ABSTRACT
English Poetry 1900-1950 makes it clear that he regards any poetry that divagates, as does Yeats's, from the authenticity which is 'I's' mark, or that obtains, as Eliot's does, some relief from 'I', as a betrayal. Eliot has a direct apprehension of self-consciousness, and a will to analyse it, which Sisson has not. In the 'Sevenoaks Essays' Sisson remarks that the word conscience is preferable to consciousness, and the French are more fortunate and more exact in having a word conscience which does not distinguish the two. Sisson's intention here, to confine the meaning of consciousness to the relation with ends, would give a narrow (though within its limits valid) interpretation of Eliot's 'To be conscious is not to be in time' and render incomprehensible the whole of Four Quartets. For Sisson's principal attempt to escape the aching or devouring 'I' has been by philosophizing it out of existence.
