First, that is a very inadequate understanding of what it means to portray reality as subjective, in the Idealist context. Space and time are merely forms of intuition (ie, ways in which objects are presented to our consciousness), but for all that they are not "in our minds", but are the media in which phenomena appear. We encounter one another as phenomena through our bodies, or the actions of our bodies. The ability to interact (to sign and see, to speak and hear, to touch and feel) guarantees intersubjectivity, and we communicate about a shared universe, however, from different perspectives. I do not, myself, think that the poem has much to do with Bradley. (If I recall correctly, Eliot was an undergraduate when he wrote "Prufrock", and took up Bradley in graduate studies).
I think that the poem is about morbid self- consciousness and indecision, a sense of self- effacement and peripherality to the mainstream of life. ("No, I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be, am an attendant lord, one that will do, to swell a progress, start a scene or two).... This is a well- brought up young man out for a night in the seedy side of town, and paralyzed to find himself confronting choices that would alter his perception of the world, and of himself, forever..... |
