A now famous term used by T. S. Eliot in an essay “On Hamlet” (1919). The relevant passage

is: “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an “objective correlative”;

in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of

that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory

experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked”.

Eliot goes on to suggest that in Lady Macbeth’s sleep walking speech and in the speech that

Macbeth makes when he hears of his wife’s death, the words are completely adequate to the

state of mind; whereas in Hamlet the prince is “dominated by a state of mind which is

inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear”. These observations have

provoked a good deal of debate.

In other terms a successful artistic creation requires an exquisite balance between, and

coalescence of form and matter. If the matter (thought, feeling, action) is “too much”,

(“in excess of”) the form (in this case words) we have a discrepancy, strain, a lack of unity

(that is insufficient correlation; they don’t “fadge”). Vice versa, another kind of discrepancy

and strain: the experience is overwhelmed by the words. Colloquially we say “I was

speechless”, “it was indescribable”. In other words we have not found the “formula”. In

reverse, lacking the “formula” again we over-describe, say too much.