T.S. Eliot's Impersonality for 6th Semester,


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.