Preludes

Darkness and light are recurring motifs. At the simplest level, they refer to times of day. In Part I, for example, as the darkness of evening falls, the streetlamps are lit. In Part II, people raise their window shades to let in the light of morning. However, the terms also have a deeper, symbolic element. In Part III, a woman lies on her back on her bed at night but she sees flickering against the ceiling “the thousand sordid images / Of which your soul is constituted” (Lines 27-28). These flickering images involve a kind of light, which is somehow conjured up by the night, although the light is set against the spiritual darkness of her soul. In the morning, natural light returns, although not in a blaze of glory; instead, it “crept up between the shutters” (Line 31), as if furtive or hesitant. At this moment, the woman has a transcendent experience, “a vision of the street / As the street hardly understands” (Lines 33-34). This vision suggests a kind of enlightenment that comes to her unexpectedly, lifting her beyond the “sordid images” (Line 27) that dominated her mind earlier. As night gives way to morning, so also the darkness in the soul gives way, at least for a moment, to a measure of light.

Part IV presents darkness and light both literally and symbolically. It describes not only the fading of natural light at sunset, but also the figure of the man whose “soul stretched tight across the skies” (Line 39) and who feels a desire to become “the conscience of a blackened street” (Line 46). “Blackened” refers to the coming of nighttime but also conveys the notion that the people are living in a darkness of the spirit; the man feels their suffering and wants to bring the light of new understanding to them—an understanding of their dignity and worth as “infinitely gentle / infinitely suffering thing[s]” (Lines 50-51).