Comment 33 of 63, added on January 24th, 2012 at 12:56 PM.

Prelude is indeed an interesting poem.If analysed stylistically,especially
the first stanza, it contains a lot of stylistic devices.

Kimja Nahin from India

Comment 31 of 63, added on November 21st, 2010 at 3:08 AM.
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i was 4m cbse and now in isc.. this helped me a lot...

Mayank from India

Comment 29 of 63, added on February 19th, 2010 at 8:49 AM.
Prelude as a modern poem
The dominance of instinct over heart and head ,and feasting the gross
senses of modern working-class people find sense and language in Eliot's
Prelude .

Precludes” suggests the advent of modern age. Modern urban is as it were,
an ever winter. It is bleak and somber. The poem begins from the winter
evening. The time is six o’clock. It aught to have been a time of prayer
but, nay, it, with the modern man is a time of debauchery. The atmosphere
around suggests this. There is a smell of steaks in the passage ways. The
whole day ends with the appetite of consumption- “The burnt out ends of
smoky days”. The things around are in utter disorder. The “withered
leaves”, “broken blinds” gathering newspapers wrapping the
street-work-feet, gusty shower,- all suggest the setting of anarchy. The
poet suggests that modern men have been dehumanized. For this waywardness,
a cab-horse reacts by stamping its feet on the street. So, we find in the
first stanza, a unique representation of modern urban life. The poet gives
us some broken pictures, - which are the poet’s objective correlative.
Eliot’s ‘precludes’ is a modern poem in more than one
sense. First of all it reveals the spirit of modern urban life with a
number of objective correlatives. From stanza 1 to 4, we find the cyclic
order of the day, -evening – morning – afternoon – evening. The poem houses
with it the frustration, -monotony, waywardness, sterility and debauchery
of modern life. It is a advent of west – land, where wholesomeness,
sweetness and light of life are lost.


The poet concludes his poem with “the notion of some
infinitely gentle in finitely suffering thing”. And it is that the modern
man’s suffering is beyond any measure but they do not know what for they
suffer. The order of this world goes on ceaselessly like the plight of the
destitute woman who would vainly search fuel in the abandoned building –
sites.
Subrata Ray Mousumipara .Uluberia .West Bengal .India .


Subrata Ray from India

Comment 27 of 63, added on March 31st, 2009 at 3:36 AM.

As an inseperable part of the modernist movement in poetry, "Preludes"
offers an insight into the impersonal, anti-romatic, psychological and
provocative style framed by Eliot which was to characterise major modern
poems of the era. So much stark is the depiction of the dingy milieu of
emotionless city life that all positive aspects have been deliberately
subdued to the depiction of dirt. Finally the non-committal, cynical
existential outlook of the poet persists in his gestures of wiping his hand
over his mouth with a futile laughter. At a rare instance of being personal
the poet ultimately surrenders his feelings of disgust as he can no longer
hold on to the pessimism he comes across.

Chiranjit Kr. Nandy from India

Comment 25 of 63, added on April 25th, 2007 at 6:20 AM.

Hi I'm in grade 11 and I am studying 5 of T.S. Eliot's poems and one of
them happens to be Preludes. I find analyzing Preludes and his other poems
are really hard!

Pris from Australia