T.S. Eliot: “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”

Rhapsody on a Windy Night has always been one of my favorite poems by T.S. Eliot. In many ways, it is one of the easiest to read and understand. As the title suggests, the setting of the poem takes place in one night, from the time of midnight to four in the morning. It is ultimately about the reality of our futility, and the attempt, and ultimate failure, to escape from that reality.

There really are five sections to the poem, each one delineated by a certain time of night: Twelve o’clock, Half-past one, Half-past two, Half-past three, and Four o’clock. The main image constant throughout the poem is the streetlamp, and at those certain times in the night, it shows the poet something. The streetlamp’s light is thus the light of reality. In each section its light falls on something in the night, and that image causes the poet to recall other images from his memory that cause him to contemplate the harsh reality of life. Contrasted to the streetlamp is the moon and its moonlight. Although it can be romantic and even dreamy, the moonlight nevertheless can be an intoxicating escape from the harsh realities of this world. The streetlamp, though, does not let that happen. Thus, is the tension in the poem

Twelve O’clock
In this first section, we are faced with the contrasting sources of light in the poem, that of the streetlamp and that of the moon. The moon is described in terms of madness and forgetfulness. It holds the streets in lunar synthesis and whispers lunar incantations to those who walk the streets at night. Its light tempts one to forget the reality of a fallen world, and instead, entices one to wander in almost a dream-like state. The streetlamp, on the other hand, shows the harsh truth about the reality of our futile and fallen world. That is why every streetlamp the poet passes beats like a fatalistic drum. As soon as he passes by the light of the streetlamp and back into the spaces of the dark, his memory is shaken by the darkness of midnight, “as a madman shakes a dead geranium.”

Half-Past One
At 1:30 am, the poet passes by another streetlamp that sputters and mutters, and then shows him a woman who hesitates toward him in the light of a door, “which opens on her like a grin.” She is a prostitute, trying to entice him in her own smiling false light. The poet sees that her dress is torn and stained with sand—she’s already done at least one trick by the beach. And he notices the twisted crow’s feet around her eye—this woman is getting old, and yet she is still working the streets.

The sand on her dress and the twisted crow’s feet around her eye causes the poet’s memory to think of a number of twisted things. He first thinks of a twisted branch on the beach that has been worn down and polished by the elements. It is “as if the world gave up the secret of its skeleton, stiff and white.” He then thinks of a rusted-out spring in a factory yard that has become so eaten by rust that, although it still has the form of a spring, is ready to snap and disintegrate at the slightest touch. The twisted branch and broken spring represent the prostitute, and they all three represent humanity: skeletal, rusted through, and ready to snap.

Half-Past Two
At 2:30 am, the streetlamp shows the poet another image, that of an alley cat in the gutter that “slips out its tongue and devours a morsel of rancid butter.” The poet recalls seeing a child, probably an orphan, one time along the docks that reached out and “pocketed a toy that was running along the quay”—he caught a rat. The poet remarks that he “could see nothing behind that child’s eye.” The child was dead inside. There was no glimmer of life in his eyes. That causes the poet to recall other attempts to just reach out and stay alive. He first thinks of eyes in the dark streets, trying to peer through lighted shutters—lost in the dark, searching for the light…perhaps in wrong places, like the prostitute’s bedroom? He then thinks of an old crab with barnacles on his back, just gripping the end of a stick. In all these images, we see a reaching out, a searching, but that which is devoured, pocketed, searched for, and gripped proves to be a dead end.

Half-Past Three
At 3:30 am, the harsh, cold streetlamp shows the poet…the moon. To describe the moon, Eliot uses a line in French that, when translated, says, “The moon doesn’t retain any bitterness.” But the harsh reality as to why that is so comes in the next few lines, where the moon is depicted as winking a feeble eye and smiling into corners. The moon doesn’t retain any bitterness because the moon is old and senile: “The moon has lost her memory.” Not only that, but she is sick with smallpox and all the “old nocturnal smells that cross and cross across her brain.” The nocturnal smells are of the cheap lust and distorted view of love that those like the aging prostitute is offering.

This causes the poet to reminisce of the cheap and lustful life of night-time city life: Sunless dry geraniums, dust in crevices, smells of chestnuts in the streets, female smells in shuttered rooms, cigarettes in corridors, and cocktail smells in bars. All so dreary and pointless.

Four O’clock
At 4:00 am, the poet makes his way back to his apartment, back to being forced to remember his own real life. Now, instead of the streetlamp, “The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair.” It shows his bed and his toothbrush hanging on the wall. He puts his shoes at the door. He gets in bed to sleep, and so prepare for the next day’s life. The poem then ends with, “The last twist of the knife.” The harsh reality is that his own life really isn’t that much of a life at all. It is a living suicide.

As dark as Rhapsody on a Windy Night is, it nevertheless captures the dreariness and hopelessness of life in the modern world. The constant attempts to withdraw from reality, to not face it. The constant attempts to settle for cheap thrills and fleeting moments of excitement that quickly fade, living one just more beaten down and hollowed out. I believe it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, “The mass of men leads lives of quiet desperation.” Rhapsody on a Windy Night beautifully, and tragically, shows just what that desperation looks like.