Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot
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it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the
temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what
makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes
a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his own
contemporaneity.
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 onesided ; what happens when a new work of art is
created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works
of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal
order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction
of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing
order is complete before the new work arrives ; for order to persist
after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must
be, if ever so slightly, altered ; and so the relations, proportions,
values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted ; and
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this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has
approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English
literature will not find it preposterous that the past should be
altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the
past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great
difficulties and responsibilities.
In a peculiar sense he will be aware also that he must inevitably
be judged by the standards of the past. I say judged, not amputated, by them ; not judged to be as good as, or worse or better than, the dead ; and certainly not judged by the canons of dead
critics. It is a judgment, a comparison, in which two things are
measured by each other. To conform merely would be for the new
work not really to conform at all ; it would not be new, and would
therefore not be a work of art. And we do not quite say that the
new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of
its value - a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously
applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity. We
say : it appears to conform, and is perhaps individual, or it appears
individual, and may conform ; but we are hardly likely to find that
it is one and not the other.
To proceed to a more intelligible exposition of the relation of
the poet to the past : he can neither take the past as a lump, an
indiscriminate bolus, nor can he form himself wholly on one or
two private admirations, nor can he form himself wholly upon one
preferred period. The first course is inadmissible, the second is
an important experience of youth, and the third is a pleasant and
highly desirable supplement. The poet must be very conscious of
the main current, which does not at all flow invariably through
the most distinguished reputations. He must be quite aware of
the obvious fact that art never improves, but that the material of
art is never quite the same. He must be aware that the mind of
Europe - the mind of his own country - a mind which he learns
in time to be much more important than his own private mind -
is a mind which changes, and that this change is a development
which abandons nothing en route, which does not superannuate
either Shakespeare, or Homer, or the rock drawing of the Magdalen ian draughtsmen. That this development, refinement perhaps, complication certainly, is not, from the point of view of the
artist, any improvement. Perhaps not even an improvement from
the point of view of the psychologist or not to the extent which
we imagine ; perhaps only in the end based upon a complication
in economics and machinery. But the difference between the
present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness
of the past in a way and to an extent which the past's awareness
of itself cannot show.
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Someone said : 'The dead writers are remote from u s because
we know so much more than they did'. Precisely, and they are
that which we know.
I am alive to a usual objection to what is clearly part of my
programme for the mirier of poetry. The objection is that the
doctrine requires a ridiculous amount of erudition (pedantry), a
claim which can be rejected by appeal to the lives of poets in any
pantheon. It will even be affirmed that much learning deadens or
perverts poetic sensibility. While, however, we persist in believing
that a poet ought to know as much as will not encroach upon his
necessary receptivity and necessary laziness, it is not desirable to
confine knowledge to whatever can be put into a useful shape for
examinations, drawing-rooms, or the still more pretentious modes
of publicity. Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must
sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from
Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum.
What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or
procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue
to develop this consciousness throughout his career.
What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the
moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an
artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of
personality.
There remains to define this process of depersonalization and
its relation to the sense of tradition. It is in this depersonalization
that art may be said to approach the condition of science. I therefore invite you to consider, as a suggestive analogy, the action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide.
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Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon
the poet but upon the poetry. If we attend to the confused cries
of the newspaper critics and the susurrus of popular repetition
that follows, we shall hear the names of poets in great numbers ;
if we seek not Blue-book knowledge but the enjoyment of poetry,
and ask for a poem, we shall seldom find it. I have tried to point
out the importance of the relation of the poem to other poems by
other authors, and suggested the conception of poetry as a living
whole of all the poetry that has ever been written. The other
aspect of this Impersonal theory of poetry is the relation of the
poem to its author. And I hinted, by an analogy, that the mind of
the mature poet differs from that of the immature one not precisely
in any valuation of 'personality', not being necessarily more
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interesting, or having 'more to say', but rather by being a more
finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings
are at liberty to enter into new combinations.
The analogy was that of the catalyst. When the two gases
previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of
platinum, 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. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man
himself; but, 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 will the mind digest and transmute the
passions which are its material.
The experience, you will notice, the elements which enter the
presence of the transforming catalyst, are of two kinds : emotions
and feelings. The effect of a work of art upon the person who
enjoys it is an experience different in kind from any experience
not of art. It may be formed out of one emotion, or may be a
combination of several ; and various feelings, inhering for the
writer in particular words or phrases or images, may be added to
compose the final result. Or great poetry may be made without
the direct use of any emotion whatever : composed out of feelings
solely. Canto XV of the Inferno (Brunetto Latini) is a working up
of the emotion evident in the situation ; but the effect, though
single as that of any work of art, is obtained by considerable
complexity of detail. The last quatrain gives an image, a feeling
attaching to an image, which 'came', which did not develop
simply out of what precedes, but which was probably in suspension in the poet's mind until the proper combination arrived for it to add itself to. The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for
seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images,
which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form
a new compound are present together.
If you compare several representative passages of the greatest
poetry you see how great is the variety of types of combination,
and also how completely any semi-ethical criterion of 'sublimity'
misses the mark. For it is not the 'greatness', the intensity, of the
emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic
process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes
place, that counts. The episode of Paolo and Francesca employs a
definite emotion, but the intensity of the poetry is something
quite different from whatever intensity in the supposed experience
it may give the impression of. It is no more intense, furthermore,
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than Canto XXVI, the voyage o f Ulysses, which has not the direct
dependence upon an emotion. Great variety is possible in the
process of transmutation of emotion : the murder of Agamemnon,
or the agony of Othello, gives an artistic effect apparently closer
to a possible original than the scenes from Dante. In the Agamemnon, the artistic emotion approximates to the emotion of an actual spectator ; in Othello to the emotion of the protagonist
himself. But the difference between art and the event is always
absolute ; the combination which is the murder of Agamemnon is
probably as complex as that which is the voyage of Ulysses. In
either case there has been a fusion of elements. The ode of Keats
contains 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.
The point of view which I am struggling to attack is perhaps
related to the metaphysical theory of the substantial unity of the
soul : for my meaning is, that the poet has, not a 'personality' to
express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and
not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine
in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences
which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry,
and those which become important in the poetry may play quite
a negligible part in the man, the personality.
I will quote a passage which is unfamiliar enough to be regarded
with fresh attention in the light - or darkness - of these observations :
And now methinks I could e'en chide myself
For doating on her beauty, though her death
Shall be revenged after no common action.
Does the silkworm expend her yellow labours
For thee ? For thee does she undo herself?
Are lordships sold to maintain ladyships
For the poor benefit of a bewildering minute ?
Why does yon fellow falsify highways,
And put his life between the judge's lips,
To refine such a thing - keeps horse and men
To beat their valours for her ? . . .
In this passage (as is evident if it is taken in its context) there is
a combination of positive and negative emotions : an intensely
strong attraction toward beauty and an equally intense fascination
by the ugliness which is contrasted with it and which destroys it.
This balance of contrasted emotion is in the dramatic situation to
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which the speech is pertinent, but that situation alone is inadequate to it. This is, so to speak, the structural emotion, provided by the drama. But the whole effect, the dominant tone, is due to
the fact that a number of floating feelings, having an affinity to
this emotion by no means superficially evident, having combined
with it to give us a new art emotion.
It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoked by
particular events in his life, that the poet is in any way remarkable
or interesting. His particular emotions may be simple, or crude,
or flat. The emotion in his poetry will be a very complex thing,
but not with the complexity of the emotions of people who have
very complex or unusual emotions in life. One error, in fact, of
eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to
express ; and in this search for novelty in the wrong place it
discovers the perverse. The business of the poet is not to find new
emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them 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. Consequently, we must
believe that 'emotion recollected in tranquillity' is an inexact
formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without
distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a
new thing resulting from the concentration, of a very great
number of experiences which to the practical and active person
would not seem to be experiences at all ; it is a concentration
which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These
experiences are not 'recollected', and they finally unite in an
atmosphere which is 'tranquil' only in that it is a passive attending
upon the event. Of course this is not quite the whole story. There
is a great deal, in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious
and deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is usually unconscious where
he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be
unconscious. Both errors tend to make him 'personal'. 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.
But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions
know what it means to want to escape from these things.
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This essay proposes to halt at the frontiers of metaphysics or
mysticism, and confine itself to such practical conclusions as can
be applied by the responsible person interested in poetry. To
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divert interest from the poet to the poetry is a laudable aim : for it
would conduce to a juster estimation of actual poetry, good and
bad. There are many people who appreciate the expression of
sincere emotion in verse, and there is a smaller number of people
who can appreciate technical excellence. But very few know when
there is an expression of sig11ijicant emotion, emotion which has
its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. The
emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this
impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to
be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he
lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment
of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what
is already living.
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HAMLET
Few critics have ever admitted that Hamlet the play is the primary
problem, and Hamlet the character only secondary. And Hamlet
the character has had an especial temptation for that most dangerous type of critic : the critic with a mind which is naturally of the creative order, but which through some weakness in creative