What does it mean to say that “the author should not be personal and that the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him” will be the man who suffers and the man which creates?

 

Introduction: Eliot argues in this essay that there is a difference between a poet's personality and his art, and that great poetry exists in a kind of dialogue with the tradition of poetry, which, for Eliot, means the European tradition. When the author write something, it’s not him. It’s just an idea and creativity what he feeding in is mind.

Description: His essay is divided into three parts:

In part one, Eliot articulates his notion of literary tradition. Eliot argues that often what marks great poetry is the degree to which it is able to evoke the poets of the past most "vigorously." His point isn't that great poetry should simply imitate poetry of the past, but that it should exist in awareness of the "whole of the literature of Europe" as its context. In this sense, the meaning of a poem is never created solely by the author; its significance comes from the author's "appreciation" of his relationship to the tradition. In this sense, Eliot claims that the life of an artist is "continual self sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality."

In part two, Eliot focuses on the poetic practices this position requires. He argues that the mature poet writes not because he has "more to say" but because his technique has made it possible for him to more finely articulate emotion. He explains this using an analogy from chemistry: how platinum, in the presence of oxygen and sulfur dioxide, acts as a catalyst to create sulphurous acid. The poet is akin to the platinum: through the practice of his art, new work is brought into being, but the poet himself, personally, is unchanged. In this regard, Eliot makes a distinction between "emotion" and "feeling." The poetic mind is a receptacle for recording feelings, which the poetic process turns into "emotion." Eliot uses several examples, of which Dante is key; Dante's poetry achieves greatness not through the intensity of its emotion but the intensity of the "artistic process," which is to use new combinations of feelings to evoke in new ways the universal emotions that form the basis of literary tradition.

Part three is short conclusion. Here, Eliot recapitulates his argument: that "the emotion of art is impersonal," and the work of the artist is articulate feeling within the context of the living literary tradition of Europe.

 

 

Conclusion: The fact that critics find biographical interests dismaying is easily explained. It is still an article of a critic's faith that, as T. S. Eliot wrote 64 years ago, ''the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.'' Critics have taken Eliot's word on this matter and acted on the understanding that criticism is one thing and biography a diversion from the only thing that counts, the work, the words on the page.