NOTES OF 30^TH MARCH 2012

Eliot’s Objective Correlative

A now famous term used by T.S. Eliot in an essay On Hamlet (1919). The relevant passage is: ”The only way to express emotions in the form of art is by finding an objective correlative; in others 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 in immediately evoked”.

Mr Eliot considers the problem of communicating emotions.

He analysed the biggest classical tragedies of Shakespeare, Hamlet and Macbeth, searching for the way of render emotions used by Shakespeare.

Eliot says that Shakespeare was perfectly able to find the objective correlative to express his characters’ emotions. This happened just in Macbeth, not in Hamlet too. Hamlet’s madness had been expressed by too many words.

Eliot sustains that BALANCE and COALESCENCE are the most important requisites that the language used to communicate emotions has to get.

Balance and coalescence feature the interlacement of thoughts, feelings and actions, expressed without excesses and creating a unified set.

The resulting set of emotions has to be more impersonal as possible for being worth to everyone.

The function of the objective correlative is to hold together and to unify emotions and the language to express them