T.S. ELIOT AS A CRITICA Great Poet-CriticEliot is one of the long-line of poet critics extending from Sir Philip Sidney to our own day and including such names as Ben Jonson, Dryden, Samuel Jonson. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Arnold. Both from the point of view of the bulk and quality of his critical writings, Eliot is one of the greatest of literary critics of England, His five hundred and one odd essays published as reviews and articles from time to time, have had a far-reaching influence on the course of literary criticism in the country. “Eliot made English criticism look different,” says George Watson, “though not in a simple sense.” His criticism has been revolutionary; he has turned the critical tradition of the whole English speaking world upside down. John Hayward says:“I cannot think of a critic who has been more widely read and discussed in his own life-time; and not only in English, but in almost every language, except Russian, throughout the civilized world.”Besides being a poet, playwright and publisher, T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) was one of the most seminal critics of his time. Carlo Linati, his Italian critic, found his poetry to be ‘irrational, incomprehensible… a magnificent puzzle’, and in his poetic endeavours ‘a deliberate critical purpose’. Also in his literary criticism, Eliot’s personality has found its full expression. Thus Eliot’s literary criticism can be seen as expression of his poetic credo. As one of the seminal critics of the twentieth century, Eliot shows a disinterested endeavour of critical faculty and intelligence in analysing a work of art. For the sake of a systematic discussion, his critical works may be grouped under the following headings:a) Theoretical criticism dealing with the principles of literature,b) Descriptive and practical criticism dealing with the works of individual writers and evaluation of their achievements, and c) Theological essays.‘Tradition and Individual Talent’ has been one of his extraordinarily influential critical works. It was first published in 1922 in Sacred Woods, and was subsequently included in the ‘Selected Essays’ (1917-1932). When Eliot appeared on the literary scene, the state of English poetry and criticism was at a decadent level. Victorian criticism had degenerated into a wretched and unoriginal continuation of the romantic creed. Arnold had died in 1888. After him came Walter Pater and his theory of ‘art for art’s sake’. Oscar Wilde carried this theory to an extreme. Arthur Symons was not really a critic in true sense of the term. Saintsbury was scholarly, but more of a historian than a critic of literature. Grierson was another scholarly critic. However, none of them were able to give the desired fresh direction to English criticism. It was a state of anarchy, disillusionment and disorder all around.Eliot being a practising poet, his statements on poetry and poets carried an additional authority, and a greater conviction. His poetry and criticism are indeed closely related. He called his criticism “by-product of my poetical workshop.” The virtues of a good critic—sensitiveness, erudition, sense of fact, generalizing power----are to be found in Eliot’s pronouncements. At the same time, there is the vision of the creative artist too.Eliot’s reviews, essays, articles and published lectures fall into three periods. He terms the first period the “Pre-Christian” decade (1919-1928) in which he is mainly preoccupied with the 16 th and 17th century dramatists and poets. The second period is of social and religious criticism following his conversion. (1929-1934) the third period is what Watson terms as the “post-war Olympian period which marks the renewal of interest in critical issues. Watson further elaborates that there are three voices of Eliot as the critic: First, the youthful, exploratory enthusiasm of the twenties, where an almost ideal balance between poetic and critical activity is realised; second, an abortive of social and religious advocacy in frankly obscurantist (reactionary and traditionalist) causes; and third, a bold but exhausted attempt to recover the creative urge, followed at once by denial and desperation. The desire for discipline and order, the search for an outside authority, and the submission of the individual to this authority , and getting salvation through faith are the elements expressed in his literary, social and religious writings. There is an integrated approach in his critical career. Eliot’s critical method illustrates his theory of critical practice. It involves elucidation, comparison and contrast, an ability to make generalizations and introducing a reader to the basic and centrally important features of an author. Eliot put forward his critical opinion in a language that is clear, concise and almost scientifically accurate. It indicates his classical approach to literature. Eliot’s critical method was necessarily the result of an “intense and highly conscious work of critical intelligence.” F.R.Leavis points out: “Eliot’s best, his important, criticism has an immediate relation to his technical problems as the poet who at that moment of history was faced with ‘altering expression’.” His criticism is remarkable for its directness, and its concentrated purity of interest.A central concept to Eliot’s critical as well as his creative theory is that of tradition. The artist has to subject himself to an outside authority—the living tradition of literary works through the ages. The work of the past is to be considered in relation to the present, as something which lives on. Each generation has its own responses to art. It is very important that the works of the past are reassessed and readjusted in relation to the present. His conception of tradition is different from that of the Augustans. To Eliot, tradition is living; it is dynamic. The past is not dead and distinctly removed from the present. LimitationsNo writer is completely free of faults. Eliot has his own short-comings as a critic, and some of them are quite glaring ones. Sometimes he is pontifical, assumes a hanging-judge attitude, and instead of sympathetic understanding his pronouncements savour of a verdict. Often his criticism is marred by

personal and religious prejudices, and dislike of the man comes in the way of an honest and impartial estimate. He advocates complete objectivity in criticism, yet he is himself prone to subjective remarks at times reaching upto the level of destructive criticism. Such pronouncements have earned him the reputation of being ‘extreme’ or ‘arbitrary’. In this respect, he does not live up to his own theory of the objectivity and impersonality of poetry. His condemnation of Milton, and that of Shelley, can hardly be called sound literary criticism. When he scoffs at Arnold for his being an overworked inspector of schools, he drifts away from criticism proper and stoops to personal invective. Moreover, he does not judge all by the same standards of criticism. For example, in his essay on Dante he remarks that knowledge of the ideas and beliefs of a poet is not essential for an appreciation of his poetry. But he condemns Shelley for his ‘repellent ideas’. There is an element of didacticism in his later essays and with the passing of time his critical faculties were more and more exercised on social problems. Critics have also found fault with his style as too full of doubts, reservations and qualifications.His Contribution: Reassessment of Earlier WritersHowever, such faults do not detract us from Eliot’s greatness as a critic. His criticism offers both a reaction and a re-assessment. Through his practical criticism, he has brought about a revaluation of the great literary names of the past three centuries. His recognition of the greatness of Donne and the other Metaphysical poets of the 17th century, has resulted in the Metaphysical revival of the 20th century. The credit for the renewal of interest in the Metaphysicals and the Jacobean dramatists must go to Eliot, and Eliot alone. Similarly, he has restored Dryden and the other Augustan poets to their rightful place in the hierarchy of the Englishmen of letters. According to Bradbrook, his essay on Dante resulted not only in a greater appreciation of the Italian poet, it aroused keen curiosity and enthusiasm for the latter middle ages. We may not, sometimes, agree with his views, but there can be little doubt that he is highly original and thought-provoking. The novelty of his statements, couched in tenchant phrases, startles and arrests attention. He has shed new light on a number of English writers and has made them look entirely different—According to Eliot, the end of criticism is to bring about a readjustment between the old and the new, and his own criticism performs this function to a nicety. He says, “From time to time it is desirable that some critic shall appear to review the past of our literature, and set the poets and the poems in a new order.” Matthew Arnold was such a critic as were Coleridge and Johnson and Dryden before him; and such, to our own day, is Eliot himself (John Hayward). Eliot’s re estimation of the dramatists and poets of the 17th century, remains unrivalled in the history of English criticism.”. His vital contribution is the reaction against romanticism and humanism which brought a classical revival in art and criticism. He rejected the romantic view of the individual’s perfectibility, stressed the doctrine of the original sin and exposed the futility of the romantic faith in the “Inner Voice”. Instead of following his ‘inner voice’, a critic must follow objective standards and must conform to tradition. A sense of tradition, respect for order and authority is central to Eliot’s classicism. He sought to correct the excesses of “the abstract and intellectual” school of criticism represented by Arnold. He sought to raise criticism to the level of science. In his objectivity and logical attitude, Eliot most closely resembles Aristotle. A. G. George says:“Eliot’s theory of the impersonality of poetry is the greatest theory on the nature of the process after Wordsworth’s romantic conception of poetry.”Raised Criticism to the Level of ScienceEliot’s practical criticism offers a re-assessment of earlier writers; his theoretical criticism represents a reaction to romantic and Victorian critical creed. He called himself, ‘a classicist in literature’, and one of his important contributions in the reaction against romanticism and humanism which he strengthened. The reaction had been started by T.E. Hulme. Eliot carried it on, made it a force in literature, and thus brought about a classical revival both in art and criticism. He rejected the romantic view of the perfectibility of the individual, stressed the doctrine of the original sin, and exposed the hollowness of the romantic faith in the ‘Inner voice’ as merely doing, ‘what one likes’. He stressed that a critic must follow objective standards; instead of following merely his, ‘inner voice’ he must conform to tradition. A sense of tradition, a respect for order and authority is at the core of Eliot’s classicism, and in this respect the essay Tradition and the Individual Talent is the manifesto of his critical creed. In this way, his criticism is a corrective to the eccentricity and waywardness of the contemporary impressionistic school of criticism. Similarly, he sought to correct the excesses of what he contemptuously called ‘the abstract and intellectual’ school of criticism represented by Arnold. The critic must have a highly developed sense of fact and he must judge on the basis of these facts with perfect detachment and impartiality. He thus sought to raise criticism to the level of science; in his objectivity and scientific attitude Eliot is the English critic who most closely resembles Aristotle. In this stress on facts, on ‘comparison and analysis’, Eliot has exercised a profound influence on the New Critics. He has started many new trends in English criticism.His Revolutionary Theory of Poetry“Eliot’s theory of the impersonality of poetry”, says A.G. George, “is the greatest theory on the nature of the poetic process after Wordsworth’s romantic conception of poetry.” According to the romantics, poetry was an expression of the emotions, the personality of the poet. Thus Wordsworth said that poetry was an overflow of powerful emotions, and that it had its origins in, ‘emotions recollected in tranquillity’. Eliot rejects romantic subjectivism and propounds the revolutionary doctrine that poetry is not a letting loose of emotion but an escape from emotion, not an expression of personality, but an escape from personality. The poet is merely a catalytic agent in the presence of which varied emotions fuse to form new wholes.

He differentiates between the emotions of the poet and the artistic emotion, and points out that the function is to turn attention from the poet to his poetry. Thus his criticism is a corrective to the excesses of the biographical, historical and sociological schools of criticism. He thus changed the entire cause of critical theory and practice in many ways of far-reaching significance.Poetry as Organisation: Break from Romantic TraditionEliot’s views on the nature of poetic process are equally revolutionary. According to him, poetry is not inspiration; it is organisation. The poet’s mind is like a receptacle in which are stored a number of varied feelings, emotions and experiences. The poetic process is the process of fusing these disparate experiences and emotions into new wholes. The emotional and the intellectual, the creative and the critical, faculties must work in harmony to produce a really great work of art. A great poet both instructs and delights. However, for Eliot the greatness of a poem is tested not by the pleasure it gives or the moral elevation it leads to, but by the order and unity it imposes on the chaotic and disparate experiences of the poet. Wimsatt and Brooks are, therefore, right in saying, “Hardly since the 17th century had a critic writing in English so resolutely transposed poetic theory from the axis of pleasure versus pain to that of unity versus multiplicity.” In this way, Eliot’s theory of poetry marks a break from tradition, and gives a new direction to literary criticism.His Critical Concepts and Their PopularityEliot has formulated a number of new critical concepts which because of his gift of phrasing, have gained wide currency, and exercised a far-reaching influence on criticism ever since. Objective co-relative, Dissociation of sensibility, Unification of sensibility, are only a few of the Eliot cliches which have been hotly debated by a host of critics, and have made people sit up and think. His dynamic theory of tradition, his theory of impersonality of poetry, his insistence on, ‘a highly developed sense of fact’, on the part of the critic, have all tended to impart to literary criticism both catholicity and rationalism.Eliot’s Achievement as a Practical CriticEliot’s achievement as a practical critic has been of far-reaching importance. He has brought about a revolution in taste. As a result of his criticism, there has been a revaluation of poets like Marlowe, Jonson, Donne, and many others. The Metaphysicals were appreciated merely by a few scholars, but thanks to Eliot, they are now appreciated even by the young under-graduate. The credit for the Metaphysical revival in the early 20th century must go to T.S. Eliot. Similarly, the renewed interest in Ben Jonson and Dryden is a sort of personal triumph for Mr. Eliot. His essay on Dante has been followed not only by a considerable general interest in the Italian poet, but also by an enthusiasm for the later Middle Ages.Above all, as a practical critic, Eliot has set a standard and displayed a method. His criticism, therefore, is of permanent value, and all attempts to run down his critical achievement have so far remained futile.His Influence: Eliot’s influence as a critic has been wide and all-pervasive, it has also been a continuing one. He has corrected and educated the taste of his readers and has brought about a rethinking regarding the function of poetry and the nature of the poetic process. He gave a new orientation, new critical ideas and new tools of criticism. It is in the re-consideration and revitalisation of English poetry of the past “that his influence as a critic, has been most fruitful and inspiring. ‘No critic, indeed, since Coleridge has shown more clearly the use of poetry and of criticism’ (John Hayward). Estimating the achievement of Eliot as a critic, George Watson writes, “Eliot made English criticism look different, but not in a simple sense.” He offered it a new range of rhetorical possibilities, confirmed it in its increasing contempt for historical processes and yet reshaped its notion of period by a handful of brilliant intuitions. It is not to be expected that so expert and professional an observer of poetry should allow his achievement to be more nearly classified than this.” His comments on the nature of Poetic Drama and the relation between poetry and drama have done much to bring about revival of Poetic Drama in the modern age. There is hardly any critic now who does not bear the stamp of his influence. Even if he had written no poetry, he would have made his mark as a distinguished subtle critic. Eliot’s influence as a critic has been wide, constant, fruitful and inspiring. He has corrected and educated the taste of his readers and brought about a rethinking regarding the function of poetry and the nature of the poet process. He gave a new direction and new tools of criticism. It is in the re-consideration and revival of English poetry of the past.Prepared byProfessor Saleem Raza