T.S. Eliot on Metaphysical Poets and Sensibility
T.S. Eliot on Metaphysical Poets
We may express the difference by the following theory: The poets of the seventeenth century, the successors of the dramatists of the sixteenth, possessed a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience. They are simple, artificial, difficult, or fantastic, as their predecessors were; no less nor more than Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, Guinicelli, or Cino. In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this dissociation, as is natural, was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, Milton and Dryden. Each of these men performed certain poetic functions so magnificently well that the magnitude of the effect concealed the absence of others. The language went on and in some respects improved; the best verse of Collins, Gray, Johnson, and even Goldsmith satisfies some of our fastidious demands better than that of Donne or Marvell or King. But while the language became more refined, the feeling became more crude. The feeling, the sensibility, expressed in the Country Churchyard (to say nothing of Tennyson and Browning) is cruder than that in the Coy Mistress. The second effect of the influence of Milton and Dryden followed from the first, and was therefore slow in manifestation. The sentimental age began early in the eighteenth century, and continued. The poets revolted against the ratiocinative, the descriptive; they thought and felt by fits, unbalanced; they reflected. In one or two passages of Shelley’s Triumph of Life, in the second Hyperion, there are traces of a struggle toward unification of sensibility. But Keats and Shelley died, and Tennyson and Browning ruminated.
T. S. Eliot, “The Metaphysical Poets”
Analysis of Key Concepts
Meaning of ‘possessed a mechanism of sensibility’
The meaning of this phrase is that during the 17th century there was a unification of the two aspects of the human soul. The feeling. That’s why the mechanism in the 17th century was used. Eliot manages to include the metaphysical poetry of Dante among other works within the canon. Here we can see Eliot’s idea of great poetry, which must be the unification of sensibility; the sensibility of the poets must be united.
Temporal Limits of Eliot’s Discussion
In this passage, Eliot explains the consequences of the dissociation of sensibility that took place in the 17th century. Consequences aggravated by the presence of two authors, Milton and Dryden. During the 17th century, people started to see a dissociation of sensibility, so that by the end of that century with Milton and Dryden, the dissociation was settled. The temporal limits of Eliot’s discussions were from the early 17th century to Victorian times because he mentioned two important authors of that time: Tennyson and Browning. He covers different authors thanks to that discussion of sensibility.
Poets Thought and Felt by Fits
You can only combine two things which are different, but if you don’t know anything about them, the word combine makes no sense. The idea of combination and unification only makes sense in our present times.