It seems to me that the subject of "let" is an understood "you," that the subject of "go" is "us" and that the plural "you and I"
is subjective, not because it is subject of "the poem" (whatever that could be), but the subject of an understood "will go" or "go" with some other modal. To say that "us" is somehow "restored" (whatever that means) is to avoid the "mistake" by inventing a new rule and a new concept (subject of the poem) to go with it. I think it is easier to "restore" the understood grammatical elements that need to be there for the sentence to work with the rules we are used to: "Let us go then, (thus) you and I (will go) . . . . Reiteration is not an unusual phenomenon. This example simply has common elements of the reiteration omitted, which, however, is also not unusual.
Bruce D. Despain
(no credentials, just making an observation)
>>> [log in to unmask] 03/29/01 08:11AM >>>
Eliot has done a masterful job in this instance of restoring the objective
"us" to the subject "you and I" of the poem. It isn't an error.
Jeff Glauner
Associate Professor of English
Park University, Box 1303
8700 River Park Drive
Parkville MO 64152
[log in to unmask]
http://www.park.edu/jglauner/index.htm
-----Original Message-----
From: Omarjohns [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 7:31 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: The New York Times Corrects T. S. Eliot's Grammar
The Washington Post, The Red Pencil, By Chris Redgate
Wednesday, March 21, 2001; Page C11
Yeah, right: The New York Times Corrects T. S. Eliot's Grammar
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, a major book reviewer for The New York Times,
actually suggested that the first line in 'Prufrock' needs a fix: 'But hold
on! This means that one of the great writers of the 20th century committed
a grammatical blunder in one of his most famous poems. 'Let us go then, you
and I,' reads the first line of T. S. Eliot's 'Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock.' 'When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient
etherised upon a table.' Oh, well, it just goes to show that all of us
writers make our share of grammatical errors. Me and T. S. Eliot! T. S.
Eliot and I.'
___
So, what is the error?
Omar
Riyadh
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