Tradition and the Individual Talent

Eliot asserts that readers should criticize and appreciate poems, not the poets who wrote them. One hears of lots of poets, but rarely finds a true poem. In Eliot’s “Impersonal” theory, every poem is a “living whole” of all the poetry ever written; in this theory, it’s also important to note the relation of the poem to its author. In the case of a mature poet, the poet’s mind is not profound because they are more interesting or have a greater “personality,” but because they are able to combine feelings in new ways.

Eliot returns to his analogy of the platinum. When platinum is present, oxygen and sulphur dioxide combine to form sulphurous acid. Without the platinum, this process would not occur, but the resulting sulphurous acid has no platinum in it. Also, the platinum itself doesn’t change. In Eliot’s analogy, the platinum is the poet. In the perfect poet, the creative part of the mind is entirely separate from the part that experiences and feels. If these are separate, the creative mind will better be able to craft the passions (its material) into works of art.

In Eliot’s analogy, experiences are the elements that transform in the presence of the platinum. But the experience one has of a work of art is not at all like any other experiences. The effect of a piece of art could be made up of one emotion or several, or of various feelings. The last quatrain of Canto XV in the Inferno creates an effect—a feeling—which was only appropriate for the poet to add after the perfect combination of detail he constructed leading up to it. The poet’s mind collects images and feelings and keeps them until they have all the components for a new combination.

Eliot points out that there are countless of these combinations. Contrary to what some believe, the combination’s effectiveness has nothing to do with the intensity of the emotions in the combination. Rather, it is due to the intensity of the artist’s process. The intensity of a poem is different from the intensity of the experience it is about. Poems can be equally intense even when the emotion they depend on is not equally so, or they can produce different effects even when they are based on the same emotion. There is an absolute difference between the emotion and the artistic emotion, and the combination used to create the artistic emotion is always complex.

Eliot says that the poet is not a personality, but that their mind is a medium in which experiences cohere in new ways. This is like the idea that the human soul is a “substantial unity.” Sometimes, the poet’s personal experiences will have no bearing on their poetry; likewise, their poetry might have very little effect on their personal self.

Eliot examines a passage that combines negative and positive emotions. On the one hand, the poem expresses attraction to beauty; on the other hand, it expresses an attraction to an ugliness that negates that beauty. Eliot shows that the situation (the events of the play the passage is an excerpt of) that called for this combination of emotions is not enough to explain its full effect. Rather, the poem’s full effect results from the feelings related to the emotion being combined in a new way.

Eliot claims that the poet’s personal experiences and emotions do not make the poet notable. The emotions in the traditional poet’s personal life might be boring, but the emotions in their poetry will be complex. It is wrong for the poet to look for new complex experiences in order to enrich their poetry. That would not be novelty; rather, novelty comes from working simple, old emotions into poetry that expresses new feelings. To do this, the traditional poet can use emotions they haven’t had as well as ones they do have.

Eliot says that poetry comes neither from emotion, nor recollection, nor tranquility. Rather, it is the result of concentration: The poet concentrates many experiences until they finally unite. Mostly, the poet does this unconsciously. However, much of writing is deliberate; bad poets are not deliberate when they should be, or they are too deliberate when they shouldn’t be. In both cases, the poet is too personal. Poetry shouldn’t express emotion and personality but rather escape from them. Ironically, however, it is those with personality and emotion who want this escape.