Assignment Paper:- 8
Topic : - Tradition and Individual Talent:-
Student’s name : -Makwana Jayshri D.
Roll no :- 16
URL :-makwanajayshri261011.blogspot.com :-
URL :-makwanajayshri261011.blogspot.com :-
Semester :- M.A. Sem.ii
Batch :- 2010-11
Batch :- 2010-11
Submitted to,
Dr. Dilip Barad,
Department of English
Bhavnagar University
Department of English
Bhavnagar University
Thomas Stearns (TS) Eliot
Poet and Playwright
1888 - 1965
information—deposited by the nineteenth century have
been responsible for an equally vast ignorance.
—TS Eliot
Tradition and Individual Talent:- Thomas Stearns Eliot was an American-born English poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century.Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948. His most famous work is “The Waste Land.” On one level this highly complex poem describes cultural and spiritual crisis.
"The point of view which I am struggling to attack is perhaps related to the metaphysical theory of the substantial unity of the soul: for my meaning is, that the poet has, not a 'personality' to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways." (From 'Tradition and the Individual Talent,' 1920)
T.S Eliot’s works:-
Poetry Plays Nonfiction:- “Tradition and Individual Talent (1920)” The sacred wood: Essays on poetry and criticism A choice of Kipling’s verse ( 1941) The Frontiers of criticism (1956) Eliot is most often known for his poetry, he also contributed to the field of literary theory. In this dual role, he acted as poet- critic, comparable to Sir Philip Sidney and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. “Tradition and Individual Talent” is one of the more well known works that Elion produced in his critic capacity. It formulates Eliot’s influential conception of the relationship between the poet and the literary tradition which precedes him.
T.S. Eliot’s “Tradition and Individual Talent” was published in 1919 in The Egoist- the Times Literary supplement. Later, the essay was published in “The Sacred Wood: Essays on poetry and criticism in 1920. This essay is described by David Lodge as the English of the twentieth century. The essay is divided into three main sections:-
The first gives us Eliot’s concept of tradition The Second exemplifies his theory of depersonalization and poetry. The third part he concludes the debate by saying that the poet’s sense of poetry are complementary things. Eliot asserts that the word “tradition’’ is not a very favorable term with the English, who generally utilize the same as a term of censure. The English do not possess an orientation towards Criticism as the French do; they praise a poet for those aspects of the work that are individualistic.
For Eliot, tradition has a three-fold significance. Firstly, tradition can not be inherited, and involves a great deal of labor and erudition. Secondly, it involves the historical sense which involves apperception not only of the pastness of the past, but also of its present. Thirdly, the Historical sense enables a writer to write not only with his own generation in mind, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature from Homer down to the literature of his own country farms a continuous literary tradition. As claimed by Chris Baldick that Eliot had created an inverted literary history in which history being second to the permanent quality of literature, is read jousted to accommodate it to literature. Therefore, Eliot’s conception of history is a dynami9c and not static; and is forever in a state of flux.
Eliot’s concept of tradition:-
Ø In English criticism ‘Tradition’ is used as a phrase of censure.
Ø Criticism is indispensable creative activity.
Ø The importance of Tradition to Individual Talent.
Eliot presents his Eliot presents his conception of tradition and the definition of the poet and poetry in relation to it. He wishes to correct for the fact that, as he perceives it, "in English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence." Eliot posits that, though the English tradition generally upholds the belief that art progresses through change - a separation from tradition, literary advancements are instead recognized only when they conform to the tradition. Eliot, a classicist, felt that the true incorporation of tradition into literature was unrecognized, that tradition, a word that "seldom... appears except in a phrase of censure," was actually a thus-far unrealized element of literary criticism. Eliot says that the Englishmen have a tendency to insist, when they praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles any one else. In these aspects of his work they try to find out what is individual, what is the peculiar essence of that man. They try to find out the difference of the poet with his contemporaries and predecessors. They try to find out something that can be separated in order to be enjoyed.
But if we study the poet without bias or prejudice, we shall often find that not the best, but the most individual of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality forcefully and vigorously. According to Eliot tradition and individual talent are not separate entity. They are inseparable and hence go together.
Historical Sense/ “the historical sense involves a perception not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence” According to Eliot, knowledge of tradition plays vital role in the development of personal talent, He writes: ‘Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It can not be inherited and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves the historical sense.’
This means sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of 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 write traditional and it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity. 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. Eliot challenges our common perception that a poet’s greatness and individuality lies in his departure from his predecessors. Rather, Eliot argues that "the most individual parts of his (the poet) work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously." Eliot claims that this "historical sense," that is, not only a resemblance to traditional works, but an awareness and understanding of their relation to his poetry.
The relation of the present to the past and its respective roles in poetic creation as suggested by T.S. Eliot. Eliot gives importance to the interdependence of past and the present. He finds not contradictory but supplementary elements in the co- relationship of the past and the present. He expresses his views as follows:-
“No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artist. You can not value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. Mean this as a principle of aesthetic, that he merely historical criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, 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 existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relation, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.”
The relation of a poet’s work to the great works of the past:- Eliot is of the view that the present work of art should not be judged by the standards of the past. The present work may or may not conform to the standards of the past, but it should not decide whether the work of art is good or bad. Eliot explains it as “In a peculiar sense he will be aware also that he must inevitable be judged by the standards of the past, I say judged, not amputated, by them; not judged to bee as good as, or worse or better than, the dead and; certainly not judged by the canons of dead critics. It is a judgment, a comparison, in which two things are measured by each other. To conform merely would be for the new work not really to conform at all: it would not be new, and would not be a work of art. And we do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value- a test, it true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conform, and is perhaps individual, or it appears individual, and may conform; but we are hardly likely to find that it is one and not the other.”
Literature as continuity: To be traditional in Eliot’s sense means to be conscious of the main current of art and poetry. The poem/poet must be very conscious of the main current, which does not at all flow invariably through the most distinguished reputations. He must be quite aware of the obvious fact art never improves, but that the material of art is never quite the same. He writes: The difference between the present and the past is that the conscious present is awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past’s awareness of itself can not show.”
Part – 2:-
Eliot’s theory of poetic process and the process of depersonalization:-
Eliot starts the second part of his essay with: “Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.”
The artist or the poet adopts the process of depersonalization, which is “a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self – sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality” There still remains this process of depersonalization and its relation to sense of tradition. The mature poet is viewed as a medium, through which tradition is channeled and elaborated. He compares the poet to a catalyst in a chemical reaction, in which the reactants are feelings, and emotions that are synthesized to create an artistic image that captures and relays these same feelings and emotions. While the mind of the poet is necessary for the production, it emerges unaffected by the process. The artist stores feelings and emotions and properly unites them into a specific combination, which is the artistic product. What lend greatness to a work of art is not the feelings and emotions themselves, but the nature of the artistic process by which they are synthesized. The artist is responsible for creating "the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place." And, it is the intensity of fusion that renders art great. In this view, Eliot rejects the theory that art expresses metaphysical unity in the soul of the poet. The poet is a depersonalized vessel, a mere medium.
Analogy of chemical reaction and poetic process.
“The analogy was that of that catalyst, when the two gases oxygen and sulphur dioxide, are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form suphrous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected; has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are material.”
Eliot explains his theory of depersonalization more elaborately. He elaborates his idea by saying that the emotion and experiences in the art are different than the emotion and experiences of the artist He writes:-
“If you compare several representative passages of the greatest poetry, you see how completely any semi ehical eriterion of “sublimity” misses the mark. For it is not the “greatness” the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artist process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place that counts” He further writes:-
“The poet has, not a ‘personality’ to express, but a particular medium which is only a medium and not a personality in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. In impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a neglible part in the man, the personality.”
“Emotion recollected in tranquility” is an inexact formula for it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor with without distortion of meaning, tranquility.” It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoked by particular events in any way remarkable or interesting. His particular emotion or may be simple, or crude, or flat. The emotion in his poetry will be a very complex thing of the emotion of people. Who have very complex or unusual emotions in eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to express: and in this search for novelty in the wrong place it discovers the perverse. The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, to express feelings which are not in actual emotion at all. And emotion which he has never experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to him. Consequently, we must believe that “emotion” recollected in tranquility is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection; not without distortion of meaning, tranquility. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration, of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not ‘recollected’ and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is ‘tranquil’ only in that it is a passive attending upon the event of course this is a great deal in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and deliberate.
Part – 3:-
The third part he concludes the debate by saying that the poet’s sense of tradition and the impersonality of poetry are complementary things.
In the last section of this essay; Eliot says that poet’s sense of tradition and the impersonality of poetry are complementary things. He writes “To divert interest from the poet to the poetry is a laudable aim: for it would conclude to a juster estimation of actual poetry, good and bad.” Finally he ends his essay with: “very few know when ether is expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. The emotion of art is impersonal and the poet can not reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done and he is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.”
Conclusion:- To conclude, Harold Bloom presents a conception of tradition that differs from that Eliot. Where as Eliot believes that the great poet is faithful to his predecessors and evolves in a concordant manner, Bloom according to his theory of ‘anxiety of influence envisions the strong poet to engage in a much more aggressive and tumultuous rebellion against tradition’
In 1964, his last year, Eliot published in a reprint of the use of poetry and the use of criticism, a series of lectures he gave at Harvard university in 1932 and 1933, a new preface in which he called “Tradition and the Individual talent” the most juvenile of his essays.
