Well, I had an idea. When not thinking about dachshunds and such, I think about Prufrock and his journey. I tried to memorize the poem once; but I was in my fifties, I think, and I got only about halfway through. A little past this question: "Is it perfume from a dress/That makes me so digress?" Incidentally, one of the many significant questions in the poem, this one signaling a sudden change in the narration. I said this entry was a commercial.
I am also reading reading a book given to me by my good friend Fred: Toward God, by Michael Casey. One of the central metaphors in the book is the metaphor of the journey. Casey understands human life as a journey toward God, as the title of the book suggests. For example, he quotes Saint Gregory the Great: "The present life is but a road by which we advance to our homeland." I was so taken by the realization of this metaphor that I began to think about the number of great works of literature that embody this metaphor or this metaphorical structure: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, for example. In Shakespeare's works the examples are numerous. Othello starts out in civilized Venice and moves to Cyprus, where life is not nearly so civilized, requiring a rein/reign on the human passions that tends to break down on the island, leading to the tragic end we all know and abhor.
My favorite is The Tempest where the journey has taken place and left Prospero and his lovely daughter Miranda almost alone on a strange and somewhat magical island.
One of my other favorite works employing this metaphor is Moby Dick. Ha! "Call me Ishmael!" Indeed. One of the delightful things about Melville's fine story is that was written in nineteen century New England where the American transcendentalists, like Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, were throwing off traditional Christian meaning to turn to nature as an embodiment of God, a manifestation of God. One might say that in that atmosphere or intellectual climate, the school teacher, Ishmael, having trouble tolerating his fellow humans decides to deal with his darker feelings by going whaling. In so doing Ishmael retells the story of his setting sail, again from the relative safety of land, and going out onto the dangerous seas, after whales, essentially an American enterprise, an American business.
At the center of this very human quest story then is the figure of the whale, leviathan, so to speak, the Biblical image in the book of Job of one of those elemental, cosmic forces created by God (I should look it up but I would hate to stop and lose my train of thought here, such as it is). In the nineteenth century readers were encouraged to find meaning in nature. Yet also on the rise was the idea that the scientific method was the only means of really finding truth and meaning. Given these elements present in his cultural climate, Ishmael goes to sea. And what does he do there? He not only participates in the chase, but he also studies his prey, the whale, every aspect of it, much to the chagrin of many former students. Chapter after chapter, He explores every aspect of the whale from its skeleton to its behavior in order to determine its meaning, all to no avail, of course. The whale is finally as mysterious at the end of the quest as it was in the beginning.
There is, however, significant meaning to be found in the journey, especially in the contrasting behavior of the two main characters, Ishmael, the only survivor of the journey, and Ahab, the monomaniacal captain of the ship. Every journey, real and/or metaphorical, leaves the traveler vulnerable. If life is truly a journey "toward God," as Casey explains, Saint Gregory's next sentence after the one quoted earlier explains a great deal about the suffering we endure in our voyages: "Because of this, by a secret judgment we are subjected to frequent disturbance so that we do not have more love for the journey than for the destination." (17). "Frequent disturbance!" Ah! There's a useful category wherein I can understand a number of aspects of my own life: frequent disturbances, starting with migraine headaches in graduate school, etc.
If this image or metaphor is seen at the center of all human life, then its manifestation in works of literature could be seen as in some sense pointing us toward that understanding of what truly stands at the center of human life as Casey and Saint Gregory define it. And Prufrock should/may do that as well. Having just thought of that, I am anxious to return to Prufrock to see how the idea might be true.