엘리엇과 스윈번: 스윈번에 대한 엘리엇의 이해와 평가

Eliot and Swinburne: Eliot’s Understanding and Critical Evaluation of Swinburne

Eliot wrote two essays about Swinburne including “Swinburne as a Critic” and “Swinburne as a Poet.” But this paper focuses on “Swinburne as a Poet.” Eliot explains his difficulty in selecting Swinburne’s work for an anthology as well as how much reading was required. He classifies poets into three categories. But Eliot asserts that Swinburne is not included among the three kinds of poets. Thus he demands that we must read Swinburne’s works totally without omitting a single one. And Eliot praises Swinburne’s use of many words in his works. Subsequently, Eliot emphasizes on Swinburne’s musicality and unification of originality and detailed images. Especially Eliot thinks that Swinburne properly uses “the most general word,” evaluating that Swinburne depends on objectivity resulting from many previous sources, such as Elizabethan plays and Greek tragedies, Old French and Italian songs etc. Thus, after anthologizing Swinburne’s creative methods and his works, Eliot suggests that a poet should digest and express new objects, new groups of objects, and new feelings without randomly seeking to obtain them.