Eliot's theory of poetic process and depersonalisation and his historical sense

Question- Evaluate Eliot's theory of poetic process and the process of depersonalisation. What do Eliot mean by historical sense?

Ans- T. S. Eliot's "Tradition and Individual Talent" was published in 1919 in The Egoist- the Times Literary supplement. Later, the essay was published in the Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism in 1920/2. This essay is described by David Lodge as the most celebrated critical essay in the English of the Twentieth century. Eliot is most often known for his poetry, he also contributed to the field of literary criticism. Tradition and Individual Talent is one of the more well known works that Eliot produced in his critic capacity. Eliot attempts to do two things in this essay: he first redefines "tradition" by emphasizing the importance of history to writing and understanding poetry, and he then argues that poetry should be essentially "impersonal" that is separate and distinct from the personality of its writers. Eliot's idea of tradition is complex and unusual, involving something he describes as "the historical sense" which is a perception of "the pastness of the past" but also of its "presence". For Eliot, past works of art form an order or "tradition" however that order is always being altered by a new work which modifies the "tradition" to make room for itself. This view, in which "the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past" requires that a poet be familiar with almost all literary history- not just the immediate past but the distant past and not just the literature of his or her own country but the whole "mind of Europe". Eliot's second point is one of his most famous and contentions. A poet, Eliot maintains, must "self-sacrifice" to this special awareness of the past; once this awareness is achieved, it will raise any trace of personality from the poetry because the poet has become a mere medium fro expression. At the outset of the essay, Eliot asserts that the word 'tradition' is not a very favorable term with English who generally utilize the same as a term of censure. The English do not possess an orientation towards criticism as the French do, they praise a poet for those aspects of the work that are individualistic. However, they fail to realise that the best and the most individual part of the poet's work is that reflects maximum influence of writers of the past. Tradition does not imply a blind adherence to the literary tradition of the past. For Eliot, tradition has a three fold significance. Tradition cannot be inherited and involves a great deal of labour and erudition.

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, depersonalised his emotions and whether he has the sense of tradition. So these are the objective standards. Eliot says:

"The difference between art and

the event is always absolute"

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 catalytic 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 from 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 Depersonalisation

This is the second part of his essay. The artist or the poet adopts the process of depersonalisation, which 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 extinct of personality". Here in this essay, Eliot gives importance to poetry rather than the poet which is depersonalisation. Depersonalisation is a dream like feeling of being disengaged from your surroundings where they seem "less real" than they should. Depersonalisation as a "disturbing sense of being's separate from oneself, observing oneself as if from outside, feeling like a robot or automaton". Theory of depersonalisation consists self sacrifice and extinction of personality.

"The more perfect the artist, the completely separate in him will be men who suffers and the mind which creates".

General meaning of this can be- the action of diversing 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 depersonalisation say that it feels as if they are watching themselves at from a distance without having the sense of complete control. Even though depersonalisation is harmless, it can be extremely disturbing for the person experiencing it. Symptoms of depersonalisation 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. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervening of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art towards the whole are readjusted; and 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".

Eliot says that historical sense involves a perception, not only of he pastness of the past, but of it's 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. Eliot explains it as,

"In a peculiar sense he (modern writer) will be aware also that he must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past. I say not judged, not amputated, by them; not judged by the canons of dead critics. It is a judgement, a comparison, in which two things are measured by each other. To conform merely would be for the new work 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".

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 to 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 more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential histories from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum".

T.S. Eliot was himself the very scholar, highly intellectual and well read person. Here in this quotation, we can explain that Shakespeare didn't went to any university and Dr. Samuel Jonson also says that it seems that Shakespeare was not knowing any other language other than English. But then even his characters, themes have universal appeal. Eliot anticipated is that is somebody will question him that you are telling that the poet should be well read but Shakespeare is not fitting into the principle what you are giving, so he says that he is an exceptional. We can say that Shakespeare has absorb the knowledge, lived through his age, not through the systematic learning.