Preludes

“Preludes” is an early poem by T. S. Eliot. He wrote it when he was in his early twenties, over a period that extended from October 1910 to around November 1911. The poem was published in July 1915 in the periodical Blast and was reprinted in Eliot’s groundbreaking Modernist collection, Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917. “Preludes” is in four parts, each of which depicts a bleak urban scene at various times of day and night. Eliot based the poem on his observations of deprived areas in various places he had lived, including St. Louis, Missouri; Roxbury (a neighborhood in Boston); North Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Paris.

The edition used in this study guide is from Eliot’s Collected Poems: 1909-1962 (London: Faber and Faber, 1963, reprinted 1974) and can be found on the Poetry Foundation website.

Poet Biography

Poet, dramatist, literary critic, and editor Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri. His family had roots in New England, and after Eliot graduated from Smith Academy in St. Louis, he attended Milton Academy in Massachusetts. He entered Harvard in 1906, and received a bachelor of arts in June 1909 and a master of arts in English literature in 1910. He then studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, before returning to Harvard in 1911. After World War I began in 1914, Eliot took up a scholarship at Merton College, Oxford, England, studying philosophy.

In June of the following year, his Modernist poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” was published in Poetry magazine. In 1917, it became the title poem in his first collection, Prufrock and Other Observations. At that time, Eliot had begun working for Lloyd’s Bank in London, a position he held until 1925, when he joined the publishing firm Faber and Gwyer. In 1929, when the firm became Faber and Faber, Eliot became a director, a position he held until his death. As editor at Faber, he was responsible for advancing the careers of many young poets.

Eliot’s most famous poem, The Waste Land, was published in 1922. In densely symbolic and allusive verse, it described the fragmentation of Western culture. In the same year, Eliot founded the influential quarterly journal The Criterion, which he edited until it ceased publication in 1939.

Eliot was also a renowned literary critic. His collections of essays included The Sacred Wood (1920) and Homage to John Dryden (1924). As a critic, Eliot played an influential role as an arbiter of taste and excellence for both poetry of the past and modern poetry. He was known as a champion of the 17th-century English metaphysical poets, whose work had been neglected for over two centuries. His Collected Essays appeared in 1932.

In 1927, Eliot became a British citizen and joined the Anglican Church. “Journey of the Magi” (1927) and Ash Wednesday (1930) were among the first poetic fruits of this conversion. In 1936, Eliot published “Burnt Norton,” followed four years later by “East Coker.” Together with “The Dry Salvages” and “Little Gidding,” these poems comprised Four Quartets (1944), which explored in various ways the intersection of time and eternity.

Eliot was also a dramatist. His best play is considered to be Murder in the Cathedral (1935), about the murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. In 1949, Eliot achieved popular success with The Cocktail Party (1949), which ran for 409 performances on Broadway. Two later plays were The Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958). In 1948, Eliot was awarded the Order of Merit by Britain’s King George VI as well as the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Eliot married Vivien Haigh-Wood in 1915. By all accounts, it was not a happy marriage. After 1933, they lived apart but did not divorce. Haigh-Wood died in 1947. In 1957, Eliot married Valerie Fletcher, and they had eight years together before Eliot died on January 4, 1965, in London, of emphysema.

Poem Text

Eliot, T. S. “Preludes.” 1915. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

“Preludes” is divided into four numbered parts, each of which describes a bleak urban scene at a certain time of day. The first part is set on a winter evening. People are arriving home after their day’s work. There are rain showers and gusts of wind, as well as blown leaves and newspapers on the street. A solitary cab-horse (a horse that is used for drawing a cab or carriage) stands at a corner, and then the gas lamps are lit. Part II is set in the morning, as the street comes to life again. People gather at the coffee stand, and the narrator thinks about all the people who are raising the blinds in their furnished lodgings. In Part III, it is night. A woman lies in bed dozing, her mind filled with disturbing images. When morning comes, she has a startling revelation, the nature of which is not disclosed. She sits on the bed adjusting her hair. In Part IV, the narrator comments on a male figure who may have important things to share with the people in the street. Time passes during the afternoon and early evening. The narrator states that the images he has described convey the notion of suffering. In the final three-line stanza, the narrator appears to step back from his observations and makes light of their importance.