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Unit 30: Eliot-Tradition And Individual Talent...

impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and Notes
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 myselfFor doating
on her beauty, though her deathShall be revenged after no common action.Does the silkworm
expend her yellow laboursFor thee? For thee does she undo herself?Are lordships sold to maintain
ladyshipsFor 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 menTo 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 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, have 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.
This essay proposes to halt at the frontier of metaphysics or mysticism, and confine itself to such
practical conclusions as can be applied by the responsible person interested in poetry. To 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 expression of significant 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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