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.

-->Gli oggetti, delle situazioni permettono di comunicare un' emozione interiore al lettore/ uditore, esattamente quella che prova il personaggi.
Formule: descrizioni linguistiche che stanno per degli oggetti
Eliot scrive una poesia impersonale (come gli altri modernisti, ad esempio J. Joyce e V. Woolf), ciò significa che deve aver valore per qualsiasi persona.
Poets should be detached: i poeti devono vedere le cose in maniera neutra

Aprile: mese della rigenerazione, quella che non ci sarà interiormente. Mese simbolico per dire ciò che prima funzionava, ora non funziona più
Viola: colore utilizzato dai preti durante i funerali
Memory: past, desire: future (they should be mixed)
Dull roots: non danno il prodotto per cui sono state create
Acqua: permette la rigenerazione e la purificazione (dal peccato/malattia si passa ad uno stato che non è più pieno di germi trasformazione)