

Both, Eliot’s ‘Prufrock Song’ and Pound’s ‘Metro Poem’, deal with the similar contemporary issues in a critical tone. These poems launch a stark comment on the modern man living in moral world of immoralities, darkened with the evils of capitalism, hypocrisy, indifference, emotional and aesthetic downfall and social alienation. All these societal vices end up with the establishment of a fatal
“USURA System” that sucks the life from man’s body reducing him to the level of cadavers; “Corpses are set to banquet/ At behest of usura”, says Pound.
Eliot’s primary concern in the ‘Prufrock Song’ is that of the hell to which human being are subjected every day of their lives. The Epigraph to this song has been taken from Dante’s “Inferno”. Translated from the original Italian, the lines are as follows:
“None of us get out of here alive; if I thought that you

References: Alexander, M. (1979). The Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound. London: British Library Publishers. Henry, D. (2001). Eliot’s prufrock, with a modernist’s lens. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois DOI: www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/prufrock.htm Kenner, H. (1971). The Pound Era. California: University of California Press. Nadel, I. B. (1999). Introduction-understanding pound. In I. B. Nadel (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Ezra Pound United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Tytell, J. (1987). Ezra Pound the solitary volcano. New York: Library of Congress Publications.