paper:7 tradition and individual talent

Name: Makwana Monika

Roll No:-21

Topic: - T.S. Eliot’s Tradition and Individual Talent

Paper no:-7 Literary Theory and Criticism

Course: - M.A

Email I’D: - makwanamonika76@gmail.com

Institute: - S. B. Gardi Department of English

Introduction

The essay 'Tradition and the Individual Talent’ was written by T. S. Eliot. He is a famous critic. Tradition and individual talent is an attack on certain critical views in Romanticism particularly up on the idea that a poem is primarily an expression of the personality of the poet. T. S. Eliot argues that a great poem always asserts and that the poet must develop a sense of the pastiness of the past. There is great importance of tradition in the present poem. Tradition should not be inherited but should be obtained by great labor. Past should be altered by present as much as the present is directed by past. In fact tradition acquires a wider significance in Eliot’s writing. It involves a historical sense that was really essential for any work of art. This historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastiness of past but also its present ness. This sense compels a poet to write not only being near to his generation, but to the whole of literary tradition starting from Homer. All the personal emotions, feelings and experience should be sacrificed. There should not be the personal image of poet in his poetry.

Poetry should be impersonal. But it does not mean that the poet should not write his personal feelings, but there personal feelings should be converted in to art’s feelings. Therefore, we as a critic should not look for personality of poet in his poem because the text is objective. The theory that the poet should surrender his personality is depersonalization. The poet’s personal feelings and emotions should be depersonalized. He must be an impersonal and objective like a scientist.

•      T.S.ELIOT'S  TRADITION AND INDIVIDUAL TALENT

In his essay “Tradition and individual talent” T. S. Eliot spreads his concept of tradition, which reflects his reaction against romantic subjectivism and emotionalism. He opines that tradition gives the reader something new, something arresting something intellectual and something vital for literary conception. Tradition according to Eliot is that part of living culture inherited from the past and functioning in the formation of the present. Eliot maintains that tradition was bound up with historical sense, which is a perception that the past was not something lost and invalid.

According to him, is the part of living culture, which is inherited from the past and also has an important function in forming the present? Historical sense is a perception that past is not something that is lost and invalid. Rather, it has a function in the present. It exits with the present. It exerts its influence in our ideas, thoughts and consciousness. This is historical sense. It is an awareness not only of the pastiness of the past but the presence of the past. Eliot’s view of tradition was not linear but spatial. Eliot does not believe that the past was followed by the presence and succession of a line. On the contrary, the past and the present life side by side in the space. All existing literary works belong to an order like the member of a family. Any new work of literature was like the arrival of a member or a new relative and a new acquaintance. It arrival and presence bring about a readjustment of the previous relationship of the old members.

 A new works takes its place in the order. Its arrival and inclusion modifies the order and relationship among all works. The order was then modified. A new work art influences all the existing-literary work, as a new relative influences the old member of a family. It was this sense that the present modifies the past as the past modifies the present.

The past was modified by the present also in the sense that we can look at the past literature always through ever renewing perceptive of the present. A new work of art cannot be evaluated in isolation without reference to past literature and tradition. Evaluation is always comparative and relative. It calls for a comparison with the past that is with tradition.

In his conscious cultivation of historical sense, a writer reduces the magnification of personal self, which leads to depersonalization and impersonal act. When a writer is aware the historical sense, it doesn’t mean that he influenced by the past or his own self. Rather the writer should minimize the importance of his personal self, which will lead him to depersonalization and impersonal act. Tradition is a living stream. It was not a lump or dead mass.

But the main current does not always flow through the most noted authoress. Eliot regrets that tradition in English world of letters is used in prerogative sense. This was one reason of the undeveloped critical sense of the English nation. They are too individualistic on intellectual habits. Eliot criticizes the English intellectuals. According to Eliot to the English intellectual tradition is something that should be avoided. They give much more importance on individualism and are critical about the historical sense or tradition.

Like Arnold, Eliot views tradition as something living. For both the word “tradition” implies growth. Eliot recalls Edmund Burke what burke did for political thought, by glorifying the idea of inheritance; Eliot has done for English literary criticism. Burke, famous English politician, gave emphasis on the experience of the past in politics. In the same Eliot also gives emphasis on the past regarding English criticism.

Tradition does not mean uncritical imitation of the past. Nor does it mean only erudition. A writer draws on only the necessary knowledge of tradition. He must use his freedom according to his needs. He cannot be completely detached. Often the most original moments of a work of art echo the mind of earlier writers. Though it sounds paradoxical it is true. It is paradoxical but true that even the most original writings sometimes reflect the thinking of the past or earlier writers. So, there is nothing which is absolutely original.

 A partial or complete break with the literary past is a danger. An awareness of what has gone before is necessary to know what is there to be done in the present or future. A balance between the control of tradition and the freedom of an individual is essential to art. Eliot said elsewhere that by losing tradition we lose our held on the present. Hence, a writer should be aware of the importance of tradition.

The essay gives voice to the fact that modernist experiments seldom simply destroyed or rejected traditional methods of   representation or traditional literary forms; rather, the modernists sought to enter into a sort of conversation with the art of the past, sometimes reverently, sometimes mockingly. No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. 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 supervening  of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered…… the past[is] altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.

 T. S. Eliot emphasis both the way that tradition shapes the modern artist and the way that a “really new” work of art makes us see that tradition anew.

Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation were directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry. Here I have tried to point out the importance of the relation of the poem to other poems by other authors, and suggested the conception of poetry as a living whole of all the poetry that has ever been written. The other aspect of this impersonal theory of poetry was the relation of the poem to its narrator. I hinted, by an analogy, that he mind of the mature poet differs from that of the immature one not precisely in any valuation of 'personality', not being necessarily more interesting, or having 'more to say,' but rather by being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations.

So we see that, the elements which enter the presence of the transforming catalyst were of two kinds: emotions and feelings. The effect of a work of art upon the person who enjoys it was an experience different in kind from any experience not of art. It may be formed out of one emotion, or may be a combination of several; and various feelings, inhering for the writer in particular words/phrases/images, it may be added to compose the final result. Or great poetry may be made without the direct use of any emotion whatever: composed out of feelings solely if you compare several representative passages of the greatest poetry you see how great was the variety of types of combination, and also how completely any semi-ethical criterion of sublimity misses the mark. For it is not the greatness, the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts. The episode of Paolo and Francesca employs a definite emotion, but the intensity of the poetry is something quite different from whatever intensity in the supposed experience it may give the impression of. The ode of Keats contains a number of feelings which have nothing particular to do with the nightingale, but which the nightingale, partly, perhaps, because of its attractive name, and partly because of its reputation, served to bring together.

•       “It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoke by
Particular events in his life that the poet is in any way
Remarkable or interesting. His particular emotions may
simple, crude, or flat. The emotion in his poetry will be a
Very complex thing, but not with the complexity of the
Emotions of people who have very complex or unusual
Emotions in life.”

According to these lines, he told that the emotion which is described in the poetry by poets it shows the emotions of the poet which related with the particular event of his life which is remarkable or interesting for poet. It is possible that poetry is a complex thing but the complexity of emotions of poet is not acceptable in poetry.

•       “The business of the poet is not to find new emotions; But to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings 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. Consequently, we must believe that “emotion recollected in tranquility” is an in exact formula.”

 According to these lines the business of the poet was not to find new emotion but to use of ordinary emotions in new way and create new emotions from the ordinary one. T. S. Eliot ‘tradition and individual was one of the critical essay in which T. S. Eliot has described with concept of tradition, individual talent, emotion and poetry as well as his concept of depersonalized art. In the opening of the essay, Eliot’s defines tradition, which is the literary history. He says that each and every nation has its individual genius who creates literature. So many such individual writers produce a big bulk of writing which is tradition. In the tradition is the matter of past that is even related to present that it is in the process of formation. Eliot gives an example of English literature produced from the Anglo Saxon period up to the present day. T. S. Eliot is says that when a writer comes to write at present. He should be aware of the tradition. To learn the tradition he should have a great labor but he should not imitate it. Learning the tradition was also called historical sense that is necessary to the present writer, because tradition as the past influences.

T. S. Eliot has also given his personal idea about the depersonalization of art, which was also called impersonal poetry. He says that emotions and feelings were related to poetry but they should be expressed indirectly and objectively. So, T. S. Eliot says that emotions of the poet were expressed in poetry but the poet should in personify them.  The poet and his mind is catalyst like the platinum to change others, medium but as if the platinum is not present in the acid, the poet also should not be present in poetry. His role is very crucial because without the poet, poetry is not possible to create but, in the creation he should be totally dead or absent like the platinum absent in acid. It is his concept of impersonal art and he criticizes many English poets including Wordsworth, he has not become impersonal. He appreciates metaphysical such as a John Donne was to be impersonal in poetry.

Conclusion: - T.S.Eliot spread his concept of Tradition which reflects his reaction against Romantic subjectivism and emotionalism. He told that the concept of historical senses very useful for better understanding of poetic sense or literary sense.