Download
1 / 21
E N D
*************************** Presented by Prof.R.R.Borse, Asst.Prof., Eng.Dept., B.P.Arts,S.M.A.Sci.,K.K.C.Comm.College,Chalisgaon Mail- ravindraborse1@gmail.com
About T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in 1888 and died in 1965. He was a British poet, playwright, essayist, publisher, and literary critic. T. S. Eliot was born in the United States, and spent the first eighteen years of his life in St. Louis. He attended Harvard University, and earned both an undergraduate and a graduate degree before going to the Sorbonne. In 1914, he moved and settled in England. A year later, he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood, but he divorced her after some years and remarried in 1956 to Valerie Fletcher. T. S. Eliot became a British citizen in 1927.
When T. S. Eliot moved to London, he came under the influence of Ezra Pound, who convinced him of his literary talent and helped him publish several poems. His first poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations, collection was published in 1917 and established him as a leading poem of the avant-garde literary movement of that time. In 1922, he published The Waste Land. The Waste Land is considered to be one of Eliot’s masterpieces and one of the most influential works of the twentieth century. T.S. Eliot’s reputation grew to immense proportions and, in the following years, he established himself as one of the dominant figures in English poetry and literary criticism. In 1948 he received the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize in Literature.
‘Morning at the Window’ was written by T. S. Eliot in autumn 1914 and published in Eliot’s first collection, Prufrock and Other Observations, three years later. ‘Morning at the Window’ presents a distinctly modern view of London, focusing on everyday details and, following Baudelaire’s lead, elevating them ‘to the first intensity’. The result is a wonderful short poem.
Morning at the Window' is an imagist poem that presents an image of poverty. The picture is that of a slum where people lead miserable lives. The speaker is at the window. He may be a visitor of a certain house in the area where poor people live. The images that come to his eyes are 'object correlatives' or objects corresponding certain ideas and emotions in the poet's and the reader's mind.
The images in the poem correlate with the idea of poverty and feelings of sympathy. But the poem only presents them just the objective image, rather than romantically expressing his feelings and emotions. There is also a balance between feelings and ideas in the sense that the image arouses not only feelings in the reader but also provokes thoughts and ideas.
First Stanza “They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens, (…) Sprouting despondently at area gates.” The first stanza sets the scene and the setting of the poem. The lyrical voice starts talking about a “They”. Thus, the lyrical voice appears to be an observer who looks at this scene with distant sight (“They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens”). The images that the lyrical voice describes are object correlatives, meaning that the objects and situations depicted correspond to certain ideas and emotions in the lyrical voice’s and the reader’s mind. Then, the lyrical voice will state that he/she is in the street and aware of what goes on around him/her: “And along the trample edges of the street/ I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids/Sprouting despondently at area gates”. The lyrical voice shows images of poverty in modern London and describes them as everyday scenes, without describing individualities or moralizing his/her surroundings. This first stanza presents a very human, but distant picture; everyday life is narrated but not in individual depth. The lyrical voice chooses to narrate what he/she observes, and focuses on his point of view.
Second Stanza “The brown waves of fog toss up to me (…) And vanishes along the level of the roofs.” The second stanza furthers on the characteristics and occupants of the modern city. The lyrical voice describes the air and its pollution (“The brown waves of fog toss up to me”), being a consequence of the industrial and modern city. Just like the air comes to him in a particular way, he/she sees people in the streets accordingly. Notice how they are described: “Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,/ And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts”. People appear to be sad and dirty; nothing in this portrait of modern London seems to be cheerful or positive, as poverty reigns in the streets. Furthermore, the lyrical voice describes a possible attempt to revert the picture in the city, but it is useless (“An aimless smile that hovers in the air/And vanishes along the level of the roofs”). This stanza, and the entire poem, present a distinctly modern view of a city, most probably London, by focusing on the small details of everyday life and elevating them to “quasi-transcendent qualities”.
The poem is a set of striking images of poverty; the poet says nothing but shows them. The poor people are rattling (making a sound) breakfast plates early in the morning. • It is an obligation for poor people to go to work early and work till late. Sun or shower, frost or fog, they have to set out early. The image brings to mind similar images of poverty. • The speaker says that he is aware of the condition of the households' minds and souls, or their psychology. He doesn't describe that. Such housemaids are appearing one after another at the city gate. Maybe they come from villages. They have no identity, dignity and meaningful life. They are 'despondent', or extremely sad.
The speaker seems to go along, or else look further away waves of "brown" fog which come up to him. This is perhaps because the city air is so polluted. • Twisted faces of depressed people pass by. A passerby has tears in the eyes. The speaker takes another glance and sees her dirty skirt. Another person comes up and tries to smile, but fails. • The smile vanishes among the city roofs. All these disjointed images can be put together to build up a general picture of the poor people's plight. • The focus is on poor servant girls whose souls themselves are "damp" (moist and dirt). • The poet evokes our emotion without telling his emotions. He arouses pity without telling his pity for the people.
Eliot asserted that poetry must present 'objective correlatives' or objects and events that will correspond to certain emotions in the reader's experience. • The poet need not express his personal emotion. This idea of poetry is anti-romantic. For instance, when we encounter objective images of poverty, we understand it. • The image of a child on top of a burning house would need no explanation!
The theme of the poem "Morning at the Window" is poverty. The poem presents a very human picture of poor people in the city slum. • The poem presents a set of typical images that suggest poverty, depression, misery and squalor in the slums (poor and dirty areas of the cities) where the poor live. • The poet also mentions the state of the souls of the housemaids. So the poem thematically includes the issues of poverty, depression and squalor in the lives of poor people in the city.
The form of the poem, although unrhymed, follows the Spenserian stanza. • That means that the poem has nine lines, ending with an Alexandrine. • This type of form was used by Edmund Spenser to write The Faerie Queene, one of his most recognized works in which heroic deeds are narrated in an idyllic pastoral fairyland. • Yet, Eliot uses this form to convey impressions of a modern city, most probably London.
‘Morning at the Window’, although unrhymed, adopts the basic shape of the Spenserian stanza – namely, nine lines ending with an alexandrine. (Traditionally, an alexandrine is a longer 12-syllable line, often containing a word like ‘along’, as Eliot’s does, to point up that it is a longer line than the standard pentameter one.) • This was the stanza form used by Edmund Spenser (c. 1552-99) throughout his Elizabethan epic poem The Faerie Queene.
