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No writer has his value and significance in isolation: “No poet, no artist of any art, has his
complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the
dead poets and the artists.”
A poet has value if he conforms or fits in to the tradition; “you must set him, for contrast and
comparison, among the dead”, but this is not a one-sided process and is not passive .
He replies that . . .
Knowledge of the past does not mean book knowledge of literature from Homer to the present;
Some absorb this while others have to sweat for it; “Shakespeare acquired more essential
history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum”.
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It is a “consciousness of the past” which must be developed throughout the career of the poet.
Theory of Impersonality
The thesis statement: “The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction
of personality”.
Poetry is not individual talent or feeling but “a living whole of all the poetry that has ever been
written”.
The mind of a mature poet is only “a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very
varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations”.
It is not personality or interesting/ great thoughts which make it mature.
The mind of the poet is like a catalyst, like a filament of platinum when oxygen and sulphur
dioxide combine to from sulphurous acid;
The combination takes place only in the presence of platinum, the platinum is neutral and
unaffected, the new acid has no traces of platinum.
“The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and
the mind which creates”.
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The particular emotions of a poet may be “simple, or crude, or flat” but the “emotion in his poetry
will be a very complex thing” because of the poetic mind.
The emotional complexity in the poem is not the same as the “complexity of the emotions of
people who have very complex or unusual emotions in life”.
The poet works up ordinary emotions into poetry and creates “feelings which are not in actual
emotions at all”
Poetry is “a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration, of a very great
number of experiences”, not necessarily relevant or one’s own
This concentration does not happen “consciously or of deliberation”.
Thus there is no ‘emotion’ or ‘recollection’ or ‘tranquility’ in poetry and Wordsworth’s definition is
“an inexact formula”.
Thus “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”
Conclusion:
“The emotion of art is impersonal.”
The poet cannot reach this impersonality without “surrendering himself wholly to the work to be
done”.
Thus “Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the
poetry”.