A REFUTATION OF WORDSWORTH’S DEFINITION OF POETRY Introduction:- One of the great romantic poets, Wordsworth, commented in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads that “all poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” In other words, poetry cannot be composed under duress nor can the poet be forced to write at the spur of an opportune moment. Poetry is a matter of feeling and mood.Furthermore, emotion is the fundamental condition of poetry. Without emotion and powerful feelings poetry cannot be written. But emotions and feelings alone are not sufficient to ensure good poetry; they must be directed and modified by a calm mind. Wordsworth adds : “Poetry is produced by a man, who being possessed of more than organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply.” From this statement rises the second contention of Wordsworth that “poetry takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”According to Wordsworth, poetic composition has to pass through four stages: recollection, contemplation, recrudescence and composition. All that Wordsworth seeks to emphasise in the theory that ‘poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity’ is, to quote the words of Herbert Read, that good poetry is never an immediate reaction to the provoking cause; that our sensations must be allowed time to sink back into the common fund of our experience, there is to find their level and due proportion. That level is found for them by the mind in the act of contemplation, and then in the union of contemplating mind and the receiving sensibility, rises that unique mood of expression which we call poetry”. In Wordsworth’s view, in poetic process are involved observation, description, reflection, imagination and fancy, invention and judgement.At another place Wordsworth says of the poet that “he is a man speaking to men : a man endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness a man pleased with his own passions and volitions “Thus Wordsworth places emphasis on individualism and regards the poet as a superior genius taking pleasure in ‘his own passions and volitions.’ Thus Wordsworth regards poetry as passion and emotion which he again modifies by his description of the poetic process as “recollection in tranquillity.”T. S. Eliot in his essay on “Tradition and Individual Talent” refutes this theory of Wordsworth. He says that poetry is neither emotion, nor recollection nor tranquillity. In fact, it is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion; it is not an expression of personality but an escape from personality. “The progress of an artist is a continual extinction of personality. It is in this depersonalization that art must be said to approach the condition of science.”Contrary to Wordsworth, Eliot believes in the impersonal theory of art. He regards the poet’s mind as a medium rather than a personality. He says that the feeling, or emotion, or vision, resulting from the poem is something different from the feeling, or emotion, or vision in the mind of the poet. The poet has not a personality to express, but a particular medium which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.Therefore, greatness in poetry is not a matter of personality, says Eliot. Then he makes one of his most famous statements : “It is not the “greatness,” the intensity of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts.” He says that a poet does not have stronger emotions than others, and this is also not the concern of poet to find new emotions.“It is not in his personal emotions, the imitations provoked by particular events in his life, that the poet is in any way remarkable or interesting. His particular 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 the 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 consequently, we must believe that “emotions recollected in tranquillity” is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, of a very great number of experience which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experience at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation.”T. S. Eliot, therefore, finds fault with Wordsworth’s theory of ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’. Nor does he believe that poetry is “a spontaneous over-flow of powerful feelings.’ It is a conscious art and requires conscious effort. “There is a great deal in the writing of poetry,” says Eliot, “which must be conscious and deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious and is conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to makes him ‘personal.’ 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 emotion know what it means to want to escape from these things.”Reacting against Wordsworth’s theory that poetry is “spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling,” or that poetry has its origin in “emotions recollected in tranquillity.” Eliot advances his theory of impersonality of poetry.He observes : “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion, it is not an expression of personality but an escape from personality.” The general art is objective: “the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates.” As a matter of fact, the poet has no personality, he is merely a receptacle, a shred of platinum, a medium which fuses and combines feelings and impressions in a variety of ways.

Thus Eliot rejects romantic subjectivism and emotionalism. Inspiration alone is not a safe guide. It often results in eccentricity and chaos. Moreover, the doctrine of human perfectibility and the faith in ‘inner voice’ received a rude shock as a result of the First World War. It was realised that man is not perfect, and hence perfect art cannot result from merely the artist’s following his inner voice. Some sort of guidance, some discipline, some outside authority was necessary to save art from incoherence and emptiness.Eliot holds that the poet and the poem are two separate things and ‘that the feeling, or emotion, or vision, resulting from the poem is something different, from the feeling or emotion or vision in the mind of the poet.’ This he elucidates by examining, first, the relation of the poet to the past and, next, the relation of the poem to its author. The artist has to take something from the past, but at the same time he asserts his individuality, and while asserting his individuality he must be careful: he should remain objective. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. In a work of art the past and the present fuse into a new compound.Since the artist has a mind full of varied feelings, his mind is no more than a medium to combine them into a new shape, itself remaining unaffected all the time. It may partly make use of the poet’s own experience, ‘but the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates……….Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.’ If this is also admitted, it will be found that ‘poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from personality….The emotion of art is impersonal”. It has ‘its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet.’ So ‘honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poetry.’Unlike Wordsworth, Eliot prefers objectivity and intellect. He rejects Wordsworth’s definition of poetry as ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity.’ It is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor tranquillity. The poetic process is a process of concentration of a very great number of experiences and this concentration is not conscious or deliberate. Some critics have interpreted Eliot’s observation that a poem possesses a life of its own and that a poet must extinguish his personality in the poem as an abdication of the poet’s proper responsibility. As Allen Tate has stated the developing poem furnishes the poet with certain norms for its own nurturing.The main points of this impersonal theory of poetry can be summed up as under:—1. The poem and the poet are two different things. There is no connection between the poet’s personality and the poem. A poet is great not because he puts his personality into his work, but because he has a mind in which varied feelings enter into new combinations.2. There are two kinds of emotions, of the poem, which are impure and crude, and of the poem, which are ‘significant’. The significant emotion has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. The emotion of art is impersonal.3. The poetic process is not that of the recollection of emotions in tranquillity, but of concentration.4. The poet cannot reach the impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. The progress of an artist is a continual extinction of personality.5. Poetry is not a turning loose of emotions, but an escape from emotions, it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.6. The poet is a medium, not a personality. T. S. Eliot compares the poet with the catalyst. The mind of the poet is the platinum. The emotions and feelings are the gases. The more perfect he is as a poet, the less his own personality is involved. As the Sulphur and Carbon dioxide form Sulphurous acid, and the platinum remains unchanged, so the poet remains separate from his creation, though his feelings and emotions form new sum whole.7. The poet’s mind is a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.’ And it is not the “greatness”, the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts.”Conclusion:- Eliot compares the poet’s mind to a jar or receptacle in which are stored numberless feelings, emotions, etc., which remain there in an unorganised and chaotic form till “all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.” Thus poetry is organization rather than inspiration. And the greatness of a poem does not depend upon the greatness or even the intensity of the emotions, which are the components of the poem, but upon the intensity of the process of poetic composition. Just as a chemical reaction takes place under pressure, so also intensity is needed for the fusion of emotions. The more intense the poetic process, the greater the poem. There is always a difference between the artistic emotion and the personal emotions of the poet. For example, the famous Ode to Nightingale of Keats contains a number of emotions which have nothing to do with the Nightingale. “The difference between art and the event is always absolute.” “The poet has no personality to express, he is merely a medium in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may find no place in his poetry, and those which become, important in the poetry may have no significance for the man. Eliot thus rejects romantic subjectivism.It is not the business of the poet to find new emotions. He may express only ordinary emotions, but he must impart to them a new significance end a new meaning. And it is not necessary that they should be his personal motions. Even emotions which he has never experienced personally can, serve the purpose of poetry. Eliot rejects Wordsworth’s theory of poetry, having its origin in “emotions recollected in tranquillity,” and points out that in the process of poetic composition there is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor tranquillity. In the poetic process there is only concentration of a number of experiences; and a new thing results from this concentration. And this process of concentration is neither conscious nor deliberate.