Analogy of Chemical reaction and poetic process.

Paper:7 Literary Theory & Criticism The 20th Western & Indian Poetics – 2Student’s Name: Kaushal DesaiClass: M.A. English Sem: 2Roll No. : 13Submitted To: Department of English

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Tradition and the Individual Talent

• “Tradition and the Individual Talent” was first published in 1919 and soon after included in The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920). 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 writer. • 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.”

Depersonalization

• Depersonalization is a dream like feeling of being disengaged from your surroundings where things seem "less real“ than they should.

• Anomaly of self-awareness. It consists of a feeling of watching oneself act, while having no control over a situation.

Depersonalization

• Depersonalization as a "Disturbing sense of being 'separate from oneself', observing oneself as if from outside, feeling like a robot or automaton".

• People who suffer from severe depersonalization say that it feels as if the they are watching themselves act from a distance without having a sense of complete control. 

• Even though depersonalization is harmless, it can be extremely disturbing for the person experiencing it.

Symptoms of Depersonalization Disorder

• Feeling as if you are watching yourself as an observer - as if you're watching your life from a distance

• Feeling that you are not in 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 isn't real

• Being able to recognize that these are only feelings and not reality

Chemical Reaction

“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, 

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend 

More than cool reason ever comprehends. 

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, 

Are of imagination all compact.”

The Poetic Process

• Eliot brings the analogy of chemical reaction to explain the process of depersonalization. In this respect he has drawn a scientific analogy. He tells that a poet should serve the sold of platinum which makes sulphuric acid.

• He says, "When the two gases, previously mentioned (oxygen and Sulpher dioxide) are mixed in the presence of a filament of Platinum. They form Sulphuric acid. The combination takes place only he 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.

Poetry as Organization

• Having its origin “emotions recollected in tranquillity”. And points out that in the process of poetic composition there is neither emotion, nor recollection for tranquillity.

• Good and a Bad poet

“It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoke by Particular events in his life that the poet is in any wayRemarkable or interesting. His particular emotions maySimple, crude, or flat. The emotion in his poetry will be aVery complex thing, but not with the complexity of theEmotions of people who have very complex or unusual

Emotions in life.”

“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 in exact

formula.”

Conclusion

♀ Eliot does not deny personality or emotion to the poet only , the must depersonalise 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 that is to be done and the poet can know what is to be done

Thank you…

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