“Preludes” Introduction

• "Preludes" is made up of four poems written by the modernist poet T. S. Eliot between 1908 and 1912, when Eliot was in his early 20s. They were later collected in Eliot's debut Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917. Broadly speaking, "Preludes" is about the drudgery, waste, and isolation of modern urban life. The unnamed city in which the poem is set is a grimy, dingy place, in which people unthinkingly partake in monotonous daily routines.

• Read the full text of “Preludes”

“Preludes” Summary

• I

  The winter evening begins to quiet down, signaled by the smell of steaks cooking, which wafts through side-streets. It's six o'clock. The end of the day is smoky like the burnt-out stubs of used cigarettes. And now the rain and wind blow the dirty scraps of dead leaves around your feet, along with thrown-away newspapers blown through empty, undeveloped plots of land. The rain can be heard beating on broken blinds and chimney pots, and at a street-corner there's a lonely cab-horse steaming in the cold and stamping its hooves. And then gas-powered street lamps are lit.

  II
  The morning begins to wakes up, with the stale but not too strong smell of beer from the street, which is covered with sawdust that has been trampled by muddy feet rushing to buy an early coffee. Along with all the other illusions that daily routine makes people go through again, one is also prompted to think about all the hands pulling up dirty blinds in thousands of furnished rooms all over the city.

  III
  You threw the blanket off of your bed, lay on your back and waited for something to happen. You dozed, and watched the night reveal thousands of perverted, squalid images, images that in fact make up your soul. They could be seen flickering on your bedroom ceiling. And when you woke up and the world became familiar again, you could see light peeking through the window shutters, and hear sparrows tweeting in the gutters outside. But at that moment you experienced a vision of the street, which was so strange that even the street could hardly understand it. At the time, you were sitting on the edge of your bed, curling your hair; or perhaps you were holding your yellowing feet in your hands.

  IV
  His soul was spread out tightly across the skies, which could be seen fading as the sun set behind a city block. This soul was also trampled by hurrying feet at four, five, and six o'clock. At these times one can also see stubby fingers stuffing pipes with tobacco, evening newspapers on sale, and eyes looking around with expressions of self-assurance. Beneath all this the street has a conscience, which wants eagerly to come forth into the world.

  I am moved by the ideas that I've associated with these images, ideas that are difficult to get rid of, above all the vague notion of something that is infinitely gentle, but which is always suffering.

  Wipe your hands across your mouth and laugh at the thought of what I've just described. The worlds will go on following their cycles like old women, who can be seen collecting fuel in empty, undeveloped plots of land.

“Preludes” Themes

• 

  Alienation and Urban Decay

  “Preludes” critiques the alienating effects of modern urban life—something the poem argues is characterized by drudgery and loneliness. Urban society, the poem suggests, isolates people from one another, ultimately erasing their individuality and even eroding human morality itself.

  The city in the poem is presented as a filthy, desolate place. There are “grimy scraps” of “withered” leaves blowing around, newspapers thrown to the sidewalk, and “broken blinds and chimney-pots.” The streets smell of steak, smoke, and stale beer, and the shades in people's homes are "dingy." The most abundant product of urban life, it seems, is waste and decay.

  At first the city also seems abandoned; no people are mentioned save for the vague reference to “your feet,” creating an almost post-apocalyptic atmosphere of desertion. And when people do appear, they're just as dirty and dismal as the city they live in: their "muddy feet" trample the ground, their palms are "dirty," and their foot soles are "yellow," implying disease. It's as if the city itself is passing on a contagion to the people who live in it.

  Note how the people in "Preludes" also lack any distinguishing features and are instead reduced to their body parts. This underscores the sense of anonymity created by modern life. All these people are living together in this space, but that doesn't make them part of a meaningful community. Instead, the urban world seems to erase their identities, making them into just a bunch of "feet" and "hands."

  This use of synecdoche further implies that people are alienated even from controlling their own bodies, which robotically follow the routines required of modern urban living. People are going through the same motions day after day—opening the blinds, getting coffee, trudging off to work—without really thinking about what they're doing. In this way, cities alienate people not just from one another, but also from themselves—that is, from their individual wants, needs, and desires.

  While the human beings in "Preludes" lack emotion, identity, or agency, the environment itself is personified. Note how the "evening settles down" and the "morning comes to consciousness." This suggests that the emotions that have been drained from the human characters have been transferred instead to their surroundings. It's as if awareness itself is too heavy a burden for modern people to bear, and so needs to be carried by something larger (that is, by the world itself). In poem IV, this then extends beyond simple "consciousness" to a moral “conscience”—the street seems to possess an awareness of morality that human beings in this world have lost.

  This “conscience” is further conceived of in religious terms as a “soul," which is "stretched tight across the sky” and which is also "trampled" by the "insistent feet" of the city's inhabitants. The decaying atmosphere of the city is therefore a moral sin: city-dwellers have "trampled" this universal soul, which encompasses them as part of the sky encompassing the earth. Perhaps this mindless trampling is the reason why, although a new moral conscience is "Impatient to assume the world," the poem ends without any return to morality. Human beings first have to break out of their patterns of behavior, but refuse to do so. Women return to the routine of "gathering fuel," and the poem's reader, addressed in the second person, can only "laugh."

  • See where this theme is active in the poem.
• 

  The Nature of Time

  Each of the poems within “Preludes” relates the routines taking place in a modern city at a specified time of day: first the evening, then the morning, then the night, and finally the afternoon. The poems see modern life as being artificially controlled by the clock, which leads to people following unnatural routines day after day instead of living freely and in the moment.

  Poems I and II are the most focused on daily routine. Poem I is specifically set on a “winter evening” at “Six o’clock” and describes the streets as largely “vacant.” This poem begins and ends by describing events that happen every day: people cooking dinner and the lighting of gas-powered street lamps. By sandwiching the first poem between these repetitive activities, Eliot stresses the control that clock-based routines have over the lives of city-dwellers.

  This idea is expanded on in poem II, which details morning routines and has numerous echoes of the first poem, such as “smell of steak”/“smells of beer”; the feet of the cab-horse stamping and the “muddy feet” going to buy coffee; the “lighting of the lamps” in the streets; and people “raising dingy shades” to illuminate rooms. Through these echoes, the speaker stresses the fact that even at different times of day behavior is repetitive and cyclical—an idea that, in turn, stresses people's limited freedom in the modern world.

  However the second poem also calls this routine a “masquerade.” A masquerade was originally a formal ball in which guests wore masks and took part in dances, whose steps were learned by heart. The repetition necessary to do this is similar to the repetitive routines of modern life described in the “Preludes.” “Masquerade” can mean a disguise or mask, and as such further implies that the speaker considers clock-time to be merely an illusion. In other words, the modern notion of time is unnatural and false, created arbitrarily to structure people's lives.

  This urban routine reaches a peak in poem IV, with “four and five and six o’clock” compressed together in one line, followed by three quick examples of what typically occurs at these times: men stuff their pipes for a late smoke, evening newspapers are published, and the vague statement “eyes / Assured of certain certainties” (which may be a shorthand for the self-assured, self-satisfied looks exchanged by followers of such a clock-based routine).

  However alongside this intense depiction of clock-based time is the introduction of Christian imagery: the “soul stretched tight across the skies” is likely an allusion to Jesus's crucifixion, implying that just as the skies enclose the city, urban routine is enclosed within an overarching Christian timeline. The scale of this timeline dwarfs the “masquerade” of urban life: it is “infinit[e],” containing the Fall, Crucifixion, and Last Judgement, and then extending into the afterlife.

  However, the poem never explicitly mentions these events. Although the allusion to Jesus implies that the stale routine of earthly life can be redeemed, the poem is ambiguous about such a possibility actually happening. It ends by drawing a comparison between city routine and an infinite timescale: “worlds revolve like ancient women / Gathering fuel.” This hints at the possibility that, in its repetitions, modern life is actually not a huge break from past behavior. Instead, time is cyclical, and modern people are actually following ancient universal patterns. This comparison is paired with a bitter “laugh,” however, and the poem leaves it to the reader to conclude whether this is some profound truth about the nature of time or just a cynical joke about the inevitable suffering of humanity.

  • See where this theme is active in the poem.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Preludes”

• Lines 1-4

  The winter evening settles down
  With smell of steaks in passageways.
  Six o’clock.
  The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

  "Preludes" begins with a juxtaposition. The first line establishes an almost romantic tone by personifying the "winter evening" as settling down and relaxing, which might lead the reader to expect a poem focused on the calming joys of nature. However, line 2 goes immediately in another direction, evoking quite the opposite: the "smell of steaks in passageways" is something resolutely urban. The abrupt third line—"Six o'clock."—then brutally cuts short any illusions of this being a reflective nature poem. Instead, it's located firmly within a modern industrialized city, with routines structured around the clock.

  The poem thus almost immediately destabilizes readers' expectations. In a way, the poem positions its readers in a state similar to that of the people the poem will go on to describe—a state in which they lack control over their own lives and feel swept up by the bustling city surrounding them.

  The fourth line—"The burnt-out ends of smoky days."—echoes the second line's images of steaks cooking, which produce smoke, with its metaphor comparing "smoky" evenings to the "burnt-out ends" of cigarettes. This is also the first reference to trash in the poem, which views urban life primarily as composed of what is thrown away, rather than what is created. The heavy use of sibilance in these lines ("settles ... smell ... steaks ... passageways ... Six ... smoky days") mimics the sizzling sound of steaks frying as well as the inhalations and exhalations of smokers, positioning the reader among the city-sounds being described.

  The meter of lines 1, 2, and 4 is iambic tetrameter. This means there are four iambs per line, a.k.a. poetic feet that follow an unstressed-stressed beat pattern. For example, here is the breakdown of line 1:

  The win- | ter eve- | ning set- | tles down

  As with the natural imagery in line 1, perhaps this relatively familiar meter is meant to lull the reader into a false sense of security—to make readers think they're getting into a classical, regularly structured poem. It may also be meant to imitate the repetitive routines seen as essential to city life. However the short line 3 violently disrupts this rhythm and is just the first of many such lines to do so, indicative of the way that the structure of urban life—with its designated working hours—interrupts natural rhythms.

• Lines 5-8

  And now a gusty shower wraps
  The grimy scraps
  Of withered leaves about your feet
  And newspapers from vacant lots;

  

  

• Lines 9-13

  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.

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 14-18

  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.

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 19-23

  With the other masquerades
  That time resumes,
  One thinks of all the hands
  That are raising dingy shades
  In a thousand furnished rooms.

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 24-29

  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.

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 30-34

  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;

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 35-38

  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.

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 39-42

  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;

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 43-47

  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.

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 48-51

  I am moved by fancies that are curled
  Around these images, and cling:
  The notion of some infinitely gentle
  Infinitely suffering thing.

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 52-54

  Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
  The worlds revolve like ancient women
  Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

“Preludes” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Personification

  Personification plays a vital role in "Preludes," appearing at crucial points in each poem. The first lines of both poems I and II conceive of times of day being conscious: "The winter evening settles down" as if it's somebody relaxing after a hard day at work, and the "morning comes to consciousness," like somebody waking up. The fact that it is the environment that is described as conscious stands in contrast to the description of people in the poem, who are depicted as robot-like mindless followers of routine (or, in poem III, as hallucinating, possibly mad, loners). It is as if the intelligence and independence normally associated with humans has been drained from them and taken up by the world around them instead.

  This disconnect between the environment and its inhabitants is emphasized on line 34, where the "vision of the street" experienced by the half-awake woman in her bedroom is one that the street itself "hardly understands." This implies that her visions do not align with the reality of the street itself, and rather than being illuminating or revelatory, are in fact delusions brought on by her isolation.

  By poem IV, the personification of the city has developed from simply being conscious to having a "conscience"—in other words, a moral code. This is like an animal transitioning into a human: although apes have consciousness, there is little evidence they are developed enough to have a moral system. Not only does the street now have a conscience, it is also "Impatient to assume the world." This evokes the idea of God assuming the world in the form of Christ, and Christ then assuming the cross to redeem humankind. This staggering idea implies that the environment is not merely more conscious and more moral than its utterly dehumanized inhabitants, but that it is also like Christ in being potentially able to redeem human beings.

  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Synecdoche

  

  
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Alliteration

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Sibilance

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Allusion

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Anaphora

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Metaphor

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Simile

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Assonance

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Enjambment

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Caesura

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

"Preludes" Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Burnt-out ends
• Vacant lots
• Consciousness
• Masquerades
• Shades
• Sordid
• Vision
• Soiled
• Insistent
• Assured
• Conscience
• Assume
• Fancies
• Infinitely

• This refers to the stubs of cigarettes. Smoking cigarettes was looked down on as a working class habit at the time "Preludes" was written, with pipes and cigars the preferred alternative of the middle and upper classes. In comparing the "winter evening" to the dirty, smoky, useless remains of a finished cigarette, this metaphor serves to emphasize the poem's conception of city life as sordid and grubby.

  • See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Preludes”

• Form

  The clearest formal element of "Preludes" is the fact that it is organized into four separate poems (labeled I, II, III, and IV). These different poems within the larger poem create a series of vignettes, or short scenes, of modern urban life. Together, they all paint a picture of a dreary, isolating existence everywhere the speaker looks.

  But the shorter poems within "Preludes" are all structured very differently, making the poem feel unpredictable and disjointed even as all these sections essentially build towards the same idea of urban life as being miserable and lonely. Poem I has 13 lines split into two stanzas; poem II has one stanza with 10 lines; Poem III has one stanza of 15 lines; and poem IV has three stanzas of 9, 4, and 3 lines apiece. The differences in structure isolate the poems from each other, echoing the way in which city-dwellers are alienated by urban life.

  Poem I can be split into three sections, the first, from line 1 to 4, the next from line 5 to 12, and the last is line 13. The first, consisting of lines 1 to 4, gives the reader an overview of the scene: it takes place on a winter evening, at six o'clock, a scene that can be summed up as the "burnt-out end" of the day. The next chunk, lines 5 to 12, goes into more detail about the goings on in this particular city, at this particular time, focusing especially on what can be seen and heard. Line 13 then signifies a transition from evening to night, hence its separation from the main body of the stanza.

  Poem II can be thought of as splitting equally into two sections of five lines each. The first five lines focus on realistic description of city life. However, with the introduction of "masquerades" in line 19, the poem takes a turn, from which it will explore what lies beneath the deceptive "masquerades" that have been its main subject up to this point.

  Poem III can be split into two sections. The first, from line 24 to 29, takes place at nighttime, with the female character trying to sleep but being distracted by waking hallucinations. The second, from line 31 to 38 takes place as the sun rises, signifying morning.

  Poem IV is the most structured of the bunch, given that it is broken up on the page into three separate stanzas. The first returns to the city, alluding to Christian theology for the first time with the references to a "soul stretched tight across the skies." The second allows the speaker for the first and only time to speak in the first-person, meaning lines 48 to 51 are at a further distance from the narrative than any other section of the poem. The final three lines of the poem return to the grubby sights of urban life.

• Meter

  For the most part, the meter of "Preludes" is iambic tetrameter. An iamb is a poetic foot with a da DUM rhythm, and tetrameter means that there are four of these feet per line. Take lines 1 and 2:

  The win- | ter eve- | ning set- | tles down
  With smell | of steaks | in pas- | sageways.

  Overall, this steady rhythm echoes the robotic, repetitive behavior of city-dwellers in the poem. However there are numerous lines which break with this pattern, the most important of which are discussed here.

  In poem 1, lines 3, 6, and 9 are all clearly shorter than the surrounding lines:

  Six | o'clock

  The gri- | my scraps

  The show- | ers beat

  Technically these are written in dimeter, meaning they have two feet per line (line 3 is technically something called headless catalectic, because it is missing its initial unstressed beat). More important than terminology, though, is the effect of such changes in meter. These create a rhythm of sudden shifts and starts, which throws the reader off balance, preventing them from feeling comfortable.

  There are short lines in poem II as well, each of which represents a form of arrival. Line 18 signifies the arrival of "muddy feet" to the "coffee-stands" where they were determinedly headed, and is written in trimeter (three feet per line):

  To ear- | ly cof- | fee-stands.

  And line 20, which describes the resumption of artificial clock-time each morning, is again in dimeter:

  That time | resumes,

  There are also several hypercatalectic lines throughout the poem (all this means is that a line has one syllable too many, as opposed to catalectic, which again means they are missing a syllable). Interestingly these first occur in poem III, with the shift in focus from the general mass of anonymous city-dwellers to an individual character (the woman on her bed). Lines 25, 26, and 28 are all hypercatalectic:

  You lay | upon | your back | and waited;
  You dozed, | and watched | the night | revealing
  ...
  Of which | your soul | was con- | stituted;

  These extra unstressed syllables (i.e, the "ed" in "waited") specifically create something called feminine endings. They evoke the lazy, stress-free state of the woman in this scene—still groggy, halfway between sleep and waking.

  Several lines also mix in feet other than the iamb to vary the rhythm, or depart entirely from using the iamb as their metrical basis. The most important of these departures take place in the section including lines 48 to 51. This section has a distinct status from the rest of the poem, as it is the only place where the speaker speaks in the first-person.

  Line 48, for instance, is trochaic pentameter. Recall that a trochee has a stressed-unstressed rhythm, essentially making it the opposite of the iamb, while pentameter means there are five of these trochees in the line (as opposed to the four in tetrameter). This line is again catalectic, because it is missing its final unstressed syllable that should appear after "curled"; more important, though, is again the fact that these are trochees:

  I am | moved by | fancies | that are | curled

  This is basically an inversion of the poem's regular meter (DUM da instead of da DUM), as if the speaker is pulling off the curtain to reveal that what is behind it is the opposite to what readers thought it was. That is, all these images might just be projections of the speaker's mind, the speakers imagined "fancies."

• Rhyme Scheme

  "Preludes" doesn't have a strict rhyme scheme, though its frequent use of assonance creates a lyrical, melodious sound throughout. That said, the poem does contain end-rhymes here and there. Poem I, for example, rhymes as follows:

  ABCBDDEFEFEGG

  Though there are clearly rhymes happening, there is no obvious pattern to them. The poem is unpredictable, keeping readers in their toes.

  The most frequently recurring rhyme is with the word "feet," which appears in each of the four poems. Sometimes this creates end rhyme, as with "feet," "beat," and "street" in poem I. Other times, it creates internal rhymes or assonance, as with lines 16 and 17: "From the sawdust-trampled street / With all its muddy feet that press ..." Being associated with the dirtiness of the pavement, feet act as shorthand for the dirtiness of the city as a whole. The fact that the word's most common rhyme is with "street" highlights this relationship.

  It is also worth noting that poem I contains the most instances of end-rhyme. Perhaps this is in order to establish an ordered rhythm that mimics the artificial order imposed by clock-time on human behavior. As "Preludes" progresses, this order is revealed to be a "masquerade"—and, fittingly, the use of rhyme becomes more irregular.

  There are occasional half-rhymes as well, such as "eyes"/"certainties" (lines 44-45). This use of half-rhyme here is ironic in lines focused on the idea of certainty, given that, if anything, half-rhyme reveals uncertainty. Thus the speaker encourages readers to be critical of the received opinions passed around in cities.

“Preludes” Speaker

• The speaker of "Preludes" is a distant, ambiguous figure—never given a name, age, gender, or profession. For most of the poem, the speaker does not appear at all—making these descriptions of city life seem more like objective reality rather than the observations of a specific person.

  That changes in line 48, where the first person pronoun "I" appears: "I am moved by fancies that are curled ..." This makes it clear that the prior lines are coming from a single person's perspective—though, again, readers learn next to nothing about this person. All readers know is that the speaker seems to be a detached observer of city life, cataloguing many small but telling details. These details, in turn, prompt the speaker to think of "some infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing." In other words, thinking about the drudgery and isolation of modern life causes the speaker to feel a vague sense of sadness and unease.

“Preludes” Setting

• The setting for "Preludes" is an anonymous modern city at various times of day. The city setting is grimy, filled with litter and smokey smells, and host to a population going thoughtlessly about its daily routine. The reader gets glimpses of "dingy shades" and "muddy feet," as well as a look into the room of an unnamed woman who is sitting on her unmade bed and staring at the ceiling. Overall, the atmosphere is filled with a sense of isolation and decay. This city is not a lively, bustling place—but rather one filled with dirt, grime, and loneliness.

  In early drafts poem I was titled "Prelude in Dorchester (Houses)" and later tweaked to "Prelude in Roxbury (Houses)"; and poems II and III were each "Prelude in Roxbury." Dorchester and Roxbury are neighborhoods in south Boston. Eliot's decision to remove these specific details from the titles helps to create an atmosphere of timeless universality; these poems could take place in any city, anywhere. Although some references (e.g., "the lighting of the lamps" and people smoking pipes) are dated nowadays, Eliot's depiction of city-life still seems remarkably contemporary. Anyone who lives in a large city today will surely recognize these tropes—of people mindlessly trudging to get their coffee, of the stale smells of food and alcohol at the end of the day, and of the loneliness of an urban street late at night.

Literary and Historical Context of “Preludes”

• Literary Context

  Eliot wrote "Preludes" during a period of great literary experimentation at the start of the 20th century, a period known as modernism. Modernist writers like James Joyce, Luigi Pirandello, Dorothy Richardson, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Rainer Maria Rilke had all already published work that challenged the established literary norms inherited from the 19th century. These norms were both formal—that is, related to the actual way that poems, plays, and novels were expected to be written—and social: sex, drugs and alcohol, feminism, and working-class life all became new subjects for serious literature during this period.

  Eliot wrote the poems that make up "Preludes" between the ages of 22 and 25, inspired partly by this experimental modern atmosphere. Initially published in the avant-garde magazine Blast in 1915, "Preludes" went on to be included in Eliot's first collection, Prufrock and Other Observations, in 1917. The dismal take on modern urban life seen in "Preludes" is clearly echoed by Eiot's famous poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

  Eliot's models at this time were mainly French Symbolist poets of the late 19th century, such as Jules Laforgue and Stéphane Mallarmé. Symbolism was a movement that rejected Realism in art; instead, it tried to symbolize psychological states through descriptions of the world itself. A way to understand this is to think of the Symbolist painting The Scream by Edvard Munch. The landscape and figures are distorted, appearing nothing like they do in real life. This distortion instead represents the screamer's internal agony.

  Eliot's descriptions of grubby city life in "Preludes," combined with dreamlike, fantastic visions, were inspired by these French poets. As Eliot himself said, "The kind of poetry that I needed to teach me the use of my own voice did not exist in English at all; it was only to be found in French."

  Historical Context

  Understanding modernism also relies on understanding the historical period in which it took place. The early 20th century was a time of immense change. New technologies such as the airplane and telephone had altered people's lives immensely in a short space of time. Cities grew denser as more and more people began moving from the countryside to urban centers.

  Most importantly, World War I had shattered the old European order. Although it was still going on by the time the final version of "Preludes" was published in 1917, the news of slaughter on the Western Front had deeply shaken ideals inherited from the previous century. Never before had a European war killed so many people, and never so efficiently. The new technologies that had seemingly improved life for so many were used to kill on an industrial scale.

  This made modernist artists deeply skeptical of the modern world—hence the critical depiction of the city in "Preludes." At the same time, though, modernist thinking stirred up animosity towards older ways of living; after all, it was the old European empires that had led the continent into war. Overall, then, the modernist ideas that influenced "Preludes" were at once a revolution against Victorian tradition and a refutation of those who blindly charge ahead fully confident in their new technologies.

More “Preludes” Resources

• External Resources

  • "Preludes" Read Aloud — Listen to famous Shakespearean actor John Gielgud read "Preludes" aloud.

  • Cambridge Companion to T.S. Eliot — Read several essays by leading experts on Eliot, designed to introduce students to his work.

  • Lecture on Eliot's Auditory Imagination — Renowned scholar Christopher Ricks lectures on the importance of sound in Eliot's work. He plays a rare recording of Eliot reading "Preludes" at 27.08.

  • Biography of T.S. Eliot — Read a short biography of Eliot on Yale University's Modernism Lab, a website dedicated to the study of the early 20th century art movement.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by T. S. Eliot

  • Four Quartets: Burnt Norton

  • Journey of the Magi

  • La Figlia Che Piange

  • Morning at the Window

  • Portrait of a Lady

  • Rhapsody on a Windy Night

  • The Hollow Men

  • The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

  • The Waste Land