T.S. Eliot’s Impersonality, by P.B.:
Eliot’s theory of impersonality is a reaction against
Wordsworth’s theory that poetry is “Spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling.”
or that poetry has its origin in “emotions recollected in tranquility”. At
first,
Eliot examines the relation of the poet to the past and secondly, the relation of
the poem to its author to explain his theory of impersonality. Eliot says that poet
is never dead, it lives in the present. No poet or no artist has his
complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation
of his relation to the dead poets and artists. The artist or the poet works in
the long establishment tradition of literature to which he belongs. The poet cannot
be valued alone.
The main point of Eliot’s essay
is that the poet, the man and the poet, the artist are two completely different
entities. The poet having no personality of his own, submerges his own
personality, feelings and experiences into the personality and feelings of the
subject of his poetry. He things that the poet and the poem are two different
things, the feeling or emotion resulting from the poem is different from the
feeling or emotion of the poet. The poet should be impersonal.
He further says that “poetry is escape from emotion. It is
not an expression of personality but an escape from personality”. The emotion
of art is impersonal, so it has life in the poem not in the history of the
poet. It requires honest criticism and sensitive appreciation directed towards
it instead of the poet.
Note: this note is only for conceptual.