An interpretation of T.S. Eliot’s “Preludes”. A vision of a vision E-Book

Francesca Cavaliere

• Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,3, University of Potsdam (Anglistik), course: Symbolism and Modernism in British Poetry, language: English, abstract: In my discussion of the poem, "Preludes" by T.S. Eliot, I will proceed in a more or less chronological order. The first stanza envisions a lonely street in the evening drawing a connection between writing and walking. The 2nd stanza shows probably the same street on a busy morning illustrating the restlessness of the city dwellers as well as their lack of self-determination. In the 3rd stanza the street scene is left altogether, instead a single woman is depicted lying in her bed. In a state of expanded awareness she gains a superior view on the world. In the last stanza I shall indicate how the blindness of everyday routine hinders the rest of the city dwellers from noticing this sort of spiritual revelation. The meta-poetic references in the end overtly unmask the speaker as being a poet, making plain that the poem is not to be taken as a means to communicate reality, but rather as the experience of a mental image.

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Table of Content

Introduction

1.First stanza – Lonely street in the evening

2. Second Stanza – Busy street in the morning

3. Third Stanza – The street seen from above

4. Forth stanza – Business as usual on “final” judgement day

5. Metapoetic comments – The cycle of life

Conclusion

List of references

Preludes by Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)

Introduction

The poem “Preludes” was composed between October 1910 and November 1911 by the modernist writer T.S. Eliot and was published in Wyndham Lewis’s journal Blast in July 1915. “Preludes” is based on Eliot’s direct experience of citylife (Eliot spent most of his adult life in London) as well as literary sources such as Baudelaire’ “Crépuscule du Soir” and “Crépuscule du Matin” (cf. Jain, 1991: 63). The title of the poem suggests a musical term that is commonly defined as “a short musical composition on one theme, esp. an introduction to a longer piece” (OLD, 2000). Jain, however, emphasizes that the poem’s content rather represents an “antithesis to the Preludes of Chopin” as it reveals the “grim reality of city life”.

At first glance, “The Preludes” may therefore appear to be a faithful representation of urban life as it is without irrelevant comment. The putative objectivity and detachment of the speaker are, however, deceptive, as everything in the poem is imbued with his perceptions and told from his perspective. The speaker is probably a flaneur who writes down what he experiences while walking in the city. Even by their mere presence the people in the street are made accomplice to this act of writing, but they are unable to read the text they help to produce as long as they are part of the walking crowd. The hustle and bustle of every day life has clouded their view to such an extent that they can only grasp fragments of reality.

It will, hence, be relevant to find how the city and the city dwellers are depicted in the poem. What has provoked their limited view on the world and how can it be overcome? From which perspective does the speaker tell the events and how does this relate to his world view?

Answering these questions, one can draw the conclusion that changing one’s mental attitude automatically changes one’s outlook on the world. As a result, the map of life becomes readable only for those who perceive the world holistically from a higher and more distant perspective which allows them to discover the true nature of things.

In my discussion of the poem, I will proceed in a more or less chronological order. Thefirst stanza envisions alonely street in the evening drawing a connection between writing and walking. The 2nd stanza shows probably the same street on a busy morning illustrating the restlessness of the city dwellers as well as their lack of self-determination. In the 3rd stanza the street scene is left altogether, instead a single woman is depicted lying in her bed. In a state of expanded awareness she gains a superior view on the world. In the last stanza I shall indicate how the blindness of everyday routine hinders the rest of the city dwellers from noticing this sort of spiritual revelation.

The meta-poetic references in the end overtly unmask the speaker as being a poet, making plain that the poem is not to be taken as a means to communicate reality, but rather as the experience of a mental image.

1.First stanza – Lonely street in the evening

The poem is divided into four stanzas of which the first one is written in tetrameter verse.The dominance of number four in style is also mirrored in the poem’s setting. The first line starts with what is normally considered the fourth part of the day (after morning, noon and afternoon) or respectively the fourth season of the year: “The winter evening settles down” (1). Montgomery (1973: 61) points out that the image of the “winter evening” is representative for the doomsday atmosphere described in the following thirteen lines, as it can be considered the coldest and darkest time of the day and year in the Northern hemisphere. The reader also learns about the exact time: “six o’clock” (3) which suggests that one quarter of the day remains. Despite the concrete time given, Montgomery however argues that past, present and future would somehow coincide in this singular “six o’clock” creating an “empty timelessness” (61). This idea is confirmed by the use of simple present tense standing in opposition to the time reference: “now” (5) which would normally require the use of present progressive tense.

Similarly, Jain (1991:63) argues that there is no specific place given in the first stanza which presents but an ordinary street scene. The frequent use of the noun “street” (line 11, 16, 33, 34, 46) activates the notion of homelessness. This, however, contrasts with the ambiguous meaning of the verb “settles down”. Other than its meaning of “sinking slowly down or respectively falling from above” (OLD), it can also assume the meaning of someone coming to a rest and making a place his or her permanent home.

The romantic tone of the poem’s first line is suddenly destroyed by the prosaic language and the banal topic to follow: “with smell of steaks in passageways” (2). The “smell of steaks” serves here as a signal for the “steaks”. This creates a higher level of abstraction, as the real life object is replaced by the mere perception of its smell. Similar examples can be found elsewhere in the poem: “the lighting of the lamps” (13), “smells of beer” (15) or the “vision of the street” (33). The real thing or person is never present, there is but the “notion of some (…) thing (50/51).

Even the “rain” can be interpreted as the mere perception of its drumming sound. This idea is activated by the plural form of: “the showers beat” in line 9. Coupled with the following enjambement, the plural -s gives rise to the understanding of the genitive form: “the shower’s beat” (9). Appropriately, the expression: “And now a gusty shower wraps” (5) could be read as “shower raps” in an oral reading. This idea is in tune with the poem’s musical title “The Preludes”. This reading builds up the personification of the rain as an artist, practicing a hybrid art form between music and poetry. The personification of the rain is continued by the adjective “gusty” which other than a sudden strong wind, can also denote a sudden strong expression of emotion. One could consequently go on to conclude that the rain is characterized as being choleric, aggressive and violent, rapping out its hate against what could be defined as its semantic counterpart: “the burnt-out ends of smoky days” as they arouse associations of fire. However, as it seems the conflict between these two contrasting concepts has literally ended up in smoke.

Essentially, the adjective “smoky” arouses many different connotations here. Firstly, it suggests a lack of vision, possibly as a result of air pollution that is both passively suffered from and actively produced by the city dwellers. This is also confirmed by the mentioning of “chimneypots” (10). Alternatively, the lack of vision might be due to the foggy weather in the city. The reduced visibility is consistent with the limited perspective of the speaker. It must be assumed that he is a street walker or flâneur, as it seems that the bad weather forces him to look down on the street where he is noticing: “The grimy scraps/Of withered leaves about your feet/And newspapers from vacant lots” (6-8). The apostrophe “your feet” signals either the presence of at least one other person or the speaker’s ability to look on himself from the outside. This external view creates the impression of a more neutral and accurate look as it widens the perspective of the speaker. At the same time, the pars pro toto for the addressee: “your feet” illustrates the speaker’s incapability to perceive himself or someone else as a whole person. This depiction of human beings as dismembered body parts is continued throughout the poem: “feet” (7, 17, 41), “the hands” (21), “masquerades”(19), “short square fingers” (43), “the eyes” (44).

The speaker’s partial blindness for the people in the street is is in tune with the alliteration: “broken blinds” (10) which other than broken window blinds might also refer to people who are metaphorically blind in the sense of not noticing or realizing the true nature of things. Moreover, the preceding adjective “broken” literally depicts the people in the street as fragmented parts of a larger whole. This connection of blindness and fragmentation is reminiscent of a parable told by the Buddha of a group of blind men who all touch a different body part of an elephant and arrive at very diverging ideas about its physical appearance (cf. Keown, 2000: 1-2).