Question: How does the
shadow of unfaithfulness and insecurity haunt the lovers in T.S. Eliot’s and W.H. Auden’s
poems?
Answer: People in
the past used to lead their life peacefully in comparison to the modern people
now. But the modern people, with the passage of time, have almost forgotten to
trust one another. Therefore, insecurity is a must to obstruct their life. However,
in the Elizabethan Age, lovers were Platonic and found to worship their beloved
just like a goddess from distance. The lover keeps on praising her. But now
after the 1st and the 2nd World Wars, a radical chance has
taken place in everything. Like religion, heavenly love is also corrupted by
insecurity and unfaithfulness that is haunting the lovers in T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’, ‘The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ and W. H.
Auden’s ‘Lullaby’.
‘Lullaby’ is a love poem in
which the sense of insecurity always haunts the lovers because they, at the
crack of dawn, will be separated. Therefore, they have little time to make love
to each other since death will separate them too. Just as every creation on
earth is subject to death and decay, so their love will come to an end soon.
The speaker always thinks of death and he understands that he has little time.
Therefore, he wants to utilise his time by making love to his beloved without
losing a fraction of a second. So the lover says:
“Beauty, midnight, vision dies:”
In
the poem, it is visible that the lovers are involved in un-Platonic love
because real love, according to Auden, is not
possible without physical union. But unlike the Elizabethan lovers, they are
very concerned about their love because a type of unfaithfulness is always
haunting them to a great extant. The phrases ‘faithless arm’ and ‘mortal,
guilty’ put the readers into tension regarding love in the poem. In addition,
the speaker says that:
“...fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,”
Likewise,
in ‘The Waste Land’ by T. S. Eliot, several couples’ love affairs bear the
testimony that their relationship with one another is replete with unfaithfulness
and insecurity because the best guiding forces of life as fellow-feeling,
trust, religious faith, sacrifice and honesty are fast disappearing like a
falling star in the sky in the modern people.
There is a character called the
hyacinth girl who has been molested and deserted by her lover. Now she is too
shocked to talk. Her mental condition is described as:
“. . . I
was neither
Living nor dead, I knew nothing,”
The story of Philomel is shocking
too as she has been molested by King Tereus, her brother-in-law, the husband of
her sister, Procne. Later, she has been transformed to a nightingale. Here she
has been cheated by her close relative. There is another female character who
is talking to her boyfriend but he remains silent all the time. Now comes Lil,
a lower-class woman whose husband, Albert,
is about to return home from the Army. He is a very sensual person whose
relationship with her is just sensual not emotional. It is heard that if she
becomes unable to satiate the sensuality of her husband, he will grab other
women’s hands. Now, she feels insecure because of his faithless husband.
Sweeney is another male character
who is sensual too. He comes to Mrs.
Porter, the brothel keeper, to
satiate his sensual appeal. And their relation is nothing but mechanical. The
relation of the unnamed typist girl with the hunchback clerk is mechanical too.
The clerk is fond of sensuality only like an animal. Like that of typist girl,
the boyfriend of the lady of situation is sensual too who has physical
intercourse with her who is indifferent to him. As soon as, his sensual desires
are met, he leaves her alone bestowing a final kiss. Here, he persuades her to
do it without thinking whether she likes it or not.
Towards the end of ‘The
Fire Sermon’, we have been introduced with three Thames’ daughters who are seen lamenting after losing
their virginity with their boyfriends. They are cheated. Here, the unfaithfulness
along with insecurity in love is clear. As a result, the third Thames’ daughter says:
“I can connect
Nothing with nothing."
Even the
relationship between Aeneas and Dido is not productive. After his departure
inspired by the god of fate, she commits suicide out of frustration. And
Tristan’s relation with Isolde is unproductive and frustrating too.
In fine, it can be said that all the
characters discussed above are more or less haunted by the unfaithfulness and
insecurity because they have lack of trust, sympathy, honesty, religious faith
and self-control. For this reason, they are unafraid of doing immoral things. If
they had the above qualities, they would be happy enough in their life.
Md. Saiful Alam
B. A. Honours and M. A. in English
Lecturer of English
Queen’s College, Dhaka
E-mail: suman64924@gmail.com
My affectionate Readers,
Please, never hesitate to comment and any correction or
suggestion regarding my writings will be largely appreciated and valued and you can ask me any grammatical questions regarding English.
I promise I would try my level best to assist you, all. Thank you very much.
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