Preludes_T_S_Eliot

‘Preludes’ is presented in 4 parts and spans the course of a 24 hour period. Unusually, the narrative starts in the evening, which hints to the general theme of a decline. It should be noted that the poem seems to bypass daytime altogether, focussing on the twilight hours of dusk and dawn and so enhancing the gloominess in the speaker’s tone and mood. The narrative then takes us through to the morning and back to the evening again. This lends a cyclical feel to the poem which alludes to the repetitive tedium of an urbanised way of life. The prelude, more commonly associated with music, is usually a smaller and less significant work which is presented before the main event. Eliot’s employment of the form here could be said to be working in tandem with the general feeling of insignificance expressed in the poem. Using this form hints that this is only a small, minor foreword to some greater metaphysical gripe. Part I sets the melancholic tone, observing the ‘burnt-out ends’, ‘withered leaves’ and ‘vacant lots’ which evoke a sense of decay or decline. The use of plosive alliteration (‘wraps’, ‘scraps’, ‘newspapers’, ‘beat’, broken blinds’, ‘pots’, ‘cab’, ‘stamps’, ‘lamps’) and a fricative/sibilant succession of words (‘stale smells’, ‘sawdust-trampled street’, ‘press’, ‘coffee-stands’, ‘hands’, ‘furnished’ etc.) facilitate the speakers contempt for what he believes to be the material, insignificant grotesqueries of life. The missing ‘the’ in the second line ‘With smell of steaks…’ almost projects an animalistic or primitive quality onto the inhabitants of this world and exudes a general disdain for the way of life described. Part II opens with the metaphor ‘The Morning comes to consciousness…’ The personification used here has the effect of the ‘morning’ acquiescing with, and so reinforcing, the speaker’s disdain. The sense of isolation is further developed in the absence of tangible human life. Eliot uses passive sentences to expand this idea, in ‘…the lighting of the lamps’ the ‘muddy feet that press’ and ‘…the hands that are raising dingy shades’; this device allows for the ‘actors’ to seem only half present, like ghosts, so there is an almost supernatural undertone created. In each instance here, the speaker is describing the mundane activities of daily life carried out by people to whom we are never introduced. Instead we are told of their ‘feet’, ‘hands’ and ‘stale-smells’, all of which evoke the sense that the inhabitants are merely shuffling about one another in their perfunctory roles , more in a state of existence than in a state of real vitality. Part III sees a departure from the third person to the second person in which we are taken in from the street to a bedroom. The speaker now refers to ‘you’, it is possible that the ‘you’ is the speaker and he is now talking to and about himself. The uncertainty about such details adds to the feeling of anonymity and heightens the sense that this is a world in which the individual has become a faceless, nameless member of the general populous. This idea is echoed by the use of repetition. Here the ‘thousand sordid images’, like the ‘thousand furnished rooms’ in part II depicts a mass of people without any defining idiosyncrasies, more like the parts of a machine than coexisting individuals. There is a feeling of adjournment here as the speaker recalls dreams and images in remembrance of the night before. The caesura in ‘You lay upon your back, and waited’ illustrates the act of waiting and throws a focus on the following lines which, in contrast use enjambment, to quicken the pace and so emulate the fleeting transience of an internal thought process. The description, though abstract is vivid; in the almost onomatopoeic way the ‘sordid images’ which make up the subject’s soul are said to have ‘flickered against the ceiling’ like moths. The adjective ‘flickered’ connotes a frailty which contrasts to previous images of a more boisterous nature such as the horse that ‘steams and stamps’ or ‘muddy feet that press to early coffee stands’. It also primes us for the poignancy of ‘the infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing’ in Part IV. Then the subject is jolted from their daydream, “And when all the world came back/ And the light crept up between the shutters/ And you heard the sparrows in the gutters’. The repetition of ‘and’ has the effect of shaking the daydreamer out of a half-conscious state, but there seems to be no newness or verve to the lack-lustre morning described. The light is said to have ‘crept’, inferring a sense of fatigue, the morning in general lacks the vigour usually associated with beginnings. The absent pronouns in ‘the yellow soles of feet’ and ‘both soiled hands’ again work to diminish the subject’s identity. The speaker’s jaundiced view of the world is emulated in the ‘yellow soles’ depicted. It is even possible that Eliot is implying through word play that the metaphysical soul has become tainted by the meaninglessness of a spiritually bereft existence. The adjective ‘soiled’ implies sinfulness and the reference to ‘palms’ and ‘soles’ could be indicative that the speaker associates the modern working life with a debasement of the soul, an existence which reduces Man to the spiritual plane of an animal. To further support this idea there is a direct reference to the soul in Part IV. ‘His soul stretched tight across the skies’ The image is abstractly suggestive of a crucifix which propels the idea that what is really being discussed is Man’s struggle to retain a spiritual dignity in a morally vacuous environment. According to the speaker (which would account for the negative tone throughout) ‘His soul’ cannot compete with this new metropolis for it is seen to ‘fade behind a city block’ and is ‘trampled’ upon. The use of the possessive adjective ‘His’ seems to now be indicative of modern man generally and collectively, analogous to something Christ-like or something sacrificed. In the line ‘At four, and five and six o’clock’ we can visualise the trampling feet as they trudge back to work, the repetition of ‘and’ mimics the rhythmical punching sound of workers clocking-in, with the series of sequential numbers again alluding to an erosion of the identity. The sibilant alliteration that follows does not have a soporific effect as would often be the case, but rather works to promote uneasiness in the hissing sounds created. The ‘eyes’ seem to follow us from behind the ‘newspapers’. The ‘…infinitely gentle/ infinitely suffering thing’ is the speaker at his most poignant, equating that which is gentle or frail to something which must inevitably suffer. This is shown in repeated use of the superlative ‘infinitely’. It could be described as a biblical allusion to which it seems the speaker is in direct disagreement with the claim that ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’, and the speaker is said to ‘cling’ to this notion suggesting a forlorn hope, though a hope nonetheless. In the final lines the speaker musters a kind of gallows humour, in being ‘moved by fancies’ he tells himself to ‘laugh’ in spite of the hopelessness felt. Though this does not come across as defiance but rather as a forlorn acceptance of the way things are. The last lines are visually evocative; there is an animalistic squalor conjured in the imperative sentence ‘Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh’. In the final simile the notion of loneliness is illustrated by the use of imagery, ‘The worlds revolve like ancient women/ Gathering fuel in vacant lots’. The word ‘revolve’ implies the idea of recurrence which now has an association with drudgery and tedium. The planetary reference here evokes a feeling of being suspended and moving at a glacial pace; it is suggestive of individual lives being remote and alone. The imagery is abstract and can be interpreted in different ways, but the assonance in ‘ancient’ and ‘vacant’ heightens the sense of poignancy. We get the feeling that the speaker is ‘hanging on in quiet desperation’ rather that railing against the situation in outright despair. This subtlety allows us to appreciate the true sadness at the heart of the poem and the frailty and abandonment at the heart of the speaker. We are left with the sense that each man really is an island, alone on a meaningless course around an indistinct axis. -------------------------------------------- [ 1 ]. It has been suggested that the ‘you’ is a prostitute or the speaker’s partner. Eliot is obscure about such details but its effect upon the poem either way is the same. [ 2 ]. The New Testament, Mathew, 5: 3-10 [ 3 ]. Around the time of writing ‘Preludes’ Eliot was said to have been struggling with his faith though he became a catholic in later years. [ 4 ]. Pink Floyd’s ‘Time’