DISSOCIATION OF SENSIBLITY

Eliot’s concept of the “unification of sensibility” is standing for his preference for the metaphysical poets. And”dissociation of sensibility” for his antipathy for Milton’s poetry and the poetry of the Victorians. Yet it is not enough to dismiss these concepts, for they bear a direct relationship with Eliot’s concept of poetry. These two phrases occur in his essay on metaphysical poets in whose poetry there existed a unification of sensibility and after them a dissociation of sensibility sets in.

The word “sensibility”, which is the key word in the essay The word “sensibility”, which is the key word in the essay. It occurs several time in the essay. It is not exactly defined as such by Eliot; perhaps he feltthe meaning came out clearly from its usein the different context. One can indeed form a fairly clear idea about its significance and implication.we gather that it is not merely feeling nor is it merely thought.It is not some kind of sensation which excludes thoughts, as Bateson seems to suggest

Sensibility is a physical totality, which works on emotions as upon sensations, upon thoughts ,as upon feelings. It is an amalgamation of thoughts and feelings of intellect and emotion:it includes sensitiveness, intelligence, but is not just any one of them. The unification of sensibility, results in a good poetry. Though Eliot does not make a judgement in so many words, the judgement is implied.

The unified sensibility is one in which the poetic sensibility is composite, in which thought and feeling are the same, and intellect has blended with passion. It enables the poet to respond to heterogeneous experience in a unified way. It could assimilate disparate material and transmit it into new wholes, ordered, unified wholes,in other words into good poetry.

It is what helps the poet confronts the world(of thoughts feeling, idea and emotion) as immediately as the odor of the rose the essence of this quality is the ability to feel thoughts , to experience it as just as much reality as the noise of the type writer, or the smell of cooking.

Unless thought is so experienced, an so expressed in poetry that the attempt at unity must fail. It is in this context that Eliot called Donne and other metaphysical poets ,good poets in the main line of English poetry. Donne was able to to fuse material with spiritual, thought with feeling and see similarities where there were apparently none existed

A degree of “heterogeneity of material compelled into unity by the operation of the poet’s mind is omnipresent in poetry” A good metaphor implies the intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilar. Thus it is in imagery that the unification of sensibility finds expression

Imagery transcribes one experience in terms of another Imagery transcribes one experience in terms of another. When a poet experiences thought with the impact of sensuously percieved, I.e, as immediately as the odor of the rose, his impulse is to communicate it in the sensuous terms.

It is only in these terms( which are closest to the experience of ordinary mind), that the immediacy of thought can be suggested. It is a characteristic not only of metaphysical poets it can be found in Dante too. Donne and others have this quality of sensuous thought , or of thinking through the senses, or of the senses thinking of which the exact formula remains to be defined.

The quality is common to the great poets, says Eliot it is there in Marlowe Webster, Tourneur, and Shakespeare. Donne could amalgamate disparate experience; he had the ability to escape the abstraction of thought from experience.

After the metaphysical poets however a dissociation of sensibility sets in ,the metaphysical were in direct tradition of the Elizabethan poets and dramatists. But after the 17th century the poetic mind lost its capacity to assimilate diverse thought and feeling Earlier the poet’s sensibility enabled him to think feeling and feel a thought.

This bifurcation of sensibility was aggravated by Milton and Dryden ; Milton was all feeling and Dryden all thought. This dissociation of sensibility crept into English poetry. And had not yet been over come; according to Eliot.The intellectual poet had become the reflective poet . Tennyson and Browning are reflective poets

In Eliot’s perception of the dissociation of sensibility we can see his dislike for clear cut chronological divisions. All experience according to Eliot whether of the past or of the present or of the mind or of the senses, is united. His insistence on poet having the awareness of the presence of the past, the continuity in tradition is a step towards the unification of experience.

Dissociation of sensibility results in seeing time in clear division of past present and future, whereas he concepts of a continuous tradition showing the relevance of the past to the present, is an aspect of unification of sensibility.

Eliot’s traditionalism and his attempt to secure again the unification of sensibility are related.. Each is an attempt to order experience and to attain a broad range of coherence.

Milton and Dryden had their own significance and value in the development of language. But while language is improved, the feeling became crude. The effects of Milton and Dryden was that the later poets revolted against the ratiocinative, and the descriptive. They thought and felt by urns, unbalanced; they reflected.

Eliot draws attention to his perspective of English poetry Eliot draws attention to his perspective of English poetry. “Dissociation of sensibility” with its disorientation between feeling and thought, result in poetry that is all thinking or that which is all feeling. It implies a loss of complex attitude. With it English poetry lost its vitality and vigour.

The poet has lost its ability to look in the central cortex, the nervous system, and the digestive tract and assimilate these disparate materials into a unified whole. In his defence of the metaphysical poets Eliot un doubtly was trying to make the atmosphere receptive for his own kind of poetry, which had a close affinity to theirs.

The theory was indeed acceptable to the contemporary times because Eliot showed how it was relevant to other modern sensibility. The age of Donne and the modern times were both influenced by fast changes in the concept of life and world. The modern life is complex, a poet in these times, if he is sensitive, would have various interests into poetry he must possess or develop this unified sensibility.

The metaphysical poets were at best trying to find an equivalent for states of mind and feelings. A do modern poet must also do this to express the complexity of his experience in a unified whole of poetry. In this connection Eliot observes, the poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect in order to force, to dislocate if necessary , language into his meaning

Hence we get something that look very much like conceit Hence we get something that look very much like conceit. We get in fact a method curiously similar to that of metaphysical poets, similar also in its use of obscure words and of simple phrasing The modern age was one of the rapid change. Complexity was the order of the day: the poetry had also necessarily, to be complex and difficult. The sensitive poet would naturally be alive to colossal and complex change around him.

There had to be a regain of complexity of attitude which had been lost after the age of Donne. Only then the modern age write poetry which belonged to the mainstream of English poetic tradition,.