Tradition & the Individual Talent

[Benny Bunter]

Revisiting this today, I can understand the first section pretty well I think, and it's brilliant, but the second part gives me trouble, when he differentiates between emotions and feelings, without defining the terms. It doesn't help that he uses Dante and some obscure Elizabethan playwright to illustrate what he's on about cos I haven't read them and don't get the context.

So what's the difference between feelings and emotions?

 

[Benny Bunter]

Is it that emotions are unconscious and more personal than feelings, and therefore less desirable in poetry for Eliot?

Or have I got it arse over tit? We tend to use the two terms interchangeably in common speech don't we? but the whole second part of the essay's argument rests on the difference between them, so I need to get it clear then read it again

 

[Corpsey]

Just skimming it it seems to me he means (though as you say doesn't clearly express) that "emotion" is the response we feel to the human events depicted in art (i.e. we may feel pity for Paolo and Francesca in INFERNO) whereas "feeling" is an aesthetic experience, an emotion aroused by our appreciation of the handiwork of the artist.

Presumably he's saying that the personal emotions of an artist are worth nothing (to the reader/viewer/listener) if they aren't transmuted via artistry into an aesthetic "feeling".

I've found that Eliot and Leavis write in a quite persuasive pseudo-scientific way sometimes, and are able to "prove' that Milton was shit and Dickens was a dullard etc. And both (I believe) were doing this in opposition to a Romantic tendency in literature/criticism--hence Eliot's sternness re: mere 'emotion' in poetry.

 

[Benny Bunter]

So feelings = emotions plus aesthetic appreciation, artistry, work.

 

[Benny Bunter]

I've found that Eliot and Leavis write in a quite persuasive pseudo-scientific way sometimes, and are able to "prove' that Milton was shit and Dickens was a dullard etc. And both (I believe) were doing this in opposition to a Romantic tendency in literature/criticism--hence Eliot's sternness re: mere 'emotion' in poetry.

Pound as well. Both of them excluded Milton and Wordsworth and Shelley from their canons, but had time for Keats for reasons I've never really fully understood.

 

[Benny Bunter]

People like Eliot and Pound and Matthew Arnold were absolute tyrants in their criticism - they've read absolutely everything and know ancient greek and latin, so you just have to take their word for it when they make these huge aesthetic judgements, but at the same time you can't shake the feeling that that they were just bullshitting and showing off most of the time.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Presumably he's saying that the personal emotions of an artist are worth nothing (to the reader/viewer/listener) if they aren't transmuted via artistry into an aesthetic "feeling".

I think they were definitely right about this, I haven't got the slightest interest in people's personal life stories and emotions when it comes to literature. Other people's specific emotions are boring to read about.

 

[Corpsey]

I started reading "The Pike" yesterday, about Gabriele A'nnunzio the Italian poet/novelist/proto-fascist--much admired (as a writer) by Joyce and Proust.

It contains (translated) bits of his speeches, which are often horrible fascistic rants about painting the streets with the blood of the trecharous pacifists etc. But it's notable that even when your skin crawls at the sentiments of these speeches, they have (even in translation) a rhetorical power that half persuades you he's onto something.

Anyway, I feel a similar way reading Pound, I suppose -- not that he's expressing fascist sentiments (not at this stage anyway), but that he's such a brilliant writer that he carries you along with him. And, as you say, he purports to being massively well read, so you can't help but take what he says on faith.

Christopher Ricks wrote a good book arguing for Milton vs. Eliot and Leavis.

 

[Corpsey]

Have you stolen luka's laughing thing @vershy versh ?

 

[vershy versh]

No, I genuinely find the thought of you reading horrible, blood-stained fascist ranting and thinking "Maybe he's got a point," funny.

 

[Corpsey]

You're first against the wall in my fascist dystopia