Abstract

The essays analyses the images of fading light in T.S. Eliot’s first poetry collection Prufrock and Other Observations by focusing on the prevalent twilight and nocturnal atmosphere in numerous texts, most notably in the Preludes, where a significant connection can be found with a passage from The Ascent of the ’F6 by Auden and Isherwood. The fading of the light – connected with the end of the working day – is the objective correlative of the deactivation of the human world, highlighted by the contrast with the culmination of the sun which is instead the archetypical symbol of the fertility of life forces. Such images are intertwined with a series of images of death, degradation and degeneration which constitute the semantic opposition of the archetypes of water and fire and thus of fertility