Jane - thou shalt not find objective correlative in Sacred Wood essays (though you certainly must read it cause it is among Eliot's early essays relating to criticism and possibility of poetic drama). Thanks to you I read up the Sacred Wood yet again. Then I read up a whole volume of recent crticism of Eliot's works. I then started reading up Eliot's biography. God! Jane I am terrified of you. Never have i researched thus unless it was for a fire breathing client who wanted me to win his case or else lose my life!
But when I found it, it was somewhere in an anthology by some ____Gallanter. I wanted to carry the book to office in order to reproduce it but lo behold - i forgot to carry it.
This is not a personal mail. no sir. I owe it to the group to explain this crypt of "objective correlative".
Objective correlative is certainly Eliot's creation. According to Eliot poetry was not about _expression_ of personality but an escape therefrom. Therefore in poetry he wished to reproduce that sequence of sensory experience, or express that scene or collection of objects which when so expressed would immediately regenerate those feelings associated with the specific experience. Example-
imagine u want to express the dreariness of a city in winters u could say
ah! my heart breaks
when i see
the cold cold winter
freeze the toes
of lonely men
in an overcrowded city..
Now I have written this one right now. But this poem (if u can call it so) has no imagery, no collection of facts that can regenerate the emotions which a dreary winter can evoke. And now take Eliot's Preludes-
The winter evening settles down
with smells of steaks in passageways (objective correlative)
six o'clock
the burnt out ends of smoky days
and now a gusty shower wraps
the grimy scraps
of withered leaves about ur feet(pl. note the clarity of the description of the sensory experience)
the showers beat
on broken blinds and chimney pots (lovely!)
and so on and so forth.
not once has Eliot talked about his feelings directly and condemned the city. He has let the imagery and concrete representation of objects and scenes evoke those feelings in the reader. I guess that's what objective correlative is about..
Hope this clarifies.
Ron
Thanks, Farah,It just shows you the gaps in my reading. I really didn't know this.Objective or subjective...it rather seems to depend what you are writing about. Good poetry can be either. I think you will find that most women's poetry is subjective and men's is objective...though in these days of metrosexuality the distinctions may be blurred. Curiously, one only hears this term applied to men: can women be metrosexual, or is this still a male bastion?And no, Ronnie, I didn't damn the term, I simply asked what it was, not having come across it before. I hadn't read the Sacred Wood essays, you see. Not really required reading for a painter. But now I will...thank you for prodding me. Or should I say goading?jane
Farah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:Hello,
My internet had not been working so i was a bit out of touch...About
this "objective co-relative"...I have read Eliot's Sacred Wood
essays, and in them he has debated whether good poetry stems from
being objective or subjective...his opinion is that objectivity is
preferable since it gives a more universal elemant to poetry...but
that is not a strict criterion.Plath wrote intensely personal
poetry, and it is very good. I think Ronnie meant that subjective or
personal poetry is more vague, so consequently, more difficult to
grasp...whereas objective poems like Eliots "Love song of
J.Prufrock" (one of my favorites) etc have wider
interpretations...Am I right Ronnie?...please let me know if i got
this wrong.
Personally I prefer more objective poems.
Farah
--- In [email protected], jane bhandari <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
>
> If you know, tell me. Obviously it's something I should know, but
don't.
>
>
> ronnie banerjee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
> correlative or corelative?? First - what is the spelling? Perhaps
it is a sister-in-law. Perhaps u may read Eliot's Sacred Wood essays
to understand it before u start damning the term . Perhaps u can
stick to ur own ideas even as others stick to theirs. Beyond a point
i dont think any of us care - Jane, mon cher
> Ron
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