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Notes He wants the poet to merge his personality with the tradition. “The progress of the artist is a
continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.” He suggests the analogy of the
catalyst in a scientific laboratory for this process of depersonalization. The mind of the poet is a
medium in which experiences can enter into new combinations. When oxygen and sulphur dioxide
are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulphuric acid. This combination
takes place only in the presence of platinum, which is the catalyst. But the sulphuric acid shows no
trace of platinum, which remains unaffected. The catalyst facilitates the chemical change, but does
not participate in it, and remains unchanged. Eliot compares the mind of the poet to the shred of
platinum, which will “digest and transmute the passions which are its material”. Eliot shifts the
critical focus from the poet to the poetry, and declares, “Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation
are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.” Eliot sees the poet’s mind as “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.” He says that concepts
like “sublimity”, “greatness” or “intensity” of emotion are irrelevant. It is not the greatness of the
emotion that matters, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure under which the artistic
fusion takes place, that is important. In this way he rejects the Romantic emphasis on ‘genius’ and
the exceptional mind.
Eliot refutes the idea that poetry is the expression of the personality of the poet. Experiences
important for the man may have no place in his poems, and vice-versa. The emotions occasioned by
events in the personal life of the poet are not important. What matters is the emotion transmuted
into poetry, the feelings expressed in the poetry. “Emotions which he has never experienced will
serve his turn as well as those familiar to him”. Eliot says that Wordsworth’s formula is wrong. (I
am sure you would remember Wordsworth’s comments on poetry in the Preface to the Lyrical
Ballads : “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling : it takes its origins from emotion
recollected in tranquility.”) For Eliot, poetry is not recollection of feeling, “it is a new thing resulting
from the concentration of a very great number of experiences ... it is a concentration which does
not happen consciously or of deliberation.” Eliot believes that “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.” For him, the emotion of art is impersonal, and the artist can achieve this impersonality
only by cultivating the historical sense, by being conscious of the tradition.
It is now generally believed that Eliot’s idea of tradition is rather narrow in two respects. First,
he’s talking of simply the poetic tradition and neglects the fact that even the poetic tradition is a
complex amalgam of written and oral poetry and the elements that go into them. It was only in
later writings that he realised the fact that in the making of verse many elements are involved. In
his writings on poetic drama he gives evidence of having broadened his scope.
Second, Eliot is neglecting other traditions that go into social formations. When he later wrote
‘Religion and Literature’, he gives more scope to non-poetic elements of tradition. On these
considerations one can say that he develops his ideas on tradition throughout his literary career —
right up to the time he wrote ‘Notes Towards a Definition of Culture’ in which tradition is more
expansive than in his earlier writings.

29.2 “The Function of Criticism”
Early in his career, Eliot had declared, ”The poet critic is criticizing poetry in order to create
poetry” (“The Perfect Critic”, 1920). Eliot’s criticism was subsidiary to his creative writing. We can
consider him Dryden’s successor because his critical work serves the purpose of introducing and
justifying his own practice as a poet and playwright. He also shared Dryden’s classical leanings.
In “The Function of Criticism” (1923), Eliot unambiguously states his views on criticism, and on
the methodology it should adopt.

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