Critic Must Follow Objective Standards: T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot is a writer who is universally acknowledged not only a poet but also as a social critic in the twentieth century. He established himself not only as a poet but also as an analytic critic of both the past and present and guarded the past tradition’s integrity by co relating it with the present life. The theoretical and practical criticism of Eliot is admired widely by various critics in the world of English speaking and they utilize his criticism as a corrective of the waywardness and eccentricity of the present school of criticism. The practical criticism of Eliot provides a reassessment of the earlier writers while his theoretical criticism is the expression of the reaction to the romantic and Victorian period. The deep study of the analysis of the critical essays and writing reveals that Eliot is a poet cum critic of par excellence among the greatest critics of literature in England. In the early criticism of Eliot, the deep concern to defend poetry against any standards which is framed for judging its quality of merit can be seen.
During the young age as a poet critic, Eliot had written polemical essays for clarifying his objectives as an artist. The first characteristic that is seen in Eliot’s criticism and his poetry is the attempt to escape from the subjective self to a world of objective values. He provided it a new range of possibilities of rhetorical nature that confirmed it in the contempt for processes of history and yet the reshaping of the notion of the period is done by a handful of intuitions. The double resonance of the poet and the critic has given name of Eliot its authority and its place in the English literary dictator’s role.
As a critic Eliot stands in a lone manner among his contemporaries, as in his best works he deals not with the accidentals but with the essentials. He is the only critic who has made a contribution of constructive nature to the literary criticism. The affirmation of the need of the method which is strict and critical against the inner light of the belief of the impressionistic critic in the craftsman critic is also done by him. The social criticism of Eliot provides both reassessment and reaction and thus it make a complete diversion from the tradition of 19th century and thus a new direction is offered to the literary criticism. With that his concepts of critical nature got scattered all over his five hundred and odd reviews and essays. The coining of number of memorable phrases is done by him. Some of which are ‘perfection of common speech’, ‘dissociation of sensibility’, ‘concept of impersonal poetry’, ‘final facts’ etc. All of these phrases have gained wide currency. He vehemently rejected the romantic age’s viewpoint of the perfectibility of the individual and instead he laid stress on the doctrine of original sin and the exposure of the hollowness of the faith of the romantics in the inner voice is done by him.
Eliot believed that the critic must follow objective standards instead of just following his inner voice. The view of Eliot is that the critic must have a developed sense of fact and he has to decide on the basis of facts with impartiality and perfect detachment. In the regard to this fact Eliot raised criticism to the science level and in his attitude towards science and objectivity he is the only social critic who has very close resemblance with Aristotle In the sense of tradition Eliot’s classical bent of mind is rooted which is ultimately symbolizes the respect for order and authority. As a proof of evidence his essay “Tradition and Individual Talent” was written as the manifesto of the critical requirements. In this respect it can be said that his criticism is a corrective to the waywardness and eccentricity of the present school of criticism. Thus he is the critic who wanted to correct the excesses of what he referred to as the criticism of intellectual and abstract school which is represented by Arnold.
Regardless of the ultimate value of his criticism, there a known act which cannot be denied by anyone is that he is a great irritant in thought. The criticism of Eliot has been revolutionary as he turned the critical tradition of the whole world of English speaking upside down.
