The artist and the "extinction of personality"
 

"The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality"
 
T. S. Eliot, in "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
 
Hejinian notes the "famous pronouncement" at the end of the essay:
 
"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality"
 
[would be interesting to discuss when we discuss subjectivity in the poem]
 
Eliot here "announces the poem [...] as the pertinent effective vehicle, not the poet"
 
However, Hejinian also notes that "By giving ontological autonomy to a cultural product [...] Eliot denies its embeddedness in social structures, its complicity with reigining ideology--something a Marxist would never do"

> from Lyn Hejinian's Allegorical Moments: Call to the Everyday (2023)

> tagged with #emotions, #ideology, #identity, #poetry

> created Mar 13, 2025 at 7:34:12 AM


> part of unfinished everything


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unfinished everything is an original work / ongoing project (1997-present) by jeremy p. bushnell

selection, arrangement, and original text available for creative reuse under this licensing arrangement

authors' quoted words are their own.


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