The Last Romantic: W. B. Yeats

Abstract

Prufrock’s self-denigration disguises an innate slothfulness, an unwillingness to accept that great ends are commensurate with the immense expenditure of energy and self needed to attain them, a collapse in the belief that had hitherto held sway in previous, more unwaveringly Christian centuries: the belief that through commitment, effort, discipline and self-sacrifice man could transcend the infirmities of his nature and win through to a worthy goal. This belief underlay in particular the endeavours of the Romantic poets, who held that through a concentrated output of imaginative energy the individual could break through to a higher self, a clearer reality and ‘leave the world unseen’ far behind or beneath him. Such faith was common to most 19th-century poets, writing in the shadow of the Romantic mountain range that had miraculously pierced the clouds in the early years of the century. But Prufrock remains nonplussed at the prospect offered by such creative endeavour, merely muttering, ‘And would it have been worth it, after all?’