Tradition and Individual Talent

                                           Name: Darshangi Andharia
                            Paper: E-c-203: Literary Criticism
                   Topic: Tradition and Individual Talent By T.S. Eliot
                                         SEM: 2, part 1. 

                                        Year: 2011-2012

                                          Submitted to,
                                        Dr.Dilip Barad,
                                   Bhavnagar University,
                                           Bhavnagar.




                           Tradition and Individual Talent By T.S. Eliot  
was extraordinarily influential in the middle of the last century. His essay “Tradition and Individual Talent” was published in 1919 in the Egoist-times literary supplement. Later, the essay was published in the Sacred Wood: Essay on poetry and criticism in 1920 or 1922. This essay is described by David Lodge as the most celebrated critical essay in the English of the 20th century. The essay is divided into three main sections. They are 


(1) Concept of tradition


(2)Theory of Depersonalization and poetry


(3)Poet’s sense of tradition and the impersonality of poetry are complementary things.






Part:-I Concept of Tradition


Eliot’s critical writing offers intellectual insight into the work of literature or art. He says that poem requires a mental exercise should be happen in the minds of the readers. The word ‘Tradition’ and ‘Individual Talent’ gives some clues to us about his work and what is it about. He explain the concept of tradition what we had adopted it in normal course or in easier way. It is somewhere connected to the reconstruction because if the reader will read the text of the poems then he/she will interpret-it in their way of understanding the thing. He says that the meaning is within the text not out of the text. So it is related to reconstruction. Some one said, “The dead writers are remote from us because we know how much more than they did.” Precisely, and they are that which we know. Eliot is the favor of which we know, however unconsciously. Someone in the starting point of the essay he writes that ‘Criticism is as inevitable as breathing’, but almost in the some breath that ‘We should be none the worse……for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.’ Eliot believes in objective capability through it he has present with his own self or with his feelings and emotions.


For him tradition has three fold significance. Tradition cannot be inherited and involves a great deal of labor means someone must obtain it by hard work. It involves appreciation not only of the past but also of its presence. And the historical sense enables to write not only with his own generation in mind, but with feelings that down to the literature of his own country forma a continuous literary tradition.


All the same time the poet must be conscious of his place in his contemporary time. He says that the Englishmen have a tendency to insist, when they praise to poet, in these aspects of his work they try to find out what is individual. They try to find out the difference of the poet with his contemporaries and predecessors, especially with his immediate predecessors. They try to find out something that can be separated in order to be enjoyed.


It means, poet couldn’t be appreciated in isolation but he should be seen in relation to the dead poet. Contrast comparison among the dead makes the present poet traditional. Because present poet has used the references from the past poet’s or writers work of art. For example in the poem “The Waste Land” he himself has used the Indian myths as his reference with the poem. Even Plato, the pioneer of the criticism has said that, “Poem is thrice removed from the reality.”


Eliot says that the improvement in the conscious present is an awareness of the past. He also says that the poet can absorb essential knowledge required to create a work of art. The progress of an artist is a continual self sacrifice a continual extinction of personality. This shows he gives importance to the interdependence of past and the present. He finds not contradictory but supplementary elements in the co-relationship of the pat and the present.


He also adds that the relationship of a poet’s work to the great works of the past. He says that present work of art should not be judge by the standards of the past. We cannot say that this on is good or bad. To be traditional in Eliot’s sense means to be conscious of the main current of art and poetry.






Part:-II The Theory of Depersonalization


In this he defines the process of depersonalization and its relation to the tradition. He start with “Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.” Process is “A continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. He gives the example of two gases oxygen and Sulphur dioxide. Trough this example he wants to say that if poet wants to write a poem then he doesn’t have any history or background or any feeling then the writing process will be stopped. So the mind of the poet or knowledge of is the shred of platinum.”


There are two elements which are experience of poet-feelings and emotions. It shows the relation between the poem and poet. He further says that “the poet has not a ‘Personality’ to express, but particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and those which become important for the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.”


The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary once and, in working them up into poetry, to express feeling which are not in actual emotions at all. And emotions which he has never experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to him. We must believe that “Emotion recollected in tranquility” is an in exalt formula. These experiences are not “Recollected” and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is tranquil what is important in it is a kind of concentration by the poet.


He says that bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both


Errors tend to make him personal.

I Sense of tradition and the impersonality of poetry are complementary things.

third and last part he says that the poets of tradition and the impersonality of poetry are complementary things. He writes: “To divert interest from the poet to the poetry is laudable aim: for it would conduce to a juster estimation of actual poetry, good and bad.” He ends his part with the words that expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. And emotion of the art is impersonal. Poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done unless he lives in the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.


In the conclusion we can say that “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.” In this essay reader response and reception theory have elaborate or we can apply it with this approach.


So, as per T.S.Eliot’s view point 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. But, of course, only those who have, personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.