T.S Eliot was a British essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic, and one of the twentieth century's major poets.
In the essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” Eliot expresses his anti romantic view. he rejects the statement of Wordsworth-“emotion recollected in tranquility.” Emotion, recollection and tranquility are three components for poetic composition of Wordsworth’s formula . Eliot presented his own theory about emotion and feelings. He thinks emotion and feelings are two different thing. He says that emotion arises out of personal incident or situation of a poet’s life. It is closely associated with a poet’s private life. Feeling depends on personal situation of poets life. It can be aroused by a word,image or phrase.
Eliot declares that a poem can be composed either with emotion or with feelings. It is not always necessary that poetry must create from emotion. Coleridge’s ‘Dejection’ is composed with the direct use of emotion rooted in personal incident. Eliot rejects the subjective emotionalism of Wordsworth’s theory. He also thinks that emotions not only generates by individual events of poets life but also emotions are distilled, processed into what Eliot calls structural or art emotion, for which a poet deserves consideration.
Eliot objectify the romantic magnification of personal emotion in poetry. Poetry is not a medium to release raw emotion in an artless, uncontrolled and undisciplined way. Later Eliot maintains that poetry is not a turning loose of emotion. Rather it is a controlled, selective, expression of emotion.
Eliot refuses Wordsworth’s requirement of tranquility. He thinks that the moment of composition is a sharp moment of psychic activity. It is a motivated state of mind when an intense, purposive intellect brings feelings or emotions into new order. Wordsworth’s reference to “tranquility” implies a kind of passive effortlessness. And Eliot says it is not “a passive attending upon the event”. It is a moment when all mental and emotional faculties are closely occupied in performing a creative fact. Thus Eliot counters Wordsworth’s formula of creative process. In this way Eliot declares his anti-romantic view.
