|
READ THIS
"Preludes" is a series of verses about the decadence and decline of modern society, and more
particularly of modern urban society. Each prelude deals with a different aspect of this decline.
THE POET AND HIS POEM
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St Louis, Missouri, in 1888. He attended Harvard University and
graduated with a Masters degree in Philosophy. While there, he published several poems in the
Harvard Advocate.
The poet left the United States in 1910, moving first to France, then Germany and finally London. He
married Vivienne Haigh-Wood in 1915, which caused him to settle permanently in England.
His marriage was never successful, however, and they separated in 1933. In 1956 he would remarry, this
time to Valerie Fletcher.
Early during his stay in London, Eliot fell under the influence of Ezra Pound -- the great American poet
-- who also assisted in the publication of his early poetry.
The publication of his first book of poetry -- Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917 -- revealed
Eliot as a forerunner of Modernism, the philosophy of Modern Art. His next book -- The Waste
Land, 1922 -- is claimed by many to contain some of the most important poetry of the 20th century.
Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. He died in London in 1965.
"Preludes" has been described as a vivid portrayal of the decadence and decline of modern society,
and more particularly of modern urban society.
This was not a new theme. Indeed, Oswald Spengler -- the great German Philosopher of History -- was
already writing about the collapse of Western Society. The Great War of 1914-18, Spengler wrote, was
simply a manifestation of this collapse.
Eliot and Spengler were contemporaries and it is probable that the poet would have read the German's
writings while studying philosophy at Harvard University, although Spengler's best known work -- The
Decline of the West -- would be published only in 1918, one year after Eliot's own publication of
"Preludes".
Have you looked at the questions
in the right column?
|
TEST YOURSELF!
Read the left column and then answer
the following questions:
"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."
- What does the poet mean when he says that the "morning comes to consciousness"? What
type of consciousness is it? (4)
[Need help?]
The morning is portrayed as being alive and having a soul -- but one which awakens to the human world
of staleness, grime and decay. Are we looking here at a conflict between nature and the world of human
creation? Or is it more than this?
|
- One critic claims that the waking street is likened to a man with a hangover. Is this
true? (4)
[Need help?]
Such an interpretation would appear to be over the top, to miss the point. There is no mention in this
poem of drunkenness or debauchery but merely of decay, staleness and grime. The poet speaks of the
"press" of people to the coffee stands. So the "faint stale smells of beer" does not refer to
the beer consumed by one person but by thousands of people.
|
- Comment on the imagery in: "From the sawdust-trampled street | With all its muddy
feet". (6)
[Need help?]
First, notice the dehumanised description of the people. One is aware of thousands of people but they
are merely a sum of their parts, their "muddy feet". Later the poet will speak of the "hands"
in a "thousand furnished rooms".
Notice too that the street is not clean but is sullied by sawdust that has been trampled underfoot. The
street is untidy, unkempt and decaying -- just as the human spirit is untidy, unkempt and decaying.
|
- In what way can the coffee-stands be said to be "early"? (4)
[Need help?]
This is a "transferred epithet", is it not? The coffee-stands themselves are not early but it is the
people who are up and about early in the morning. And so the epithet "early" has been transferred
from the people -- or the morning -- to the coffee-stands.
|
"With the other masquerades
That times resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms."
- What is the meaning of "masquerades"? (2)
[Need help?]
A masquerade is a false show, a pretence. Would not the poet, therefore, be referring to the workings
of the human spirit as being false, a pretence?
|
- Why would "all the hands | That are raising dingy shades | In a thousand furnished rooms" be
a masquerade? (4)
[Need help?]
The poet encompasses all of human action within this masquerade but then he singles out for special
mention the one act of "raising dingy shades in a thousand furnished rooms". Human action is all
the same, and is repeated over and over. There are thousands of rooms of human beings, and in each
room each person is doing precisely the same thing.
Is the poet reducing the workings of the human spirit to that of a robot? Note that he doesn't speak of
human beings at all but only of their parts -- their hands.
|
GENERAL QUESTIONS:
- In what way can this second prelude be said to continue the theme of a world that is worn out and
decaying? (6)
[Need help?]
Look at the words which the poet uses to paint his picture: stale smells of beer; sawdust-trampled street;
muddy feet; masquerades; dingy shades.
All of these words would seem to have the theme of a worn out, decaying world of the human spirit.
|
- The poet continues the theme of depersonalization and dehumanisation. How does he achieve
this? (6)
[Need help?]
Look at the words which the poet uses to paint his picture: stale smells of beer; sawdust-trampled street;
muddy feet; masquerades; dingy shades; a thousand furnished rooms.
Where is the mention of individual people? There are indeed people here -- in fact, people by their
thousands -- but they are broken down to the sum of their parts: the muddy feet, the press to the early
coffee-stands, the thousands of hands raising the dingy blinds in thousands of rooms. The language is
impersonal, dehumanised.
And it is all a "masquerade", says the poet, a false show, a pretence. The reader is presented with
the exact opposite of human dignity, the opposite of the sanctity of the human spirit. All of human action
is false. It's just a pretence.
|
|
