1. T. S. ELIOT & NEW CRITICISM 1

2. T. S. ELIOT T. S. Eliot has described himself as a classicist in literature, a royalist in politics, and an Anglo-Catholic in religion. He detested Equalitarianism, progress, and liberalism. He understands that his beliefs in politics, religion, and literature form a whole. Though his ideas about individual literary figures have undergone metamorphoses throughout the years, the general outline of his critical position has remained unchanged. The essays he wrote at the end of the First World War embody the same fundamental ideas as his later ones. 2

3. T. S. ELIOT In 1917 he wrote an essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," which is still valuable as an introduction to his thought. It was written to combat the idea that the poet should be praised in proportion to his originality. No poet or artist of any sort can be understood solely in terms of himself. Often the most valuable parts of the poet's work are those in which "the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously." All the existing monuments of literature compose an order, an ideal form. 3

4. T. S. ELIOT Each new work alters, even if but slightly, the whole order. Thus it is that each new piece of work must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past. the poet must know the main current of literatures. He must have " the historical sense which we may call nearly indispensable to any one who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year. " There is a mind outside of his own, the mind of Europe, of his own country. The conscious present is an awareness of the past. The dead writers are that which we know. 4

5. T. S. ELIOT For Eliot, tradition is the mind of Europe It is more important than the individual poet. The poet must subordinate himself to tradition because it is more valuable than his own personalty. For him, “ The progress of the artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality." this process is called de-personalization. This process of depersonalization is related to tradition. 5

6. T. S. ELIOT To show this relation, Eliot gives as an analogy what happens when a piece of platinum is introduced into a gas chamber containing sulphur and carbon dioxide. The two gases hen form sulphurous acid, but the platinum itself remains unchanged. The mind of the poet is the platinum. The emotions and feelings are the gases. The more perfect he is as a poet the less his own personality is involved. His mind forms the new compounds but he remains separate from what he creates. In great art, "the difference between art and the event is absolute." 6

7. T. S. ELIOT Eliot is directly attacking the romantic notion that he poet expresses his personality. The experiences that are important for the poet as a man may have no place in his poetry Those that are important in his poetry may have little or nothing to do with his personality. Eliot writes that it is an error for the poet to feel that his own emotions are in any way remarkable or interesting. For him, the business of the poet is: ◦ not to find new emotions, but to use ordinary ones ◦ To work ordinary emotions up into poetry ◦ To express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. ◦ And emotions which he has never experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to him.” 7

8. T. S. ELIOT Thus, Wordsworth's "emotion recollected in tranquillity" cannot be accepted by Eliot. For Eliot, it is the concentration of a very great number of experiences, rather than emotions or recollections, that makes poetry. This concentration happens unconsciously. Naturally, though, a large part of the writing of poetry must be conscious. When the poet is unconscious when he ought to be conscious and conscious when he ought to be unconscious, he tends to be personal. That is a bad poet. "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion; it is not expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things." 8

9. T. S. ELIOT In hisessay, "The Function of Criticism," Eliot declares that the problem of criticism. For him the problem pf criticism is essentially one of order. For him the true critic has certain features: ◦ He will subordinate his personal prejudices to the common pursuit of true judgment. ◦ He must have objective standards of value. ◦ In other words, he must support classicism, for "men cannot get on without giving allegiance to something outside of themselves." ◦ The "inner voice" must be rejected. ◦ He must conform to orthodoxy because there are common principles, laws which it is his business to seek out. ◦ He must have a highly developed sense of fact. Fact cannot corrupt taste. Opinion and fancy can. ◦ He must be a seeker of truth. 9