Title
In the drafts, the poem had the subtitle "Prufrock among the Women." Eliot said "The Love Song of" portion of the title came from "The Love Song of Har Dyal," a poem by Rudyard Kipling, published in the 1888 collection Plain Tales from the Hills. The form of Prufrock's name is like the name that Eliot was using at the time: T. Stearns Eliot.
On the origin of the name "Prufrock", there was a Prufrock-Litton Company, a furniture store, in St. Louis at the time Eliot lived there.
In a 1950 letter, Eliot said, "I did not have, at the time of writing the poem, and have not yet recovered, any recollection of having acquired this name in any way, but I think that it must be assumed that I did, and that the memory has been obliterated."
Read more about this topic: The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock
Famous quotes containing the word title:
“I wish not to be given a title or an appointed position. I can and will do more good if I were made a Federal Agent at Large, and I will help best by doing it my way through my communications with people of all ages. First and Foremost I am an entertainer but all I need is the Federal Credentials.”
—Elvis Presley (1935–1977)
“He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very talents will be a hindrance to him.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
“Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister’s Hill, lived Brister Freeman, “a handy Negro,” slave of Squire Cummings once.... Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord,—where he is styled “Sippio Brister,”MScipio Africanus he had some title to be called,—”a man of color,” as if he were discolored.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)