“ The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. ”
T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood (1920). copy citation
| Author | T. S. Eliot |
|---|---|
| Source | The Sacred Wood |
| Topic | personality progress |
| Date | 1920 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Wood/Tradition_and_the_Individ... |
Context
“What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career.
What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.
There remains to define this process of depersonalization and its relation to the sense of tradition. It is in this depersonalization that art may be said to approach the condition of science. I shall, therefore, invite you to consider, as a suggestive analogy, the action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide.”
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