Preludes

I

The winter's evening settles down
With smells of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves across your feet
And newpapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On empty blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

Commentary

one of the

One of the earliest Eliot poems I read - we had to study it in school. Despite that <g>, it remains one of my favourites…

[The Preludes] form a group of four portraits - two of places, and two of people. Despite their inclusive title, which suggests the preoccupation with musical form that was to stay with Eliot until he wrote the Four Quartets towards the end of his career, one is immediately struck by their vividness as sketches. Each seems to suggest the material for a painting by a French artist at the turn of the century. Eliot has been wittily charged with writing the best French poetry in the English language, and although the landscape of these poems seems to be that of Edwardian New York, it is seen as if through the eyes of the French poet Paul Verlaine.

– George Macbeth, Poetry 1900-1975

Biography

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in Missouri on September 26, 1888. He lived in St. Louis during the first eighteen years of his life and attended Harvard University. In 1910, he left the United States for the Sorbonne, having earned both undergraduate and masters degrees and having contributed several poems to the Harvard Advocate. After a year in Paris, he returned to Harvard to pursue a doctorate in philosophy, but returned to Europe and settled in England in 1914. The following year, he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood and began working in London, first as a teacher, and later for Lloyd’s Bank.

It was in London that Eliot came under the influence of his contemporary Ezra Pound, who recognized his poetic genius at once, and assisted in the publication of his work in a number of magazines, most notably `The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ in Poetry in 1915. His first book of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published in 1917, and immediately established him as a leading poet of the avant-garde. With the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, now considered by many to be the single most influential poetic work of the twentieth century, Eliot’s reputation began to grow to nearly mythic proportions; by 1930, and for the next thirty years, he was the most dominant figure in poetry and literary criticism in the English-speaking world.

As a poet, he transmuted his affinity for the English metaphysical poets of the 17th century (most notably John Donne) and the 19th century French symbolist poets (including Baudelaire and Laforgue) into radical innovations in poetic technique and subject matter. His poems in many respects articulated the disillusionment of a younger post-World-War-I generation with the values and conventions–both literary and social–of the Victorian era.

As a critic also, he had an enormous impact on contemporary literary taste, propounding views that, after his conversion to orthodox Christianity in the late thirties, were increasingly based in social and religious conservatism. His major later poems include Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1943); his books of literary and social criticism include The Sacred Wood (1920), The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), After Strange Gods (1934), and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1940). Eliot was also an important playwright, whose verse dramas include Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party.

He became a British citizen in 1927; long associated with the publishing house of Faber & Faber, he published many younger poets, and eventually became director of the firm. After a notoriously unhappy first marriage, Eliot separated from his first wife in 1933, and was remarried, to Valerie Fletcher, in 1956. T. S. Eliot received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, and died in London in 1965.

– The Academy of American Poets - http://www.poets.org/

[and more]

This particular Prelude, of course, may be familiar to some of you - several of the lines are used almost as is in the song ‘Memory’, from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical ‘Cats’ (which itself is based on Eliot’s book of light verse, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats). You can’t keep a good poet down :-).

— Thomas

The Wondering Minstrels, poem #107 · 1 June 1999

Poem selected by Abraham Thomas

Fair use

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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.

Vidya · 23 October 2005

Even I read this poem in school, maybe 6th standard. But then all that the poem represented to me was a scene of the winter evening, of the rain, of the horse and other images. But now when I read this poem in the backdrop of the age to which Eliot belonged- The Modern Age - and probe deeper into what these varied images signify, a completely new picture emerges out of the lines, a new meaning leading to a better understanding altogether.

First of all winter, especially in cold countries like England, is not a refreshing image, it is both dull and uninspiring and if we can say so, lifeless too. And rain in winter is the most unwelcome of all. The pitiable condition of the streets after an evening shower is a picture not so worth mentioning after all. Maybe the images have been deliberately chosen by the poet in order to reflect the dull and dreary times in England then, when under the sway of industrialization and war, life was undergoing a tremendous change, which to these poets was not inspiring at all. Eliot draws our attention towards burnt-out ends of cigarettes, grimy scraps, withered leaves and broken blinds, none of which are refreshing or pleasing even in the remotest sense of the words.

The modern poet looks for meaning not in the beautiful and refreshing aspects of Nature like the Romantics, but in the dull and dreary aspects of mundane living. And failing to find any assurance in these, they are disillusioned and frustrated. The modern poet is not obsessed with ‘beauty’, but he etches life’s ugliness in verse. The portrayal is so stark and real that it has a great impact on the reader and transforms their mood completely.

The lonely cab horse may symbolically represent the lonely man or even the lonely poet, who is frustrated with life and steams and stamps in disgust. The lighting of the lamp doesn’t illuminate in a positive sense. It only serves to highlight the miserable condition of the streets after the gush of rainfall.

Of course this need not be the only way of looking at the poem and its images provide various shades of meanings.

Vidya Venkat.

Vidya · 27 October 2005

Following a request that came to me through email, I would like to explain what the mood of the poem exactly is. T .S. Eliot wrote this poem sometime in 1915 when the First World War had already begun and was bringing about a great deal of social change, most of it unwelcome. All the ‘past’ glory of England was turning into ‘present’ turmoil and there was little inspiration to look forward to in ordinary life for poets like Eliot and Pound. Their state of mental unrest finds clear expression through their poetry. When Eliot gives the title ‘Preludes’ to this poem, it must be understood that Eliot wanted this poem to introduce his new style of approach to his audience, his poetry being markedly different from that of the previous age. In fact, Preludes can be seen as an introductory note to the poet’s magnum opus, “The Wasteland”.

Cont… Next post

Vidya · 27 October 2005

One must carefully note the collocation of words and images in the poem here. Eliot paints the landscape of his mind in carefully crafted verses. They almost become a defining statement on the kind of life that prevailed in many parts of England and the Western countries then.

The first clue to the mood of the poem comes in the first line itself. Each word in this poem is part of the poet’s mental landscape. One must understand that poetry reflects a poet’s attitude; therefore it is the poet’s personal mood which shapes the mood of the poem as well. The word ‘winter’ symbolizes harshness, coldness and lifelessness. The poet is therefore obviously not in one of his happy moods, having referred to winter in the very first line of the poem. The dreariness of life is reflected here. To winter is added the image of evening, which marks the approach of night, again, symbolizing the approach of darkness into the very lives of people. And Eliot says that this ‘winter evening’ settles down, as if it to suggest that it is going to be this way only from now on. The mood too is “settled” therefore in the very first line.

The smell of steaks in passageways suggests the mundane, ordinary nature of life. Like what I said in the previous post, modern poets are primarily preoccupied with the day-to-day life and utilise it as material for their poetry. The smell of steaks pervades the air in passageways therefore, is like how monotony pervades the lives of people. People eat the same steaks everyday and every house by the passage cooks the same too!

Thus the burnt-out ends of cigarettes, the smoky days, the grimy scraps, the withered leaves, the vacant lots, broken blinds, lonely cab horse are all symbols that signify the monotony and dreariness of life. This is how I interpret each image:

Burnt-out ends: People burnt out of all their vitality like a cigarette butt.

Smoky days: Hazy days; the vision of man is blurred when the air is filled with smoke; it also stifles breath- suggestive of poor living conditions.

Grimy scraps: Suggesting waste, rubbish and therefore wasted lives.

Vacant lots: void in the lives of people, void of meaning, void of purpose, etc.

Broken blinds: suggestive of broken lives; of people unable to pull them selves together and crumbling under emotional pressure or for whatever other reason.

Lonely cab horse: also loneliness of man, the poet too included; each is suffering singularly; embittered souls.

From this one can clearly understand what the mood of the poem is like. Interepreting hidden meanings in the poem are essential to a complete understanding of the poem and the poet’s attitude and that of the Age which he represents. This explains why Shakespeare never wrote such things as Eliot did. Reading the poem in the backdrop of history always helps. Of course, every poet attempts to only generalize his personal experience and therefore this poem may mean different things to different people owing to the light in which they view it. It’d indeed be nice to know from the readers what other relevance this poem might possibly have.

Vidya · 27 October 2005

Burnt-out ends: People burnt out of all their vitality like a cigarette butt.

Smoky days: Hazy days; the vision of man is blurred when the air is filled with smoke; it also stifles breath- suggestive of poor living conditions.

Grimy scraps: Suggesting waste, rubbish and therefore wasted lives.

Vacant lots: void in the lives of people, void of meaning, void of purpose, etc.

Broken blinds: suggestive of broken lives; of people unable to pull them selves together and crumbling under emotional pressure or for whatever other reason.

Lonely cab horse: also loneliness of man, the poet too included; each is suffering singularly; embittered souls.

From this one can clearly understand what the mood of the poem is like. Interpreting hidden meanings in the poem are essential to a complete understanding of the poem and the poet’s attitude and that of the Age which he represents. This explains why Shakespeare never wrote such things as Eliot did. Reading the poem in the backdrop of history always helps. Of course, every poet attempts to only generalize his personal experience and therefore this poem may mean different things to different people owing to the light in which they view it. It’d indeed be nice to know from the readers what other relevance this poem might possibly have.

Vidya Venkat.

Vidya · 28 October 2005

Here is a complete and correct text of the poem:

THE WINTER evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

III

You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

Hutch · 24 November 2006

And against the images of dullness and dreariness, notice the repeated images of light:

I.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

II.
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

III.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;

IV.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

Against all the despair of that world, some are still lighting lamps, raising the shades, seeing visions, and gathering fuel for fire. The hope of a new day still lives, indomitable.

BB,
Hutch

Rrpoeticlov · 28 February 2007

hi
i am rajendra shinde. i teach english in a small town near pune, maharashtra, india. i would like to be your friend to share my views on literary texts and issues.
please reply to further correspondence.
yours truly,

rys
28.2.2007