Personality in Literature

BASAWARAJ AIVALLI, M.A.

Karnatak University Post-Graduate Centre, Gulbarga

Literature is generally said to be an expression or the writer’s personality. But we do not go to literature to meet the writer. Instead, we go to literature, as Robert Frost would say, for delight which ends in wisdom.

Then, can we dispense with the writer altogether? Are the poem and the poet independent of each other? Of course, we do not go to a poem to peep into the mind or the poet. But can we say we have not had the feel of it? We cannot; because without the poet the poem would not have existed. It is he who has the experience. Not that others do not have experiences or that his experiences are altogether different from those of others. The poet is always at the point of intersection. He has acute sensitivity and he is conscious of the meaning, necessity and intensity of those experiences, which he expresses in the best words possible in the best possible order, charging them with appropriate emotions and feelings. Thus the poem grows out or his personality and therefore the poem cannot but bear the colour of his personality.

What is personality? “Precisely, it is” Sir Herbert Read says, “the general-common-denominator of a man’s sentiments and emotions.” It is formed less by the conscious part than the subconscious and unconscious parts of the human mind, which record the good and the bad, the important and the unimportant things and events around. A personality is characterised not only by what it includes but also by what it excludes. Hence the variety and wide difference in the personalities of individuals. When these personalities are reflected in literary works, the works are bound to be different from one another.

Human nature being the same at all times and at all places, it is impossible to create anything entirely new. A French critic, says Middleton Murry, has even calculated the original plots in all literature to be just thirty-six. So what the writer does is not creating anything entirely new, but to present universal experiences in his own way. It is this ‘uniqueness’ of a work that makes it a ‘new’ work, in the sense that it could not have been written in any other way, period or by any other man. Only Milton could write Paradise Lost, and The Waste Land could not have come out at any other time or from any one else. It is the unique personality of the writer that gives the work its uniqueness. And this uniqueness is that we think of when we say that it is ‘Shakespearian or ‘Keatsian’ or ‘Lawrentian’.

Since poetry is a more ‘personal’ form it is more or less inevitable that a poet should ‘reveal’ his personality in his poems, may be in spite of himself, through his themes, imagery and even metre. In the novel, since the novelist does not, generally, speak directly it appears to be possible for him not to give himself away. But, as R. G. Moulton says, “It is impossible to construct a story, touching things human, which does not involve underlying conceptions of life; if the author so intended then the story reveals his conceptions of life; if he did not so intend the conceptions of life are betrayed. Thus, the story by the manner of its execution connects with art, by its matter with life.” Drama, by its very nature, is more objective than the novel and the dramatist, unlike the novelist, enjoys no privilege of commenting on his characters and events. Yet, the voice of the dramatist can be recognised echoing through his characters and themes. In modern days drama has been a vehicle of ideas and the emphasis laid on a particular idea reveals the mind of the dramatist as in the case of Ibsen.

We must remember here that no part of a writer’s work like a poem or play should be detached from the body of his whole work and singled out for finding out the writer’s personality. No greater injustice can be done than to single out a dark comedy of Shakepeare like Measure for Measure and say that his attitude to life was cynical. Therefore the whole work of a writer should be studied to get a comprehensive idea of his personality.

If the writer cannot help being present in his work, how much of a writer’s personality is permissible and justified? There is not and cannot be any criterion. Inspiration is essential but poetry is not all inspiration. “There is a great deal, in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is usually unconscious, where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him ‘personal’ says T. S. Eliot. Shaw seems to have been too ‘conscious’ in not letting his characters speak for themselves freely.

T. S. Eliot’s theory of impersonality is only a development of Keats’s theory of “negative capability.” Keats says that a poet should be able to suspend his own self and take part in the men, things and events around. According to Elliot a writer’s personality is a complex whole which includes important as well as unimportant things. All that a poet feels may be important to him, but in poetry the expression of all his emotions and feelings, i.e., his ‘personality’, may not be important at all. Because the emotion in poetry has to be a very complex and significant one. So, he has to keep his ‘personality’ away in order to create a work of art, lest his personality intrudes and influences it. It is in this sense that Eliot says, “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not an expression of personality but an escape from personality.” He also says, “The poet has not a ‘personality’ to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality. Therefore the emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done.....The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.” Eliot seems to have stated what an ideal artist must do to be highly original and great or ‘traditional’ in the Eliotian sense. The long and glorious history of English literature does not provide any instance of a writer other than Shakespeare, who died continually in his work and lost unity to gain meaningful multiplicity.

Sir Herbert Read makes a stimulating statement that ‘romantic’ and ‘classic’ are just two kinds of art springing respectively from personality, which is the general-common-denominator or a man’s sentiments and emotions, and from character which is a disposition resulting from the repression of certain impulses which would otherwise be present in the personality. And it seems that the greater the strength of character the greater will be the degree of impersonality, for which Eliot hankers.

Literature certainly is not an ‘expression’ of the writer’s personality. It is the result of an artistic effort to create meaningful and delightful patterns in words. However imaginative a writer may be the depth and the width of life are beyond human comprehension. A slice of life is chosen by the writer while expressing in literary forms and however objective and impersonal he may be, the choice, for which he alone is responsible, certainly reflects his personality. As Prof. Menezes says, “The poet publishes the poems and the poems publish him.” Thus, literature is not an expression of personality. But personality is ‘revealed’ in it. And what is revealed is not all that a personality is but a part of it only.

Curiously enough a learned critic like C. S. Lewis argues that a writer’s personality is not at all revealed in his works. According to him the writer’s personality is a limitation, and the writer’s business is, starting from his own mode of consciousness, to find out that arrangement of public experiences, embodied in words, which will admit him to a new mode of consciousness. The writer proceeds partly by instinct, partly by following his predecessors and largely by trial and error and the result is an annihilation of his own particular psychology rather than its assertion. Evidently, Mr. Lewis is nearer to the theory of impersonality. But, regrettably, he ignores the fact that a writer is ever confronted with the problem of choice, which is determined by his own disposition.

After all what is it that we really ‘enjoy’ in literature? If the basic plots are not more than thirty-six, why are so many new novels and plays coming out daily? If the themes for poetry hardly change how and why are so many poems written! Yet, no two are alike. The reason is the simple truth that each man is different from the other in his conception of and responses to life. It is undoubtedly the poet’s ‘unique’ personality that makes a poem ‘new’ and it is the personality of the poet that we really enjoy. In Wordsworth’s ‘The Daffodils’ we share the enthusiastic pleasure of the poet white in Herrick’s ‘To Daffodils’ we share the sense of transience of human life, like that of daffodils. While reading ‘Three Men in a Boat’ we not only get an account of the experiences of three sailors but also an interesting commentary on life around by Jerome K. Jerome. It is not implied that we go to literature to meet the writer. But as he breathes through the work and as his presence makes the work unique and on that account delightful, we ‘enjoy’ the personality of the writer too.