A prelude in music and art is an isolated, introductory fragment that announces a theme but goes no further than announcement, as in Chopin’s Preludes. It evokes a tone, in poetry using images rather than exposition to declare itself.
The poem consists of four stanzas with inconsistent rhyme and meter, the latter predominantly tetrameter (four stressed syllables per line)–but also dimeter (two stresses) and trimeter (three stresses)–frequently iambic (a poetic foot of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one): The winter evening settles down. It is almost blank verse1, almost free verse.2 The “fragmented” rhyme and meter intensify the overall fragmented descriptions of fragmented days, the war-torn Europe of Eliot’s environment.
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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.
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Prelude I.
The first prelude begins with the personification3 of the evening, as a person settling down, i.e., letting go of a burden or a stress, in this case the implied cacophony4 of daytime. It seems to suggest relaxation and peacefulness, but is undercut by the use of the words: smell, an unpleasant-sounding word, as opposed to, say, aroma; passageways, impersonal locations as opposed to hallways or interiors; and the abrupt, six o‘clock, a three-syllable sentence/line. From line four on, the tone becomes increasingly bleak. The implied metaphor of the end of the day to a burned out cigarette, vague (smoky) and useless, littered with the detritus of vacancy–grimy scraps of withered leaves, newspapers from empty lots--blown about in a gusty shower that beats on broken window and door blinds and chimney-pots. Even the rhymes don’t alleviate the dreariness: passageways/days, wraps/scraps, feet/beat/street, lots/pots, stamps/lamps. The effect of the word-choice and imagery is isolating, depressing, and alienating, suggestive of the current state of urban life. The stanza ends with a desolate image of a lonely cab-horse, unattended, steaming and stamping in the rain, finally culminating in an ambiguous image of light–And then the lighting of the lamps: do the lamps bring brightness to the dark, or do they illuminate the sorrow.
Prelude II
It is now morning, personified not as a new beginning but as slowly awakening (comes to consciousness) from a hangover, accompanied by the faint stale smells of beer, already a depressing start. There then follows a panorama of early morning activity, from the barren, sawdust-trampled street and muddy feet to the early coffee-stands of isolated people; from the masks (masquerades) that everyone puts on as the day begins(time resumes) to the thought of the countless hands (a synecdoche5 for the whole person), just isolated parts, across the city in a repetitious raising of dingy shades to “greet” yet another meaningless day, the hands’ bodies standing in isolation in their impersonal thousand furnished rooms. Just as the evening brought no relief from the sordidness of daily life, a new day brings no promise of relief either.
Prelude III
The third prelude is written in second person, addressing a solitary woman. Still morning, she awakens to begin her day, tossing back the blanket, but as if reluctant to arise: You lay upon your back, and waited. She dozes and half-asleep imagines the night revealing the sordid images of her subconscious (soul), flickering against the ceiling, as if in a movie of her soul, an empty inner life. Then, as reality returns (came back) completely (all the world), with daylight creeping, as if stealthily, between the shutters, and sparrows splashing or pecking in the gutters, not chirping in the trees, she had a vision of the street, the city, life, but one different from the world’s view (As the street hardly understands). We are left with an image of the woman, sitting along the bed’s edge, removing her hair-curling papers, a trivial gesture, or clasping her yellow-soled feet with her soiled hands, an unpleasant, ugly picture of apathy and squalor. Once again, a new day promises nothing new.
Prelude IV
It is now late afternoon/evening, and Eliot changes focus to third person. a non-specific person perhaps representing humanity in general, whose soul, at dusk (skies that fade) is stretched to its limit, trampled by the daily stuff of existence, feet insistent in their need to get home at four and five and six o’clock, another rote workday done. Workmen’s stubby fingers (short square) stuffing end-of-day pipes, or workmen reading evening newspapers are rituals that mark the end of the workday, part of the self-assured eyes (eyes/Assured) that in the contentment of these rituals are certain of certain certainties of life as they see it, representing the conscience of everyman in his blackened street, impatient to move on and assume his part in the quotidian mundanity of everyday life that is his world.
The focus now shifts to first person, the poet, in a moment of compassion for this everyman, moved by fancies, the imagination that envelopes and clings to these images (the poem?): the idea of the infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering aspect of life. The best we can do is have a beer, wipe a hand across our mouth in a moment of ironic acceptance, and laugh at ourselves.
But the compassion is transient. The poem ends “not with a bang, but a whimper,” the image of ancient crones (women), in empty, abandoned, vacant lots, bent over as they gather their daily supply of newspaper,etc., for fuel, representing the daily revolution of the world, endlessly repeating itself in exhaustive, meaningless gestures, Eliot’s worldview of a post-war world, drained and eviscerated, “signifying nothing.”
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- verse without rhyme, especially that which uses iambic pentameter ↩︎
- a form of poetry that does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any musical pattern ↩︎
- the representation of an abstract quality in human form. ↩︎
- harsh discordant mixture of sounds. ↩︎
- a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole ↩︎
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