Preludes
Preludes (1917) is an early poem of Eliot that deals with the characteristic Modernist trope of urban absurdity, monotony and squalor. The poem is divided into 4 parts and in a 'montage'-like fashion, creates an associative framework of images that describe a banal urban life, disconnected, solitary and full of alienation and meaninglessness.
The first part sets the tone in minutely describing a winter evening in the city--from the smells of meat to the grimy scraps to the abrupt rain or the lonely cab-horse--pervasive in this landscape is a sense of drabness--a lack of transcendence. The style is impressionistic, imagistic and the vein is symbolic. The poem addresses a 'you' --an object in all this.
The 2nd part moves ahead in time to the morning, continuing the prevalent drabness. the raising of dingy shades in numerous rooms of the city or moving towards the coffee shop in the morning--all connote routine action that is rather trivial and devoid of signification. the images towards the end are rather abstract here. urban life is seen as a daily carnival of masking the self.
The 3rd part concretizes the 'you' somewhat, as a woman, as a prostitute perhaps. Whatever be the gender, he/she stands for this dead world with all its sordid images. The space becomes domestic, a bed-room. The individual projects his/her inner gloom upon the outer world, which is intrinsically gloomy to begin with. Towards the end of this part, the 'vision' which the 'you' has is no epiphany; rather a vision of incomprehension that leads to a split between an object (the street) and its idea. This is no real knowledge but an attack on the epistemic value of this sordid life.
In the 4th and final part the 'you' is further alienated into the third person 'he' and this self seems to have internalized this absurd world of disconnection. There are images of victimization in the 'trampling' process. The conscience of a blackened street trying to assume the proportion of a world is an
The first part sets the tone in minutely describing a winter evening in the city--from the smells of meat to the grimy scraps to the abrupt rain or the lonely cab-horse--pervasive in this landscape is a sense of drabness--a lack of transcendence. The style is impressionistic, imagistic and the vein is symbolic. The poem addresses a 'you' --an object in all this.
The 2nd part moves ahead in time to the morning, continuing the prevalent drabness. the raising of dingy shades in numerous rooms of the city or moving towards the coffee shop in the morning--all connote routine action that is rather trivial and devoid of signification. the images towards the end are rather abstract here. urban life is seen as a daily carnival of masking the self.
The 3rd part concretizes the 'you' somewhat, as a woman, as a prostitute perhaps. Whatever be the gender, he/she stands for this dead world with all its sordid images. The space becomes domestic, a bed-room. The individual projects his/her inner gloom upon the outer world, which is intrinsically gloomy to begin with. Towards the end of this part, the 'vision' which the 'you' has is no epiphany; rather a vision of incomprehension that leads to a split between an object (the street) and its idea. This is no real knowledge but an attack on the epistemic value of this sordid life.
In the 4th and final part the 'you' is further alienated into the third person 'he' and this self seems to have internalized this absurd world of disconnection. There are images of victimization in the 'trampling' process. The conscience of a blackened street trying to assume the proportion of a world is an