Archive, Memory, and Allusions

As Voss and Werner points out, “the archive is always only partially decodable,” urging us “to read its minimum signs with maximum energy”; the process begins with the act of recollection, wherein every piece of evidence is “provisional and subject to revision” (ii). Marinetti opposes delving into archival investigations, contending that it is a “waste … of … strength” or energy to venerate “the past” which yields no results but “exhaust[ion], [and] diminish[ment]”. Eliot, however, employs numerous allusions to such historical figures as Michelangelo, Lazarus, and Hamlet, to name but a few, to describe Prufrock’s internal conflict and disillusionment which implies the chaotic atmosphere of early-20th-century. The underlying intention of the poet is to engage the reader’s cultural memory.