Bridge course : T. S. Eliot's Tradition and Individual Talent

       T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and Individual Talent" :-

                   

T.S. Eliot’s essay Tradition and the 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 defence.

"The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together."

The concept of Tradition :-

The concept of “tradition” according to Eliot is the sense of continuity from the past. It is a continuity where a writer or a poet should write in tradition and it is readily unacceptable to the Whites as it is like a “censure”. The Western world seems to be occupied more on the creative forces and Eliot stresses on the elements of critical thoughts as well as while obtaining a “tradition’. According to Eliot, a poet has to write in “tradition” and there exist the elements of past in the work of poet’s art when it is examined or explored for critical elements rather than creative forces, the very “individual parts” will show the impressions of the continuity of the past or the element of past which the poet has taken from which has already existed before. He states that “the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors ,assert their immortality vigorously”.

According to Eliot , if a poet or a writer imbues the element of the past, there is an imitation of the past but he justifies that the imitation is “not the slavish imitation” of the past or the existed work of art before. He argues that the strict blinding of imitation of the past is not tradition and hence “Novelty is better than repetition”. He tries to suggest that a poet do not slavishly imitate the past but there is something new which is born out of that imitation. Hence, there will be a new novelty in the piece of work of art which he implies the “individual talent”. He says that a passive imitation of the past is to be discouraged and ignored.

In addition to this, Eliot suggest that a poet can obtain a “tradition” by understanding the past and he calls it as a “historical sense” which is not merely an imitation but of its presence in the present. It not involves the “pastness of the past but of its presence” but of the literary circle from the whole European literature produced from “Homer” to the present and the poet creates his own new work in the present with not just a mere imitation of the past but by understanding the past to obtain the “tradition”. A poet has to differentiate the good and bad things from the past and has to obtain the good things to create his own new work of art and hence the amalgamation of the understanding of the past and the poet’s liability to obtain the good things from the past constitute a “historical sense’. Hence,there will be both elements of past as well as of the present in a new work of art through a “historical sense” to establish a continuity of literary tradition by a poet.

Moreover, he highlights that “tradition” is not easily obtained and “inherited” but requires a “hard labour” and effort. There has to be the development of the “historical sense” by a poet to write in “tradition” and there is a recognition of the past and the present poet creates a new work of art so there is a continuity of literary tradition because every poet write in tradition. The poet starts to write in “tradition” when he has obtained the “historical sense” and it is possible for the poet to obtain when he has understood the past and is guided by the past in the present where he adds a new piece of work. Here, he suggests that there is a continuity as well as the creation of a new work of art in the present.

Eliot further goes on to say that “tradition” is a “dynamic one”. He suggests that the past directs the present and the present alters the past to create a new work of art which is the “individual talent”. Hence , the knowledge of the past and the creation of a new art becomes the “Tradition and Individual Talent”. He adds that the poet takes a “tradition” or the elements from the past but there is also a change or alteration in the present which creates something new and hence it is “dynamic one”. It is also a “dynamic” in a sense that when one would judge critically, one can find the elements of the past which has been existed before is guided to the present and the present modifies it when the new work of art to produce in the present. Hence, the entire structure becomes a reciprocal and the relationship of the past or the “historical sense” reciprocates to the present where it modifies the past to bring forth a new work of art or “individual talent” and the “tradition” is established and continued.

Lastly, Eliot also points out the judgement of the new piece of work in the present. He states that the judgement of the new piece of work is done by comparison and contrast between the past and the present which has altered the past. It is not merely done through a comparison and contrast but it is to see the manners in which the present has modified or altered the present has done to the past. It is to observe the range of changes in the new work of art to the present and to the past as well as to undermine the values of the past and present which is equally balanced without undermining the past as well as the present. Hence, Eliot says that this is the real sense of “tradition’.

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