ACCEPTANCE SPEECH BY T.S. ELIOT

The text that I have to analyze is T.S. Eliot’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize.

Just considering the first lines of the speech the intelligent reader can immediately notice Eliot’s humility; indeed he states: When I began to think of what I should say to you this evening, I wished only to express very simply my appreciation of the high honour which the Swedish Academy has thought fit to confer upon me.

So he is modest but at the same time very wise; indeed he says he decided not to profess his own unworthiness in order not to cast doubt upon the wisdom of the Swedish Academy: To profess my own unworthiness would be to cast doubt upon the wisdom of the Academy.

He may also be considered wise because he can recognize what he has to say and what he has not to say:  to praise the Academy might suggest that I, as a literary critic, approved the recognition given to myself as a poet.

Afterwards his humility is again underlined when he describes his feelings when he knew about the Nobel Prize; these feelings are the same of every common human being:  May I therefore ask that it be taken for granted, that I experienced, on learning of this award to myself, all the normal emotions of exaltation and vanity that any human being might be expected to feel at such a moment, with enjoyment of the flattery, and exasperation at the

inconvenience, of being turned overnight into a public figure?

So T.S. Eliot continues his speech explaining what is the Nobel Prize in his opinion; the Nobel Prize is not the simply recognition of merit or of the fact that an author’s reputation has passed the boundaries of his own country and his own language but it is something different: But I find in the Nobel Award something more and something different from such recognition. It seems to me more the election of an individual, chosen from time to time from one nation or another, and selected by something like an act of grace, to fill a peculiar role and to become a peculiar symbol.

Therefore he connects the function of  the Nobel Prize’s winner, who is considered a representative of great importance, with the importance of poetry. He explains how he generally interprets the term “poetry” and afterwards he states language of poetry is the art par excellence: Poetry is usually considered the most local of all  the arts. Painting, sculpture, architecture, music, can be enjoyed by all who see or hear. But language, especially the language of poetry, is a different matter. Poetry, it might seem, separates peoples instead of uniting them. But on the other hand we must remember, that while language constitutes a barrier, poetry itself gives us a reason for trying to overcome the barrier.

He states that language is a barrier because people can speak different language and so it may happen that people do not understand each other; however poetry is instead considered as a tool which allows us to have relationship with all foreign people:  In the work of every poet there will certainly be much that can only appeal to those who inhabit the same region, or speak the same language, as the poet.

After these consideration about poetry and its universal function he concludes his speech reaffirming the value of poetry and of the Nobel Prize’s winner:  And I take the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature, when it is given to a poet, to be primarily an assertion of the supra-national value of poetry. To make that affirmation, it is necessary from time to time to designate a poet: and I stand before you, not on my own merits, but as a symbol, for a time, of the significance of poetry.