Portrait of a Lady

In his last year as a Harvard undergraduate, T. S. Eliot devoured the work of the French Symbolist poet Jules LaForgue. The French Symbolists were a literary group that emerged in the second half of the 19th century. In addition to LaForgue, they included Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Verlaine.

LaForgue treats romantic relationships between men and women with a satirical eye: The eagerness of the woman to ensnare the man in a romantic alliance is deflected by the ironic detachment of the male, which prevents any serious emotional communication. LaForgue’s influence can be seen in Eliot’s “Conversation Galante” (1916), whose mocking tone mimics LaForgue’s style in his poem “Autre Complainte de Lord Pierrot” (or “Another Lament of Lord Pierrot”), a dramatic dialogue between a man and a woman.

That poem by LaForgue was also on Eliot’s mind as he wrote “Portrait of a Lady,” as can be seen by the line, “Well! and what if she should die some afternoon” (Line 114), which echoes LaForgue’s “Enfin, si, par un soir, elle meurt dans mes livres” (“Finally, if, one evening, she dies in my books” [LaForgue, Jules. “Autre Complainte de Lord Pierrot.