Thomas Steams Eliot (1888-1965)
Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, writing this blog for the thinking activity of bridge course on T.S. Eliot's 'Teadition and Individual Talent'. Where i will discuss some questions like ,
- Your understanding of the views expressed by Eliot in this essay.
T.S Eliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" is very metaphysical in its concepts; definitions of his main points are only understood within the context of the quantum metaphysical realm. Some of the main points in T.S. Eliot's essay are tradition, isolation, knowledge, and catylyst.For Eliot, the term "tradition" is imbued with a special and complex character. It represents a "simultaneous order," by which Eliot means a historical timelessness – a fusion of past and present – and, at the same time, a sense of present temporality.
T.S. Eliot’s essay 'Tradition and Individual Talent' was first published as an anonymous piece in The Egoist, a London literary review, in September and December 1919 and subsequently included by Eliot in his first collection of essays, The Sacred Wood, published in 1920. That it continues to exert a genuine influence on thought regarding the interrelationship among literary classics, individual artists, and the nature of the creative imagination, is a comment on its value. In any case, Eliot was able to let loose in this comparatively short essay—it runs to little more than 3,000 words—packing virtually every sentence with pronouncements that, in any other context of presentation, might have required far more elaboration and persuasive defense.
-How would you like to explain Eliot's concept of Tradition? Do you agree with it?.
- Concept of Tradition
here he talks about the figures of past and literary tradition. ( historical timelessness)
Unity of time is expressed by Eliot in Burnt Norton also :
“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.”
In Dry Salvages, Eliot defines the sense of tradition in the following manner:
“The past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations,
Time the destroyer is time the preserver.”
Eliot says that no poet or artist of any kind has his full meaning and significance done. His importance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his kinship with the poets and artists of the past generations. You cannot value him alone, you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the poets and writers of the past. This, Eliot says, is a principle of aesthetic, and not merely of historical criticism. The necessity for the individual talent to conform to tradition is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it.’
"The whole of the literature of Europe from Homer"- T.S.Eliot
"Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you must obtain it by great labour."
According to T. S. Eliot, tradition is significant for the critic as well as for the creative writer. As he was the both poet and creative writer .Tradition does not mean a sense of inheritance from some past author or merely a sense of belongingness to the past. Tradition is a dynamic force. It does not mean standing still. Tradition is the historical sense and not the handing down, or following the ways of the ancients blindly. It cannot be inherited. It can only be obtained with great labour. It involves a historical sense which enables a poet to perceive not only the pastness of the past but also its presentness. In a nut shell T.S. Eliot insist hard work of the writer.
-Theory of Depersonalization
-Poet's sense of tradition and impersonality of poetry are complementary things.
- Novelty
It means that all the writers shuld keep in mind that all the new creations are already in the Tradition. They must follow their past writers to create novelty even. Nothing can be begin from the zero but everything has it's past. and it should be noted .
- Personal Emotions
Great works never express poet's personal emotions. Sucessful poetry always remain impersonal and independent , also he says that those poetries be immortal . Further it include into Literary Tradition.
T.S.Eliot has done the objection to HAMLET by Shakespeare, as he wrote the work ' Hamlet and his problems ' and there delt with the issue OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE. We can compare T.S.Eliot with Sir Philip Sidney and S.T. Coleridge . As he was poet and literary critic both.
- Escape from Emotion
This essay is attack on ROMANTICISM perticulerly the idea the poen is poet's personal expression.
-What do you understand by Historical Sense? (Use these quotes to explain your understanding)
"The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence"
This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional.
T.S. Eliot says that how historical sense should be connected to the modern works of art. Furthur he says that all the new writers should read and follow the old authors, and also they must include that tradition.
-What is the relationship between “tradition” and “the individual talent,” according to the poet T. S. Eliot?
Eliot advocates for the separation of art from artist and argues that tradition has less to do with imitation and more to do with understanding and expanding upon the intellectual and literary context in which one is writing.
-Explain: "Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum".
it is not desirable to confine knowledge to whatever can be put into a useful shape for examinations, drawing-rooms, or the still more pretentious modes of publicity. Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum. What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career.
-Explain: "Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry"
There are many people who appreciate the expression of sincere emotion in verse, and there is a smaller number of people who can appreciate technical excellence. But very few know when there is an expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet.
-How would you like to explain Eliot's theory of depersonalization? You can explain with the help of chemical reaction in presence of catalyst agent, Platinum.
T.S.Eliot gives an example of chemical process to explain his theory of depersonalization to create Sulphur dioxide, platinum is used as a catalyst, but when it is prepared we do not see platinum any more in the solution. Similarly, to create poetry, poet's mind works as a catalyst but we do not see his mind in his poetry.
-Explain: " 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."
Eliot’s argument is a little more complicated than it first appears. It’s often assumed that Eliot is saying that, because poetic personality doesn’t matter, the poet’s self doesn’t matter either: poetry is impersonal in that it could come from anyone, if only they read the right books and set to work. But as the critic C. K. Stead argued in his brilliant The New Poetic: Yeats to Eliot 
-Write two points on which one can write critique on 'T.S. Eliot as a critic'.
1.Old orthodoxies and erected new ones
2. insisting tradition more than trends
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