Modernism was in many ways a rejection of Romanticism, which often used nature as a setting, or even a subject. He imagines walking on the beach and hearing the mermaids singing, but laments 'I do not think that they will sing to me.' He questions whether he should have been 'a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.'

Though he talks of visits and parties, and says that he has 'known them all already, known them all,' the tone is one of an outsider, watching the action happen around him but not feeling a part of it. Alfred Prufrock.' The narrator is a passive observer. This is one of the central themes of 'The Love Song of J. Without that strong sense of meaning, many authors expressed a sense of being disconnected. Sense of AlienationĬlosely related to the questions of self in modernist works was a sense of alienation. The questions in the poem concern meaning in the face of mortality. He wonders, 'Do I dare disturb the universe?' and assures himself that there will be 'time for all the works and days of hands.' At the same time, the narrator brings an objectivity to the questions, making them not about a subjective experience but a universal one. Alfred Prufrock,' the narrator struggles with questions of meaning within not only the society, but also existence itself.

Rather, modernist writers were interested in larger questions of self and meaning in a universal context. However, unlike Romantic poetry, its chief concern was not the expression of emotion. One of the characteristics of modernism is that it struggled with questions of self and identity.

Poem love song