Today January 4 2014 is 126th Birth Anniversary of T S Eliot
T S Eliot:
“No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written. He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.”
T S Eliot, 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', 1915:
"...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, ..."
"...Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', which is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement." (Wikipedia)
The poem will celebrate its centenary in 2015.
As soon I read this poem around 1982, I liked it, although I did not understand a lot of it.
I particularly loved these two lines:
"In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo."
Why? I don't know.
(On September 28 2007, I wrote a post "In the Room the Women Come And Go, Talking of Dev Anand", on Dev Anand's autobiography.)
On the art of comics, Holland Cotter says in the New York Times, November 15 2013:
"Comic art is, on a very basic level, about concentration, about fitting a complete world in a small space and keeping it coherent and readable."
Isn't poetry about the same:
"fitting a complete world in a small space and keeping it coherent and readable."?
Recently, I got too see an adaptation of the Eliot's poem as a comic book by Julian Peters
Artist: Julian Peters
Now, there are five frames in the picture above.
The third, "Let us go and make our visit", is fine and so is the fourth, "In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo", and so are the frames one and two at the top where the poet is shown dressing up.
They all are very good drawings but add no value to my appreciation of the poem.
But wait...what makes the comic strip of Peters special is the fifth frame depicting the following line:
"The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes"
That is the way the fog rubs its back upon the window-panes as the poet walks by...Wonderful.
I hope when they celebrate the poem in 2015, they will also remember Julian Peters's adaptation.
T S Eliot:
“No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written. He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.”
T S Eliot, 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', 1915:
"...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, ..."
"...Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', which is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement." (Wikipedia)
The poem will celebrate its centenary in 2015.
As soon I read this poem around 1982, I liked it, although I did not understand a lot of it.
I particularly loved these two lines:
"In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo."
Why? I don't know.
(On September 28 2007, I wrote a post "In the Room the Women Come And Go, Talking of Dev Anand", on Dev Anand's autobiography.)
On the art of comics, Holland Cotter says in the New York Times, November 15 2013:
"Comic art is, on a very basic level, about concentration, about fitting a complete world in a small space and keeping it coherent and readable."
Isn't poetry about the same:
"fitting a complete world in a small space and keeping it coherent and readable."?
Recently, I got too see an adaptation of the Eliot's poem as a comic book by Julian Peters
Artist: Julian Peters
Now, there are five frames in the picture above.
The third, "Let us go and make our visit", is fine and so is the fourth, "In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo", and so are the frames one and two at the top where the poet is shown dressing up.
They all are very good drawings but add no value to my appreciation of the poem.
But wait...what makes the comic strip of Peters special is the fifth frame depicting the following line:
"The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes"
That is the way the fog rubs its back upon the window-panes as the poet walks by...Wonderful.
I hope when they celebrate the poem in 2015, they will also remember Julian Peters's adaptation.
