Stress on Facts: Objectivity

It was in 1928, that Eliot made his famous declaration that he was, a classicist in
literature, a royalist in politics, and an Anglo-Catholic in religion. Thus in his own
trenchant way, Eliot emphasised the value of order and discipline, of authority and
tradition, and of organisation and pattern.
The cardinal point of his classicism is his insistence on fact. A poem must be judged on
the basis of facts and it is the critics duty to place these facts before the readers. He
rejects impressionistic criticism as worthless, and insists that a work must be judged by
certain accepted principles and standards. He believed that the true basis of poetry lies
in the organised labour of intellect, rather than in the accidents of inspiration and
intuition. Says Maxwell, In this intellectual bias, in the belief that authority rather than
liberty is the guide to truth, and in his regard for formal details, is Eliots kinship with
Augustan classicism.
Rejection of Subjectivism: Advocacy of Order and Discipline
Eliots classicism arose in part, at least, out of his reaction to the exhausted and thinned
out romantic tradition. The romantics believed in inspiration and intuition. They
believed in the poets following his own inner voice. But inspiration is fitful, a matter
of chance and accident, and unrestrained liberty in the hands of lesser men is likely to
degenerate into chaos and licence. The evil consequences of such romantic fallacies were
well-illustrated by contemporary English poetry which was degenerate and which
indulged in trivialities. Reacting sharply against this state of affairs, Eliot emphasised
that the classical school achieved, an elegance and a dignity absent from the popular
and pretentious verse of the romantic poets. In the essay on The Function of Criticism,
he points out that the difference between the two schools is that between the complete
and the fragmentary, the adult and the immature, the orderly and the chaotic. This
shows that Eliot appreciated the completeness and formal perfection of classical poetry,
and the classics could achieve this order and balance, only because they followed some
discipline, some authority outside themselves. Perfection results only when the ultimate
guide for the artist is not his own self, but some objective authority. Thus he makes fun
of Middleton Murrys reliance on the inner voice, and says that following the inner voice
merely means doing what one likes. He calls it whiggery.
Poetry as Organisation
Poetry is not merely inspiration, it is also organisation. The maturity of the artist is seen
in his ability to organise disparate experiences into a single whole. In mature art there
is unification of sensibility, of the intellectual and the emotional, the creative and the
critical. This can be achieved only by an exercise of the powers of the intellect. The poet,
in order to achieve perfection, must be painstaking: The larger part of the labour of an
author is critical, the labour of sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting,
and testing. Eliot recommends the ideal of Horace and Virgil that the poet should
create in heat, but correct at leisure, and lick his poems into shape. In his own practice,
Eliot followed this ideal. He revised and re-revised till his work acquired the finish of
classical poetry. He was a conscious, painstaking artist in the noblest tradition of
classical art.
Conformity with Tradition

Eliot emphasised the importance of tradition, which represents the accumulated

wisdom and experience of the ages. The traditional elements in a work of art are of
greater significance than the so called individual and original. In his essay Tradition and
Individual Talent, he views European literature from Homer down to his own day as a
single whole, and pleads that English literature must be viewed as a part of this literary
tradition. The poet must accept it as the outside authority, and only such acceptance can
save English poetry from disorder and chaos. New works of art must conform to this
tradition. In his own practice, Eliot accepts this literary tradition as his poetic
background. It is this background of literary tradition which provides, the objective
correlative in Eliots poetry. He goes to this very tradition for comparison and
elucidation of individual poets and their works. His use of literary tradition may be more
involved and complex than that of the Augustans, but it is basically the same.
Economy and Precision: Wit and Irony
Classical art is concise, and precise, while romantic art suffers from diffusiveness and
blurring of outline. Eliot also advocated this preciseness of classicism. His critical prose
has the epigrammatic terseness and economy of classical art. He has the same gift of
phrasing. Another important feature of classicism in its satiric wit, and a vein of
mockery and irony runs through all critical writings of Eliot also. Often he does not
answer argument by argument, but dismisses it with devastating irony. Eliots wit is the
result of his classical predilections, for wit requires, brevity, careful phrasing, and clarity
of thought and expressionall qualities of classical art. It also indicates a view of life
similar to that of the Augustans, i.e. a moralists concern for human frailties, and an
ironical treatment of them.
Classical Ideal of Phrasing
Like the classics, Eliot aspired for formal perfection and achieved it painstakingly. He
was a conscious artist, and his prose, as well as his poetry has a marked intellectual
tone. He achieved verbal precision and felicity of phrasing through constant sifting,
selecting and ordering of material. He polished and re-polished what he wrote and his
revisions show his predilection for economy and precision in expression. His classical
ideal of phrasing is described in Little Gidding:
The Common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together.
The emphasis is on exactness and precision. It is the same ideal as that of Pope:
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.

Only Eliot envisages a wider field of choice, he admits the common word. He
constantly revised, and his revisions and excisions show an, intellectual rather than an
instinctive, emotional approach. Form and content are refined by the shaping power of
the intellect, till his meaning is conveyed clearly and precisely.
Conclusion
Such is Eliots classicism. There is a close similarity between his theory and practice and
that of the Augustans. Each accepts an existing framework of tradition, the rules of an
objective authority, and makes conscious effort to work within that framework. Satirical
wit plays an important part in both, and with it goes a concern for the necessity of

cultivating precision of form and word. This requires an intellectual rather than an
emotional, instinctive approach to the task of selecting words, of relating them to each
other, and to the whole.
Eliots classicism is seen in his impersonal theory of poetry, in his insistence on artistic
self-restraint and depersonalisation of emotion and adherence to some outside
authority, in his emphasis on facts, and in his advocacy of the classical ideals of art.
However, he differs from the classicists in one important respect. He did not enunciate
any theory of poetry, while he has much to say on the nature of poetry and the poetic
process.