The correlative object

T. S. Eliot offers a critical reading of Hamlet: he provides the reader with a critic essay dealing with the literary work by William Shakespeare.

The correlative object is a device consisting of a situation, a chain of events or a particular object which shall be the formula of that particular feeling. <<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 for 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 sleepwalking speech and in the speech that Macbeth makes of his wife’s death, the words are completely linked to the state of mind; whereas in Hamlet, 1919, 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 a coalescence of form and matter. If the matter (thought, feeling, action) is “too much” (<<in excess of>>) the form (words), we have a discrepancy, a lack of unity, that is insufficient correlation (<>). 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.

T. S. Eliot shares with James Joyce that the point of view should be detached: the writer shall not be influenced by his/her personal emotions -->search for impersonality.