Preludes Analysis

     I



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.





     II



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.





     IV



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.

.: :.

A teacher who thinks Eliot does not write about prostitutes? Better to look at the poems first and then decide, rather than come to them with preconceived ideas. At the very least he writes quite a lot about casual sex and usually with a sense of disgust. 'Sweeney Erect' is set in a brothel or at least a very unrespectable boarding-house, for instance. Now as to the last comment, Eliot does not say that anyone who tosses a blanket off the bed etc is a prostitute - he uses the picture to *suggest* something that he doesn't say. The woman isn't with a client at the point of the poem, she is literally waiting for sleep not sex - but Eliot uses language which suggests unenthusiastic sex, and hence (together with the 'thousand sordid images') that this has some relevance to the woman's life. This part of the poem is set at the beginning of the night, not just before she gets up; she then goes to sleep and watches 'the *night* revealing' her life in her dreams; it is only after this that dawn comes.
I don't think however that she knows 'dirty secrets' about the street - all the sordidness is in the description of the surroundings and in her dreams. What she sees, suddenly and for no apparent reason and even in squalid surroundings, is a vision (note the word) of the inner essence of the street (and its inhabitants), a sort of mystical experience which anticipates the poet's own vision of an 'infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing'. Even in such circumstances, Eliot is saying, you can have that sort of transcendent experience. This is how the world really is, even if most of the time we don't recognise it. But of course the vision only lasts for a moment, and the closing words of this part of the poem bring us back to poverty and squalor.

| Posted on 2008-11-11 | by a guest

.: :.

I think that there is not enough evidence to support the notion that the woman in the third stanza is a prostitute, just because of the suggestive way "You tossed a blanket from the bed,/You lay upon your back, and waited;". I usually toss the blanket and lie waiting for a while in bed before I get up, that does not make me a prostitute? As for the thousand sordid images/Of which your soul constituted;" well the first two stanzas a generalization of the city and the people (or aspects of persons i.e. feet and hands)are fragmented, mechanical and routine. As if city life consumes a person to a point that there is nothing left but bits and pieces of what a person use to be. The second stanza talks about the masquerades, the pretence of people in the city and that could also be a reason for the sordid images-that living in the city has somehow poisoned and polluted its inhabitants. When I read this poem I cannot help but think of William Blake's London because it has the some bleak outlook of city life a place where there is no communal life, a place of isolation and alienation. And taking into consideration that this poem form part of modernism movement it moves away from the glorified idyllic look of city life and portrays a dark, sordid underworld that was usually ignored by the earlier poet. Therefore I think the woman in the third stanza is more poor than a prostitute and as for the yellow sole of her feet, well 19 century England or America hygiene was not that prevalent. It also emphasize the bleakness, hopelessness that consumes the inhabitants of a city because they life in squalid situation even the smells of steaks is followed by grimy images of burnt-out, scraps, vacant, broken and lonely depressing images. No wonder the woman does not want to get out of bed and she tosses the blanket aside and just lay there. From the above images there is nothing to motivate getting up and doing something. Everything is the same mechanical robotic routine, with no sign of vitality, if anything sign at all of life it is artifice and pretentious.

| Posted on 2008-09-18 | by a guest

.: :.

I had the exact same interpretation of Prelude III being a poem about a prostitute. I told my teacher the interpretation and she flat out said "no" due to the fact that T.S Elliot does not write about prostitutes. Although, it still doesnt change my interpretation of it. It could also just be about a poor woman dreaming. As she dozes off, the thousand sordid images that he speaks of are probably of her dreams of a life she wish she had. Then when the world comes back, this is her waking up to reality. It seems she is living in a place she does not wish to live, hence why she "waited" to doze off and continue her dream of this imaginary life and escape reality again. But going back to the prostitute interpretation, when it says "The thousand sordid images/Of which your soul was constituted/They flickered against the ceiling." it could mean that the flickering of the lights are caused by the "client" on top which casts a shadow over her also causing the quick flashes of "the thousand sordid images". I'm not sure.

| Posted on 2008-08-12 | by a guest

.: fdafdsfds :.

First, some observations about technique.
From the first stanza,
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
There's a pun here that works effectively with enjambment when you read it out loud i.e. a gusty shower raps (conveying the sound of raindrops) and then, running on and taking on a different meaning, a gusty shower wraps the grimy scraps of withered leaves about your feet.
I agree with Dreamer Idiot, the sibilants in the first stanza, does add to the mood of the rain. Throughout the poem, the repetitive 's' sounds tend to lull the reader/listener, the way listening to white noise tends to make you fall asleep... which makes the ending of the poem even more of a punch!
I feel that some of the alliteration adds to the richness of the imagery as an onomatopoetic — words that which sounds suggest/imitate the sound it describes — device: the smell of steaks in passageways, a lonely cab-horse steams and stamps — the hissing sound of the esses invokes the sound of steaks on the grill and of the rain steaming off the horse's back; the showers beat on broken blinds — "bup! bup! bup!"
The internal rhymes within the poem adds to the musical qualities of this poem, something that struck me from the first time I read it. For example, in the second stanza:
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.
While the first stanza builds some energy with staccato alliterations, the second stanza uses more assonance, which, in my opinion, slows the poem's pace a bit, taking cue from the last line of stanza I, the rolling lighting of the lamps.
The repetitive 'o' sounds in the first line, followed by faint and stale, and the stressed 'e's in street, feet, and coffee. Further on, we find masquerades/shades and resumes/rooms ... and so on.
In the first two stanzas the poem's narrator remains detached, and rather than describing human beings, only describes the muddy feet and hands (synecdoche... now that's a word of the day).
Then in the third one, he suddenly rounds up on a poor woman waking up in the morning with three lines starting with the word 'you' that draws the reader in:
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
Who is this woman? Dreamer Idiot thinks it's the narrator speaking of himself but lets explore a different interpretation: perhaps she is a prostitute, hence the 'dirty' hands and yellow soles of feet (a symptom of disease maybe, or could be just rough calloused feet)? The first half of the stanza is certainly suggestive... toss the blanket on the bed, and lie waiting and dozing away to escape as a thousand men come to visit over the nights.
The thousand sordid images ... flickered against the ceiling — perhaps shadows by a bedside lamp.
I only put forward this interpretation because of the lines "You had such a vision of the street/As the street hardly understands;", which suggests that she knows some dirty secrets about the people walking in the street downstairs. And there is the personage of the light creeping through the shutters, as opposed to the image of sunlight boldly streaming through, as if the room is a place more suitable for darkness.
... but, no, an unha

| Posted on 2008-06-09 | by a guest

.: :.

First, some observations about technique.
From the first stanza,
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
There's a pun here that works effectively with enjambment when you read it out loud i.e. a gusty shower raps (conveying the sound of raindrops) and then, running on and taking on a different meaning, a gusty shower wraps the grimy scraps of withered leaves about your feet.
I agree with Dreamer Idiot, the sibilants in the first stanza, does add to the mood of the rain. Throughout the poem, the repetitive 's' sounds tend to lull the reader/listener, the way listening to white noise tends to make you fall asleep... which makes the ending of the poem even more of a punch!
I feel that some of the alliteration adds to the richness of the imagery as an onomatopoetic — words that which sounds suggest/imitate the sound it describes — device: the smell of steaks in passageways, a lonely cab-horse steams and stamps — the hissing sound of the esses invokes the sound of steaks on the grill and of the rain steaming off the horse's back; the showers beat on broken blinds — "bup! bup! bup!"
The internal rhymes within the poem adds to the musical qualities of this poem, something that struck me from the first time I read it. For example, in the second stanza:
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.
While the first stanza builds some energy with staccato alliterations, the second stanza uses more assonance, which, in my opinion, slows the poem's pace a bit, taking cue from the last line of stanza I, the rolling lighting of the lamps.
The repetitive 'o' sounds in the first line, followed by faint and stale, and the stressed 'e's in street, feet, and coffee. Further on, we find masquerades/shades and resumes/rooms ... and so on.
In the first two stanzas the poem's narrator remains detached, and rather than describing human beings, only describes the muddy feet and hands (synecdoche... now that's a word of the day).
Then in the third one, he suddenly rounds up on a poor woman waking up in the morning with three lines starting with the word 'you' that draws the reader in:
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
Who is this woman? Dreamer Idiot thinks it's the narrator speaking of himself but lets explore a different interpretation: perhaps she is a prostitute, hence the 'dirty' hands and yellow soles of feet (a symptom of disease maybe, or could be just rough calloused feet)? The first half of the stanza is certainly suggestive... toss the blanket on the bed, and lie waiting and dozing away to escape as a thousand men come to visit over the nights.
The thousand sordid images ... flickered against the ceiling — perhaps shadows by a bedside lamp.
I only put forward this interpretation because of the lines "You had such a vision of the street/As the street hardly understands;", which suggests that she knows some dirty secrets about the people walking in the street downstairs. And there is the personage of the light creeping through the shutters, as opposed to the image of sunlight boldly streaming through, as if the room is a place more suitable for darkness.
... but, no, an unha

| Posted on 2008-06-09 | by a guest