Criticism-Traditional and Individual Talent

 T.S.Eliot 

Essay: Traditional and Individual Talent- Criticism 

Hello everyone...

This blog based on thinking activity assigned by Dilip sir Barad. In which I'm going to discuss a few points related to T. S. Eliot's essay, named Traditional and Individual Talent. Before discussing our main points let's look apon the basic information about the work. 

Traditional and Individual Talent :- 

"Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919) is an essay written by poet and literary critic T. S. Eliot. The essay was first published in The Egoist (1919) and later in Eliot's first book of criticism, The Sacred Wood (1920).The essay is also available in Eliot's "Selected Prose" and "Selected Essays".

In more, Often hailed as the successor to poet-critics such as John Dryden, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot’s literary criticism informs his poetry just as his experiences as a poet shape his critical work. Though famous for insisting on “objectivity” in art, Eliot’s essays actually map a highly personal set of preoccupations, responses and ideas about specific authors and works of art, as well as formulate more general theories on the connections between poetry, culture and society. Perhaps his best-known essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” was first published in 1919 and soon after included in The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920). Eliot attempts to do two things in this essay: he first redefines “tradition” by emphasizing the importance of history to writing and understanding poetry, and he then argues that poetry should be essentially “impersonal,” that is separate and distinct from the personality of its writer. Eliot’s idea of tradition is complex and unusual, involving something he describes as “the historical sense” which is a perception of “the pastness of the past” but also of its “presence.” For Eliot, past works of art form an order or “tradition”; however, that order is always being altered by a new work which modifies the “tradition” to make room for itself. This view, in which “the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past,” requires that a poet be familiar with almost all literary history—not just the immediate past but the distant past and not just the literature of his or her own country but the whole “mind of Europe.”

Eliot’s second point is one of his most famous and contentious. A poet, Eliot maintains, must “self-sacrifice” to this special awareness of the past; once this awareness is achieved, it will erase any trace of personality from the poetry because the poet has become a mere medium for expression. Using the analogy of a chemical reaction, Eliot explains that a “mature” poet’s mind works by being a passive “receptacle” of images, phrases and feelings which are combined, under immense concentration, into a new “art emotion.” For Eliot, true art has nothing to do with the personal life of the artist but is merely the result of a greater ability to synthesize and combine, an ability which comes from deep study and comprehensive knowledge. Though Eliot’s belief 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” sprang from what he viewed as the excesses of Romanticism, many scholars have noted how continuous Eliot’s thought—and the whole of Modernism—is with that of the Romantics’; his “impersonal poet” even has links with John Keats, who proposed a similar figure in “the chameleon poet.” But Eliot’s belief that critical study should be “diverted” from the poet to the poetry shaped the study of poetry for half a century, and while “Tradition and the Individual Talent” has had many detractors, especially those who question Eliot’s insistence on canonical works as standards of greatness, it is difficult to overemphasize the essay’s influence. It has shaped generations of poets, critics and theorists and is a key text in modern literary criticism.

1) How would you like to explain Eliot's concept of Tradition? Do you agree with it? What do you understand by Historical Sense?

Partially. I appreciate the emphasis on dialogue and critical engagement. However, the idea of complete "impersonalization" feels restrictive. Personal experience and emotions, when filtered through the historical lens, can also contribute rich layers to art.

Historical Sense:This refers to the ability to perceive the past in its own terms but also recognize its ongoing relevance and impact on the present. It's a nuanced awareness of both continuity and change, allowing the artist to draw upon and contribute to the ongoing conversation across time.

• "The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past but of its presence.":- 

For Eliot, "historical sense" isn't just remembering old stuff, it's hearing the past whispering in the present. This awareness of tradition's ongoing influence allows talented artists to weave those whispers into their work, creating art that speaks not just to their time, but to all time. In a way, it's like taking a traditional family recipe, adding your own twist, but knowing the recipe itself evolves with each generation's touch. That's the beautiful dance between tradition and individual talent.

• 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. :- 

Eliot sees "historical sense" as a dual-edged sword, crucial for a writer's "traditional" status. One edge pierces the veil of time, revealing the "timeless" within past works. Great artists aren't just copycats; they recognize universal themes and concerns that transcend historical context, the whispers of humanity echoing across generations. The other edge slices through the present, making the writer acutely aware of their own "temporal" position, the specific cultural and historical forces shaping their voice.

This intricate dance between the timeless and the temporal is what truly defines a traditional writer. They embrace past forms and ideas, not as relics, but as living embers to be fanned into new flames. They don't simply reflect their own time; they engage in a conversation with the past, reinterpreting its whispers through their unique lens, creating art that resonates both now and ever after. It's in this harmonious coexistence of timelessness and temporality, tradition and individuality, that the most enduring works of literature are born.

2) What is the relationship between 'Tradition' and the 'Individual Talent ' according to the poet T.S. Eliot?

Tradition is alredy exiting monument and individual talent to merge in with tradition. Individual Talent does not cut itself away from the tradition can only marginally add a bit. 

• "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." :- Eliot demand from his poet as well as from his reader a wide reading. For better understanding he gives example of luminaries like Shakespeare who was not highly educated in the conventional sense but what it is still that Shakespeare array of entire age because he seems to lived his age and absorbed knowledge.We can say here Eliot actually borrowing idea from Matthew Arnold, his essay on function of criticism but in the essay of Function of criticism at the present time mentioned that great epochs of creativity doesn't come often.

• "Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry." :- In simple words honest criticism means there is no any sensitive appreciation means within the prejudice about poet one should criticize the work. Thus the honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the the work itself.    

                 

3) 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.

Chemical reaction for better understanding about creative writing process

 

So3+ H2o--->(Platinum)H2So4

Here platinum is the medium through process happened and H2So4 came in existence,  the same way in creative process Human mind need medium or content of feeling like suffering, pain,  happiness etc.,  but as in chemical process at result we gets only sulphuric acid and absence of platinum a medium the same way should be in creative writing that writer's own reflection of feelings should not reflect in his/her works. 

• " 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."

   We can say that Poetry should impersonal. As Eliot says Poetry is not expression of emotion but poet should away from his personal emotion in his work. Eliot further writes: The poet has, not a "personality" to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality.

4) Write two points on which one can write a critique of 'T.S. Eliot as a critic'.

We can consider Eliot as a critic, according to these points, Modernist sensibility, Cultural tradition, Intellectual rigor , spritual exploration, complexity in literary theory.

Thank you so much for reading.

Have a great time.