Previous
Criticism
Depersonalization is the action of detaching the personal self from something. In the context of “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” depersonalization is the process the traditional poet goes through to make their poetry less personal and more in keeping with Eliot’s Impersonal Theory instead. The poet depersonalizes their poetry by working up complex arrangements of common emotions instead of their personal emotions. The poet further depersonalizes their work by not using it to express their own feelings and by remaining neutral in the entire writing process. In depersonalizing their poetry, they become more traditional, because they are conscious not of themselves but of the whole history of poetry.
Depersonalization Quotes in Tradition and the Individual Talent
The Tradition and the Individual Talent quotes below are all either spoken by Depersonalization or refer to Depersonalization. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Part 1
Quotes
What happens 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 extinction of personality.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Unlock explanations and citation info for this and every other Tradition and the Individual Talent quote.
Plus so much more...
Get LitCharts A+
Part 2
Quotes
The mind of the mature poet differs from that of the immature one not precisely in any valuation of “personality,” not being necessarily more interesting, or having “more to say,” but rather by being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the man who creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
[The traditional poet’s] 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.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Tradition and the Individual Talent LitChart as a printable PDF.
