Notes of the 30^th of March 2012

The objective correlative has been used by T. S. Eliot in an essay on Shakespearian tragedy,  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.” 

In the essay Mr Eliot explains how a person can analyze a work of art. He points out the necessity for the reader to compare the work of art with the works of tradition, as himself does.

The word "correlative" means something that makes a connection between other things, while "objective" means it is referred to an object.

Mr. Eliot wonders what is the better way to talk about and convey feelings and emotions.

He analyzed masterpieces of the past which were about emotions and discovered that every text is a product of intertextuality. He considers two great masterpieces: Shakespeare's Hamlet and Macbeth. The conscience of Macbeth (a central theme in the 20^th century) is filled with emotions (he sees scorpions when he’s cross) while Lady Macbeth, when she’s not more able to control her emotions, becomes sleepwalker and in her talks she express the objective correlative. In the opinion of Eliot, Shakespeare created the characters with strict functions, linked to the plot of the story. In lady Macbeth’s words Shakespeare used the right correlative objective to express her emotion to the public.

On the contrary when Shakespeare has to describe the feelings of the protagonist in Hamlet he uses madness, a strategy which doesn’t work, because the emotion doesn’t come to the reader. The right formula to convey feelings and emotions to the reader is finding out the objective correlative, one chain of objects, a climax of emotions. Eliot states that Shakespeare used too much words to communicate Hamlet’s madness and the excess of words created too much confusion on the audience. The public gets gradually lost and doesn’t understand the emotions effectively, as in Macbeth. To convey the emotions is needed an “exquisite balance”, an ideal order that consists in an agreement between what expressed by the character and what understood by the reader. The type of poetry that makes use of the objective correlative uses also the synesthesia to involve all the senses. Eliot employs the term “coalescence” to indicate the agreement of all the parts of a literary work. The correlative objective joins the language that communicates emotions and the emotions themselves.

There can be two kinds of discrepancy that undermine the coalescence: the discrepancy between word and feelings (when there’s no unity) and the excessive use of words (that leaves the reader in a daze).