T.S.Eliot

  Question 1:-What is a the relationship between "tradition" and" the individual talent" according to T.S.Eliot?

About Author 

            Born:-26 September 1888

            Died:-4 January 1965

            Thomas Stearns Eliot was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. Considered one of the 20th century's major poets, he is a central figure in English-language Modernist poetry.

Introduction

            Tradition and Individual Talent , written by T.S. Eliot is one of the most influential essays of all the times. It has placed an important concept of understanding the core meaning of Literature as a whole. He tries to justify the importance of art in academy as a discipline and if Literature has to be enacted as a discipline, it has to be critical , refine , allusive and complex in its nature. The essay serves as an important masterpiece to understand the theory of Impersonality and tradition”.

Relationship between "tradition" and" individual talent"

           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 but Eliot stresses on the elements of critical thoughts 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 from a critical lens rather than a creative force. The very “individual parts” will show the impressions of the continuity of the past or the elements of past which the poet has taken from which has been 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 of the past but of its presence in the present. It not involves the “pastness of the past but of its presence” and the literary circles of 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 who creates a new work of art so that there is a continuity of literary tradition because every poet writes in a 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 the Individual Talent”. He adds that the poet takes a “tradition” or the elements from the past in his work of art but there is also a change or alteration in the present that 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 and is guided to the present but the present modifies it when the new work of art is produced. 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.

Conclusion

        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 that 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 past and the present has done to the past. It is to observe the range of changes in the new work of art in the present and to the past as well as to undermine the values of the past and present to be equally balanced without undermining the past as well as the present. Hence, Eliot says that this is the real sense of “tradition’.