Emotion, Art, and Impersonality Theme Analysis

In Part 2 of “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Eliot depicts the perfect poet as completely separate from their work. To do this, he argues for a difference between personal and artistic emotion. Although we might think that the intensity of an emotion in a poem comes directly from the intensity of the poet’s experience of the emotion, this is actually not the case. In fact, Eliot claims that the poet’s emotions may even be “simple, or crude, or flat.” What is more, the poet might remain unaffected by their own poems. Instead of expressing personal emotions in poetry, the poet uses their artistic strength to bring feelings—perhaps not even their own—together into a new effect of an emotion. Therefore, the poet is remarkable because they are a “medium” for this transmutation of feelings, not because of individual personality or depth of experience. In making this claim, Eliot transfers greatness from the poet’s personality to the poems themselves and asserts that poetry writing should actually be an extremely impersonal experience.

From the outset of Part 2, Eliot argues that artistic emotion is not at all like personal emotion. First, the experience of a piece of art is essentially unlike any experience of life. Eliot claims that the effect of a piece of art does not develop simply out of a situation but is obtained “by a considerable complexity of detail.” Even though art creates a single effect, it always comes from a complex combination. What is more, the intensity of a poem always comes from the combination, not the emotion. Eliot illustrates this by pointing out that the episode of Paolo and Francesca—a tragic love story—is as poetically intense as the voyage of Ulysses as depicted in Dante’s Inferno, even though the two episodes do not stem from the same emotion. Therefore, the particular emotion has nothing to do with the poem’s intensity. To drive this point home, Eliot quotes a passage from an anonymous source. He shows that the power of the passage comes not from the situation—beauty set up against ugliness—but from the unique combination of feelings, images, and phrases that evoke the situation’s emotion in a fresh way. All this shows that art is always something more than what might have inspired it.

Furthermore, the poet’s personal emotions do not assist them at all in writing poetry. First, a poet who is inexperienced in their personal life can still be a talented writer. The poet’s own emotions might be “simple, or crude, or flat” while the emotions in their poetry are complex, which shows that the ability to write poetry can exist without the writer’s having had many experiences. Moreover, when the poet seeks new, more complex experiences, they will still not necessarily achieve complex poetry. They will only achieve complexity by using “the ordinary [emotions]”—ones which the poet may not even have had—in their poems, and in so doing express new feelings “which are not in actual emotions at all.” The poet’s artistic ability, not their experiences, is responsible for their poetry. All in all, the very act of writing poetry is not for the purpose of expressing one’s personal emotions. Eliot claims that poetry is impersonal because it “is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.” The poet does not use their poetry for self-expression, nor would it be any better if they did.

The ideal poetic process—recombining usual emotions and experiences to create new feelings—is best done if the poet’s work is impersonal. Early on, Eliot boldly claims that the perfect artist is entirely separate from their work. The more separate they keep their personal lives from their art, “the more easily will [they] digest and transmute the passions which are [their] material.” In other words, to be a good writer, the poet has to write impersonal poems. To illustrate this, Eliot compares the poet to a piece of platinum and the effect it has on sulphur dioxide and oxygen. In the example, the platinum causes the other two elements to fuse together and transform into sulphurous acid. Meanwhile, the platinum, like the ideal poet, leaves no trace in the sulphurous acid and is not itself changed by the process. The poet’s artistic process is responsible for their poetry, not their personality. Also like the piece of platinum, the poet “is a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways.” The poet makes external experiences and emotions combine and unite with their artistic process alone and not with their personality.

Not only does Eliot claim that writing poetry should be an impersonal experience, but he also claims that we should not admire poets so much for their unique lives. The intense emotional effect that art creates has “its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet.” In order to achieve this effect, the poet must undertake “a continual extinction of [their] personality” while writing. Therefore, their poetry is impersonal to the point of effacing the poet who wrote it. Their poetry is admired with no reference to its author.