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III. Analysis of language features of poetry of T.S.Eliot.
Poetry according to T.S. Eliot is not an expression of personality or of felt emotion; 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, as he says in his essay Tradition and the Individual Talent. The intrusion of the personal element into the structure or a work of art will destroy the objectivity which is necessary for aesthetic appreciation. The mind of poet is a receptacle of numberless feelings, phrases, images and thought, but he mere outpouring of these items does not result in poetry. The poet's mind is to act as a catalyst effecting a spontaneous fusion of disparate experience to create 'new wholes'. Thus the emotions and the personality of the poet become depersonalised and become significant in the poem rather than in the history of the poet. The Impersonal theory of poetry is one of the most important critical concepts of Eliot.
It is naturally interesting to examine how a Eliot himself practised his critical tenets in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock though a subjective note is present in the 'I' of the poem, Eliot does succeed in extinction of personality in that the irony is made to reflect a general human condition. In the Poems of 1920, Eliot seems to adhere more firmly to his theory of impersonality - as for instance in Burbank with a Baedeker, where disparaged view are amalgamated into a unified impression. In The Waste Land, theory and practice, to a large extent, amalgamate. The predicament of the contemporary situation is expressed in terms of an objective correlative in the myths. In the myths Eliot finds the situation and incident which act as objective correlatives for his emotions. The images, thoughts and ideas from various sources are fused to make the poem a work of art. Thus we see in Eliot's poetry a surrender or extinction of personality in order to achieve universal significance for he writes.
T. S. Eliot is a great craftsman with words. He was a great reformer of the English language like Wordsworth and John Donne. Eliot started writing in the beginning of the twentieth century. The English language became very poetic, very formal and very remote from the language of everyday use at this time. The language was vague and imprecise because of the influence of the romantics and other decadent followers. T.S. Eliot reformed the English language by bringing it once more into contact with everyday usage. In this manner, he tried to impart to its life and energy once again. He expressed his ideal in the following words:
"An easy commerce of the old and the new
The common word exact without vulgarity
The formal word precise but not pedantic
The complete consort dancing together."
The following are the main characteristics of T.S. Eliot's style and diction:
Power of phrasing by means of Auditory Imagination : A poet's greatness is determined by the sort of words he uses and the manner in which he puts them together. He can achieve this greatness by power of phrasing which is determined by auditory imagination. Auditory imagination implies "the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious level of thought and feeling, invigorating every word; sinking to the most primitive and torgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back seeking the beginning and the end."
The poet was an embodiment of this type of imagination. His words are chosen both with reference to their sense and sound. As Helen Gardner remarks: "Mr. Eliot was from the first, a poet with a remarkable range of diction, and with a natural gift for the vividly memorable phrase." His gift of phrasing is appreciated by all the critics. He had the aptitude to squeeze words till they yielded their full juice of meaning. He was fully alive to the potentialities of words as well as to their associations in various contexts.
Eliot's classical style : T.S. Eliot was a conscious and painstaking artist. He would revise and re-revise he would polish and re-polish what he attempted. In this manner, he acquired precision and exactness. Thus his ideals were based upon classical dogmas. He followed the foot-steps of Horace and Virgil who sed to revise their verses constantly. In this manner, he imparted new life, new form and new colour to the words which he used. He achieved perfect order of speech. Thus, he has been appreciated immensely because of these ideals of art.
Eliot's variety of diction : Eliot mixes unexpected and common-place phrases and words which immediately startle and surprise the reader. His colloquial beginnings are very effective. He immediately arrests the attention of the reader. for example, The Love Song of J. Alfed Prufrock has a direct, straight-forward and colloquial opening. He immediately plunge into the topic by saying, "Let us go then, you and I." Similarly, in Gerontion, he is straight-forward and conversational throughout. In The Waste Land the style is very straight-forward as the poet uses the phrase 'Unreal City' in the beginning of the passage.
His variety of diction can be noted by the use of phrases and images taken from the sordid realities of every-day urban life. Sometimes, he uses the non-poetic words and phrases which are not used in poetry before. It is not easy to assimilate the diction of everyday speech but Eliot uses this technique successfully. He has acquired that variety of diction, that union of the poetic and the prosaic, of the common world and the formal, the colloquial and the remote, the precise and the suggestive which is the achievement of a great order. There is a dramatic element in T.S. Eliot's style. He achieved this dramatic art because of the immense range and variety of diction. He uses the words and phrases according to the characters and the status of the speaker. Sometimes, he varies his style with parody. A Game of Chess opens with as direct parody of a famous passage in Antony and Cleopatra.
Economy and preciseness of Eliot's style : His use of language is characterised by economy, precision, variety, and appropriateness. He would not use two epithets where only one can serve his purpose. His use of concrete, vivid and pictorial words, his power of selecting the right and the precise word, the handling of pronoun, adjectives and the various tenses of a verb, the conversational tone, 'a return to common speech,' are some of the distinctive features of his poetic diction. Eliot has also the knack of making powerful effects by the repeated use of a single word, such as, "Thinking, thinking, thinking, nothing, nothing, burning" in the third section. The absence of fertility and peace is indicated by the repeated use of the negative "no" in the opening section of The Waste Land:
"And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And dry tones no sound of water."
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