Tradition and 


the Individual Talent


(1919)

T. S. Eliot
 Tradition to Eliot

• Criticism is as inevitable as breathing

• When we praise a poet on those aspects of his/

her work in which he/she least resembles her/
his predecessors

• what is individual

• we find the peculiar essence of the poet

• something that can be isolated and enjoyed

• The best and the most individual parts
we pride ourselves on discovering in

the poet are the very parts where the

dead poets most vigorously assert their

immortality
• Tradition is not a blind or timid adherence to tradition of
immediate generation.

• Novelty is better than repetition

• Tradition cannot be inherited, you must obtain it by

great labour.
 Historical Sense
• Involves a perception of not only

• the pastness of the past, but its presence

• It compels the writer to write not merely with

his own generation in his bones, but with the
whole ‘mind of Europe’ from Homer and also

the whole literature of his own country.

 Historical Sense

• He/she is aware of the whole literature of Europe,

the literature of his/her time and the simultaneous
existence of both the past and the present.

• Has the sense of the timeless as well as the

temporal and timeless and the temporal
together, is what makes the writer traditional
• ‘No poet, or artist of any art, has his complete
meaning alone.’

• His significance, his appreciation is in relation to the

dead poets and artists

• He cannot be valued alone

• is to set up for contrast and comparison among

the dead
• When a new work of art is created something happens
simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded
it.

• The ideal existing order is modified by the

introduction of the new

• the existing order is complete but for order to

persist after the supervention of the novelty, the whole
existing order must be altered, if ever so slightly
• When the old order is altered :
➢ the relations,

➢ the proportions,

➢ the values of each work

➢ the whole are readjusted

and this is the conformity between the old and
the new.

• The past should be altered by the present

as much as the present is directed by the
past
• New poet will inevitably be judged by
the standards of the past.

• Its a judgement, a comparison

• To conform merely would be for the
new work not really to conform at all
 Relation of the Poet 

to the Past

• Poet cannot see the past as a lump, an indiscriminate

bolus : - it’s inadmissable

• Poet cannot form himself/herself on one or two

admirations : -
it’s an important experience of youth

• Cannot form himself/herself on one or two preferred

period : - it’s a
pleasant and highly desirable supplement
 Poet must be conscious of:

• the main current

• that art never improves, but the material of art is

never quite the same

• of the mind of Europe; of his own country

• this mind is much more important than his own

private mind - a mind which changes, which is a
development, which abandons nothing en route
Objection to Eliot’s doctrine
• which requires a ridiculous amount of
erudition, a claim rejected by appeal to the
lives of poets in any pantheon

• Much learning deadens or perverts poetic

sensibility

• Eliot however insists that a poet ought to

know as much as will not encroach upon
necessary receptivity and necessary laziness
 Eliot believes

• the poet must develop a consciousness of the

past and should continue to develop this
consciousness throughout their careers

• a continual surrender of himself/herself as

he/she is at the moment to something more
valuable

• the progress of an artist is continual self-

sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality
 II: Theory of Impersonality 

in Poetry

• The relation of the poems to other poems

• the conception of poetry as a living whole

of all the poetry that has ever been written

• the relation of the poem to its author

 Difference between the

Mature and Immature poet

Difference in not valuation of “personality”not

being more interesting or having “more to say”

BUT by being a more finely perfected medium in

which special or varied feelings are at liberty to

enter into new combinations

Sulphur Dioxide Oxygen Platinum Sulphuric Acid

Emotions Feelings Mind/Catalyst Poetry

Experience Impressions

Imagination Images

Phrases

Words
 Mind of a Poet 

(shred of platinum)

It may partly or exclusively operate upon the

experience of man himself

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 the mind digest and

transmute the passions which are its material
The experience maybe formed out
one emotion
or
a combination of several and various feelings –
in the form of words, phrases or images
Great poetry maybe made without the
direct use of any EMOTION
but

composed out of FEELINGS SOLELY

The poet’s mind is 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

What makes poetry great
it is not the greatness

the intensity of emotions,

the components
BUT

the intensity of the artistic process,

the pressure
under which the FUSION takes place
The poet has, NOT a personality to express
BUT a particular MEDIUM

which is only a medium

and not a personality
the MEDIUM in which
IMPRESSIONS and EXPERIENCES
combine in peculiar and unexpected ways
IMPRESSIONS and EXPERIENCES

which are important for the man

may take NO PLACE

in the poetry
and

those which became important

in poetry may play negligible
part in man, the personality
A poet’s particular emotions
maybe simple, or crude, or flat.
The business of 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.

There is the great deal,
in the writing of poetry,
which must be conscious and deliberate.
The bad poet is usually conscious
where he ought to be unconscious.
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.
 III

Eliot shifted the focus of critics

from the poet to poetry

From expression of sincere emotion

to the technical excellence
There is an expression of significant emotion,

emotion which has it’s life in the poem

and

not in the history of the poet.

Emotion of art is impersonal.

The poet cannot reach this impersonality

without surrendering himself

wholly to the work to be done

The poet lives not merely in the present
but the present moment of the past,
unless he is conscious,
not of what is dead,
but of what is already living.