Prepared by- Divya Choudhary
Course- M.A.
Sem- 2
Paper no. - 7
Paper name- Literary Theory and Criticism
Enrollment no. - PG15101007
Batch- 2015-17
Email id- choudharydivya400@gmail.com
Submitted to- Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
INTRODUCTION
In Tradition and
Individual Talent, he propounded the doctrine that poetry should be impersonal
and free itself from Romantic practices, ‘the progress of an author is a
continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality’. He sees that
in this depersonalization, the art approaches science. For Eliot, emotions in
poetry must be depersonalized. Artistic self-effacement is essential for great
artistic work..
He opposed Coleridge who says that a worth of
a poet is judged by his personal impressions and feelings. Eliot says that
impressionism is not a safe guide. A poet in the present must be judged with
reference to the poets in the past. Comparison and analysis are the important
tools for a critic. The critic must see whether there is a fusion of thought
and feeling in the poet, depersonalized his emotions and whether he has the
sense of tradition. So these are the objective standards. But what emotion is
Eliot talking of? He speaks against the poet’s emotions. Art, too has emotions;
but different from those of the artist and this difference is to be maintained
for a great work of art. Eliot says:
“The difference between art and the event is always absolute”
His theory of
impersonality goes even further when he criticizes Wordsworth’s view that
poetry has its, Origin in emotions recollected in tranquility”. In his view
poetry is an organization of different concepts and for such organization to
take place perfect objectivity on the part of the poet is essential. There is
no question of the poet expressing his personal emotions. To Eliot, The poet’s
emotions and passions must be depersonalized; he must be as impersonal and
objective as a scientist. The personality of the artist is not important:
important thing is his sense of tradition; A good poem is a living whole of all
the poetry that has ever been written. The poet must forget his personal joys
and sorrows, and be absorbed in acquiring a sense of tradition and expressing
it in his poetry. Thus the poet’s personality is merely a medium, having the
same significance as a catalytic agent, or a receptacle in which chemical
reaction takes place. That is why the poet Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion,
but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an
escape from personality. Eliot does not deny personality or emotion to the
poet. Only, he must depersonalize his emotions. There should be an extinction
of his personality. This impersonality can be achieved only when the poet
surrenders himself completely to the work that is to be done. Eliot asserts:
“The emotion of art is impersonal.
And the poet cannot reach this ‘impersonality without surrendering himself wholly
to the work”
Eliot compares the
poet’s mind to a jar or receptacle in which are stored numberless feelings,
emotions etc., which remain there in an unorganized and chaotic form till, “all
the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.”
Thus poetry is organization rather than inspiration. And the greatness of a
poem does not depend upon the greatness of, or even the intensity of, the
emotions, which are the components of the poem, but upon the intensity of the
process of poetic composition. Just as a chemical reaction takes place under
pressure, so also intensity is indeed for the fusion of emotions into a single
whole. The more intense the poetic process, the greater the poem. There
is always a difference between the artistic emotion and the personal emotion of
the poet. The poet has no personality to express, he is merely a medium in
which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways.
Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may find no place
in his poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may have no
significance for the man.
Poetic Process
In Tradition and Individual Talent, Eliot propounded the
doctrine that poetry should be impersonal and free itself from Romantic
practices, 'the progress of an author is a continual self-sacrifice, a
continual extinction of personality'. Eliot says that impressionism is not a
safe guide. A poet in the present must be judged with reference to the poets in
the past. The critic must see whether there is a fusion of thoughts and
feelings in the poet depersonalized his emotions and whether he has the sense
of tradition. So these are the objective standards.
In the poetic process there is only concentration of a
number of experiences and new things result from this concentration. And this
process of concentration is neither conscious nor deliberate; it is a passive
one. In the beginning, his self, his individuality, may assert itself, but as
his powers mature there must be greater and greater extinction of personality.
He must acquire greater and greater objectivity. He compares the mind of the
poet to a catalyst and the in the presence of a catalyst alone, so also the
poet's mind is the catalic agent for combining different emotions into
something new. Eliot speaks of John Keats;
"The ode of Keats contain a number of feelings which have
nothing particular to do with the nightingale, but which the nightingale,
partly perhaps because of its attractive name, and partly because of its reputation,
served to bring together".
Thus, the difference between art and emotion is always
absolute. The poet has no personality to express, he is merely a medium in
which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways.
According to Eliot, two kinds of constituents go into the making of a poem; the
personal elements, i.e. the feelings and emotions or the poet, and the
impersonal elements, i.e. the 'traditional', the accumulated knowledge and
wisdom of the past, which are acquired by the poet. These two elements interact
and fuse together to form a new thing, which we call a poem. It is the mistaken
notion that the poet must express new emotions that results in much
eccentricity in poetry. That is why, Eliot says:
"His particular emotions may be
Simple, or crude, or flat".
Theory of
Depersonalization
This is the second part of his essay. The artist or the poet
adopts the process of depersonalization, which is "a continual surrender
of him as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress
of an artist is a continual self sacrifice, a continual extinct of
personality". Here in this essay, Eliot gives importance to poetry rather
than the poet which is depersonalization. Depersonalization is a dream like
feeling of being disengaged from your surroundings where they seem "less
real" than they should. Depersonalization as a "disturbing sense of
being's separate from oneself, observing oneself as if from outside, feeling
like a robot or automaton". Theory of depersonalization consists self
sacrifice and extinction of personality.
"The more perfect the artist, the completely separate in
him will be men who suffer and the mind which creates".
General meaning of this can be- the action of diverging
someone o something of human characteristics or individuality psychiatry meaning,
a state which one's thought and feeling
seem unreal or not belong to oneself. Eliot compares it to a chemical process.
When two gases Oxygen and Sulphur dioxide are mixed in the presence of a
filament of platinum (can also be called mind of poet), they form sulphurous
acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present, nevertheless
the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum and the platinum itself is
apparently unaffected; has remained inert, neutral and unchanged. Mind of the
poet is the shred of platinum. The more perfect the artist, the more completely
separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates the more
perfectly the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material. Poetry
is not a turning loose of emotions, but an escape from personality. Only those
who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from
these things.
People who
suffer from severe depersonalization say that it feels as if they are watching
themselves at from a distance without having the sense of complete control.
Even though depersonalization is harmless, it can be extremely disturbing for
the person experiencing it. Symptoms of depersonalization order-
- Feeling as if you are watching yourself as an observer- as
if you are watching your life from a distance.
-feeling that you are not in a control of your actions.
- Feeling disconnected from your body.
- Out-of-body experiences.
- feeling as though you are in a dream.
- feeling that everything around you is unreal.
- being able to recognize that these are only feelings and
not reality.
Eliot does not deny personality or emotion to the poet only,
he must depersonalize his emotions. There should be exit notion of his
personality. This impersonality can be achieved only when the poet surrenders
himself completely to the work i.e. to be done and the poet can be known what
is to be done.
Historical
Sense
Eliot finds not contradictory but supplementary elements in
the co-relationship of the past and the present. He expresses his views as
follows:
"No
poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. His significance,
his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and
artists. You cannot value him alone: you must set him, for contrast and
comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of aesthetic, not merely
historical criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall
cohere, is not one-sided, what happens when a new work of art is created is
something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which precede it.
The existing monuments from an ideal order among themselves, which is modified
by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them.
Eliot says that historical sense involves a perception, not
only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense
compels a man to write not merely with his own generation with his bones, but
with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within
it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence
and composes a simultaneous order.
In Eliot's sense, to be traditional means to be conscious of
the main current of art and poetry. Eliot writes,
"The difference between the present and the past is
that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and too an
extent which the past's awareness of itself cannot show".
Eliot says that there is a distinction between knowledge and
pedantry.
"Some can absorb knowledge; the tardier must sweat for
it. Shakespeare acquired more essential histories from Plutarch than most men
could from the whole British Museum".
Conclusion
To
conclude, Harold Bloom presents a conception of tradition that differs from
that Eliot. Whereas Eliot believes that the great poet is faithful to his
predecessors and evolves in a concordant manner, Bloom according to his theory
of ‘anxiety of influence envisions the strong poet to engage in a much more
aggressive and tumultuous rebellion against tradition’
In
1964, his last year, Eliot published
in a reprint of the use of poetry and the use of criticism, a series
of lectures he gave at Harvard university in 1932 and 1933, a new
preface in which he called “Tradition
and the Individual talent” the most juvenile of his essays.
