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Quotation from The Sacred Wood by T. S. Eliot
“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.”
The Sacred Wood, Tradition and the Individual Talent, II (Project Gutenberg #57795)
The central statement of Eliot's impersonal theory of poetry, opposed to the Romantic idea of poetry as self-expression.
Citation: "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality." — T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood, Tradition and the Individual Talent, II (Project Gutenberg #57795). (id eliot-the-sacred-wood-q2)
Portrait: Thomas Stearns Eliot by Lady Ottoline Morrell (1934), Lady Ottoline Morrell, Public domain.
