Ans. - “The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks
in passageways.
Six o’ clock.
The burnt –out
ends of smoky days.”
A poem is a complete expressive of the mood of the poet, and
Thomas Stearns Eliot is of no exception to it, when he is certainly throughout
his poem is deeply in a mood of gloom and despair, as far as society is
concerned. He is considered to be one of the most distinguished poets of the
twentieth century who brought a very modern touch to his poetry with plenty of
symbolism and knowledge of the world. His imagery and metaphors are drawn from
classical Greek Literature and even from Upanishads. He brought a fresh
metaphor and depicted dilemmas, the hopelessness and sterility of the modern
man with a fine hand. He is a poet who needs to be studied therefore very
deeply, and is still the subject of a lot of research for scholars. His famous
works are “The Waste land”, “The Hollow Men”, “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’’
and many others. One of his poems in ‘Preludes’, he is describing of a modern
street, a witness to various sordid images and ugly deeds and the mechanical,
hum-drum, meaningless life led by its inhabitants:
“His soul
stretched tight across the skies
That fades behind
a city block,
Or trampled by
insistent feet
At four and five and
six o’clock;”
His ‘Preludes’ is a complete link of poems divided into four
sections. It is a poem, as portrait of the modern man is nothing but mainly of
desolation of a mundane life. Eliot, here speaks in his poem of the alienation
of man and about the exploration of the cycle of life. To quote him-
“You had such a vision of the street
As the street
hardly understands;”
The poet leads the
reader from evening to night and morning and again from morning to evening-a
full account of a day’s activities-or lack of them. “The winter evening settles
down” could be any one evening in winter but ‘winter’ is usually associated
with lack of growth, chill and gloominess. ‘’With smells of steaks in
passageways’’ ,where the ‘smell of steaks’ suggests the cooking of food but the
word ‘passageways’ conveys an idea of stuffy corridors. The poet gives the time
of the evening-it is ‘six o’clock’-a time for returning home after a day that
is burnt out like cigarette stubs –nothing productive happens:
“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.”
It is raining and the ‘gusty storm’ that lashes on broken
blinds can only blow ‘withered leaves ‘about your feet’ or dislodge
‘newspapers’ from the ‘vacant lots’. ‘Vacants lots’ are probably the empty
lands here and there generally becoming dumping yards. In the street corner the
‘cab-horse’ that ‘steams and stamps’ expresses its loneliness and restlessness.
Overall, the first section of the poem has given an impression that of filth
and neglect; the boring routine of mechanical life. The mood of the poem is thus
leading to the point of disillusionment and pessimism. The blinds appear to
cover the reality outside, and even when the day arrives it brings pretence and
there is obvious no reality which is covered up in smoke and grime.
Morning comes...,the second section of the poem brings a glimpse of hope when morning comes to
consciousness but the hope is soon gone as we learn of the ‘faint stale of
beer’ and ‘sawdust-trampled’ and ‘muddy feet ‘ and the mention of ‘dingy shades’.
There is nothing but dirt and squalor and even the people are masquerading to
be what they are not. There is no reality anywhere including the furnished
rooms which are looked upon as owned but are rented and do not bear a stamp of
any individuality. These are completely the pointers towards the decay setting
in, setting -in the society. There is pretence, in everything man does!
However, next in the third section we find there is a change
in style and tone in the few lines of the poem....A very clear picture is drawn
of the early morning activities. ‘You
tossed a blanket’-the first line of this section makes the lines a little more
personal and this way if following the lines of the poem the lines do not exactly
sound critical or judgmental. We are taken through the night and early day of a
woman who lazes on her back with intermittent feelings of ‘dozing’ and
‘gazing’-watching the night that reveals ‘sordid dreams’ and forces her to
search her soul.. even while light
creeps in through the shutters, she knows what lies outside-where the’ sparrows’
are heard ‘in the gutters’.
‘’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.”
We come to know, thus that the ‘you’ mentioned here is a
woman when the poet talks about ‘curled papers’ from ‘your hair’…..… While she
uncurls the paper curlers and sleepily rubs her ‘yellow soles’ with her soiled
hands, she reveals her restless state of mind, an image of neglect. The mention
of ‘yellow soles ‘and ‘soiled hands’ sets a mood of disgust towards the
artifice of life.
“With the other masquerades
That times resumes,
One thinks of all the
hands
That are raising
dingy shades
In a thousand
furnished rooms.”
In the final section, the poet clearly reveals his own
thoughts. From ‘you’ the mood and tone turns to ‘I’. He is moved by the fancies,
the ‘imagination of man’. He prays for an infinitely gentle’ hand to touch and
heal man. He feels for the routine lifestyle of his fellow beings working till four,
five or six o’clock, getting back, stuffing pipes and buying evening
newspapers. What the poet sees around is a representation of ‘conscience of a
blackened street…’ -a consciousness struck by false values that cannot discern
a ‘masquerade’ from a reality. This is
again unfurls like a series of snapshots of the ugliness and emptiness of
modern life styles…despite some hopes of a rebirth or a rejuvenation there is
only hopelessness and despair.
[“I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these
images, and cling:
The notion of
some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.”]
According to some, the poet is thinking of Christ who will
bring salvation for others the poet refers to any gentle being, who may have
brought hope but the next moment he is pulled back to reality. Perhaps he is
talking to himself since he was mentioning “I” and says that he should forget
about the vision of that gentle being, ‘wipe the image off and should laugh at
the thought’. The word ‘ancient’ used in
the poem for the old women does not only make them look very old but also
suggests, that they have been doing the same thing for years and nothing for
years and nothing has or will perhaps change. Life will continue to be the
same.. Thus ‘Preludes’-paints a picture of desolation, hopelessness, filth and
pretence of modern society. .The poet expresses his disgust at this bleak world
that has hopes but is caught in the mire of decay. He says-
[“Wipe your
hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds
revolve like ancient woman
Gathering fuel
in vacant lots.”]
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(References, words, sentences, ideas, setting, orientations,
contextualized from revised edition by Sraboni Ghosh and Ms. Nagpal.)
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