Theory of Impersonality

Theory of impersonality refers to the concept of impersonal relationship between a man as a poet and as a general man. According to the renderer of this concept T.S.Eliot, a poet should have two distinct personalities and he as a poet should uphold no any relation with that of his personal self while composing his poetry. That is to say the poet entirely disregards the autobiographical nature of the poetry as was prevalent in the romantic age. Eliot says that while composing poetry a poet shouldn’t have a personal self or being which is backed up by several personal experiences or backgrounds and whilst composing poetry he shouldn’t be even slightly influenced by any of his personal, historical experiences that may lay even a minimal impact over his poetic composition. The personal experiences are not to be associated with the theme of the poetic composition but rather to be kept identical and separate from it. As of this reason he even regards two constituents of composing the poetry; the personal elements, i.e. the feelings and emotions of the poet and the other one being ‘the impersonal element’ which is the ‘tradition’ or the accumulated knowledge, information and wisdom acquired from the past by the poet. These two elements fuse together to form a new thing, which is called poem.

            The emotions and feelings however uphold an inferior or lower place to thought and feelings and according to Eliot poetry instead of being an expression of emotions is rather an escape from the personal emotions. The primary reason being, if the emotion that the poet uses, which is moreover his personal emotion, to write his poetry and if he’s intermingling them with his poetry then he is making his work rather more personal than general. Moreover the personal experiences that he has are resultants of some emotions that he had previously experienced as a distinct man than a poet; these emotions are since his own and so are his words that he uses in expressing those emotions of his. These words however since considers his personal emotions may or may not concern the readers.

A poetic composition by a poet, in general, is done for the masses or the readers to read for masses to read for and not for his own personal sake to attain an emotional balance by giving words to his contained unexpressed emotions. His emotions are, on the other hand, not necessary to be the same as that of the readers and thus the poet stands a very low chance of sympathy or empathy through it, which according to Eliot is highly likely and thus becomes the basis of his rejection of same personality or being working as a poet and himself instead of keeping both the personalities estranged as far as practicable. Also, the composition based on own personal feelings mightn’t yield enough readers to the poetry thus consequently harming and hampering the person’s status as a poet. Thus Eliot propounded this theory to distinguish both the personalities to make poems more artistic than emotional works.