Analysis of the Acceptance Speech by T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot begins his Acceptance Speech appreciating the high honour which the Swedish Academy decided to confer upon him, and approving the recognition given to himself as a poet.

In the first part of his speech he thanks the Swedish Academy to have conferred him the Nobel Prize and he reflects about its significance giving his interpretation about the importance of the Nobel Prize in Literature. As a demonstration of this he affirms that he finds in the Nobel Award something more and something different from a normal recognition: in his opinion "it is more the election of an individual, chosen from time to time, from one nation to another, and selected by something like an act of grace, to fill a specific role and to become a symbol".

In the second part of the speech, instead, he reflects about the importance of poetry and especially that of language saying that poetry is usually considered the most local of all arts and that language, especially the language of poetry, is different from all the other arts and represents a special matter. Moreover, he thinks, poetry might be a way to separate people instead of uniting them because in his opinion the language of poetry is an absolute, higher language which not everybody is able to understand.

Finally he thinks that while language constitutes a barrier, poetry itself gives to people a reason for trying to overcome the barrier itself.