Here is the answer and explanation to the question What does “To have squeezed the universe into a ball / To roll it toward some overwhelming question” mean? Kindly enlighten me in detail.
What does “To have squeezed the universe into a ball / To roll it toward some overwhelming question” mean? Kindly enlighten me in detail.
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This is one of those all too brief moments in the poem when Prufrock seems on the brink of seizing the day and abandoning himself to his carnal desires. In the quoted line above, Eliot alludes to a similar line in Marvell’s “To his Coy Mistress,” where the speaker urges his beloved to roll up all their combined strength and sweetness into a ball. What Marvell is referring to here is the union of himself and his mistress in the act of love-making.
Prufrock desperately wants to make a similar move and succumb to the temptations of the flesh; but try as he might, he cannot. He remains utterly terrified of committing himself in this way, body and soul. And so he asks himself whether it would’ve been worth it “to have squeezed the universe into a ball / To roll it towards some overwhelming question.” This is his way of trying to console himself, to convince himself that perhaps it might not have been such a good idea to face his fears and have sex with a woman after all.
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Further Reading
- https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/442…
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