Character guide

Unknown

major

Also known as Mine, thy, mine, Thee, Myself, myself

He is the book's presiding consciousness: a wealthy sensualist attended by Khaled and the moon-faced Leila, moving through censers, narghilés, and Hafiz's songs without pleasure. Having exhausted women, sciences, languages, and even sanctity, he craves something 'far too great for living' that nothing mortal can supply. His cultivated despair sets the tone for everything that follows, making his boredom the engine of the book's dark meditations.

the Absolute

supporting

Also known as himself

Where Brahm once answered prayer, the narrator has proved him dead, leaving a vacancy at the center of a world stuffed with sensation. This absence haunts the Prelude: the speaker would laugh again 'in the olden fashion' if only the Absolute existed to laugh at. The concept matters because it names the void beneath the narrator's luxury, the missing term that no sin, science, or sanctity can replace.

Death

supporting

Death presides over the collection's central visions: corpses reasoning in tombs, a dead tsar riding in triumph, a dead preacher blessing the dead. In these scenes the living are declared already rotten, their hearts 'the worms lie evermore,' so that mortality is not an event but a condition. This figure gives the book its relentless logic, converting the narrator's ennui into a universal sentence passed on all flesh.

Brahma

minor

Also known as great Brahma

The Hindu creator god, invoked as a symbolic presence in the text.

Lo

minor

A named figure, possibly a lover or muse, appearing in the poetic sections.

Lili

minor

A named figure, possibly a variant of Leila or a separate character.

Leila

minor

A named character, likely a romantic or symbolic figure in the narrative.