Reading The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot, because it's mentioned in Baumgartner by Paul Auster . I get the translation of the Dante quote . I read about Lazarus . "At the time of its publication, "Prufrock" was considered outlandish, but the poem is now seen as heralding a paradigmatic shift in poetry from late 19th-century Romanticism and Georgian lyrics to Modernism." ( Wikipedia ) "The poem, described as a "drama of literary anguish", is a dramatic interior monologue of an urban man stricken with feelings of isolation and an incapability for decisive action that is said "to epitomize [the] frustration and impotence of the modern individual" and "represent thwarted desires and modern disillusionment". (op cit) "Prufrock laments his physical and intellectual inertia, the lost opportunities in his life, and lack of spiritual progress, and is haunted by reminders of unattained carnal love. With visceral ...