Unification of Sensibility | Dissociation of Sensibility | Bengali lecture | বাংলা লেকচার

Question : How does Eliot distinguish between "Unification of sensibility and Dissociation of Sensibility " in The Metaphysical poets? Ans: Eliot has through his discussion of the metaphysical poets,drawn up a distinctive picture of the Unification of sensibility and Dissociation of sensibility. Of course, his explanation of these two kinds of sensibility is not very clear but nonetheless we have some functional ideas about these two phrases. He has shown this distinction in order to drive home to the reader the fact that with the metaphysical poets the unification of sensibility was quality, and dissociation of sensibility which set in immediately after their age and continued through centuries, did much harm to English poetry. By sensibility Eliot does not merely mean feeling or the capacity to receive a sense impression. He means much more than that. By sensibility he means a synthetic faculty, a faculty which can amalgamate and unite thought and feeling, which can fuse into a single whole the varied and disparate, often opposite and contradictory experiences, the sensuous and the intellectual. By Unification of sensibility, T.S,Eliot means a fusion of thought and feeling, the creation of thought into feeling, and a direct sensuous apprehension of thought. He argued that the metaphysical poets, together with the Elizabethan and the Jacobean dramatists, had a mechanism of sensibility which could accommodate any kind of experience. However, a dissociation of sensibility set in after the age of Donne, in the late 17th century, there was a split between thought and feeling. The influence of Dryden and Milton has been particularly harmful in this respect. Eliot distinguishes between the Unification of sensibility, and Dissociation of sensibility. When a poet can unite different kinds of experience into a single idea, or when a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for work, and is constantly amalgamating disparate experience, when he brings together a great variety of thoughts, feelings and emotions into one whole unification of sensibility happens. A poet maintains the difference in different thoughts. Every thought or feeling or emotion remains different from others. A poet falls in love and reads Spinoza for instance, and they remain separate in his poetic presentation. Dissociation of sensibility had principally two harmful effects in the seventeenth century. In Eliot's opinion, on the later English poetry. The poetic diction became more refined, it satisfied some of the fastidious demands of the readers better than did Donne or Marvell or king. But while the language improved the feeling and sensibility became ruder. Another harmful effect was the birth of sentimentalism as is observed in P.B.Shelley and other Romantic poets. It paved the way for the philosophical theory in poetry and made the poets reflective. But these poets are not superior to the intellectual poets, and the poet's of the unified sensibility. Eliot regrets such a shift in poetic style which worked to the detriment of English poetry. #UnificationOfSensibility #DissociationOfSensibility #AssociationOfSensibility #Nova'slearningview #Banglalecture #Bengalilecture