What does the line “Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue” mean?

Which line in this excerpt from "the love song of j. alfred prufrock" by t. s. eliot uses synecdoche? shall i say, i have gone at dusk through narrow streets and watched the smoke that rises from the pipes of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? i should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas.