you know, what you're getting by the chemical reaction of poetry

1. Analogy of Chemical reaction
and poetic process.
Paper:7 Literary Theory & Criticism The 20th Western &
Indian Poetics – 2
Student’s Name: Kaushal Desai
Class: M.A. English
Sem: 2
Roll No. : 13
Submitted To: Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji
Bhavnagar University

2. 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.”

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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

6. 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.”

7. 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.

8. 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

10. “It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoke
by Particular events in his life that the poet is in any way
Remarkable or interesting. His particular emotions may
Simple, 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.”
“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.”

11. 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

12. Thank you…
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kaushaldesai123@gmail.com