T.S.ELIOT TRADITION AND INDIVIDUAL TALENT

NAME:-THAKAR. ANERI. R

ROLL NO:-01

SEMESTER:-2

M.A.PART:-1

TOPIC: - T.S.ELIOT TRADITION AND INDIVIDUAL TALENT.

PAPER NO:-7 LITERARY CRITICISM.

 

•     T.S.ELIOT TRADITION AND INDIVIDUAL TALENT

            In his essay “Tradition and individual talent” 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 is bound up with historical sense, which is a perception that the past is not something lost and invalid.

                 According to Eliot, 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 or 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 pastness of the past but the presence of the past. On this sense the past is our contemporary as the present is. Eliot’s view of tradition is not linear but spatial. Eliot does not believe that the past is followed by the presence and succession of a line. On the contrary, the past and the present life side by side in the space .Thus it is spatial. Then Eliot holds that not only the past influences the present but the present, too, influences the past. To prove this idea, he conceives of all literature as a total, indivisible order. All existing literary works belong to an order like the member of a family. Any new work of literature is like the arrival of a member or a new relative or 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 is then modified. A new work art influences all the existing-literary work, as a new relative influences the old member of a family. It is this sense that the present modifies the past as the past modifies the present. The past is 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. 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 artists. You cannot value him alone. You must set him for contrast and comparison among the dead.

                             A work of art has two dimensions-it is at once personal and universal. It is an individual composition, but at the same time, its inclusion into tradition determines its worth and universal appeal. A writer must be aware that he belongs to a larger tradition and there is always an impact of tradition on him. Individual is an element formed by and forming the culture to which he belongs. He should surrender his personality to something larger and more significant.

                          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 is 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 is 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.

                                 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 are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry. If we attend to the confused cries of the newspaper critics and the SUSURRUS of popular repetition that follows, we shall hear the names of poets in great numbers; if we seek no Blue-book knowledge but the enjoyment of poetry, and ask for poem, we shall seldom find it. 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 is the relation of the poem to its author. And 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.

                        The experience, you will notice, the elements which enter the presence of the transforming catalyst, are of two kinds: emotions and feelings. The effect of a work of art upon the person who enjoys it is 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 or phrases or images, 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 is 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. It is no more intense, furthermore than the murder of Agamemnon, or the agony of Othello, gives an artistic effect apparently closer to a possible original than the scenes from Dante. In the Agamemnon, the artistic emotion approximates to the emotion of an actual spectator; in Othello to the emotion of the protagonist himself. But the difference between art and the event is always absolute; the combination which is the murder of Agamemnon is probably as complex as that which is the voyage of Ulysses. In either case there has been a fusion of elements. 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 this quote he told that the emotions which are 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 this quote the business of the poet is not to find new emotion but to use of an ordinary emotions in new way and create a new emotions from the ordinary one.

                 T.S.Eliot’s ‘tradition and individual is one of the critical essay in which 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 other words, tradition is the matter of past that is even related to present because 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. It is like a wall where there are so many bricks working commonly. Eliot also 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 is also called historical sense that is necessary to the present writer, because tradition as the past influences.

                    Eliot even says that the new writer writing at present becomes the part of tradition so he has to learn tradition but to imitate it. No writers and writings have value in isolation, the writer and his writing would not be evaluated with the writers of the past, he should be compared and contrasted with the tradition, it is possible to examine his individual talent. If the new writer has imitated the tradition, blindly such slavish imitation should be discouraged because it has not individual talent. Individual talent is the novelty or newness. If the present writer has brought something novelty in his writing, it is called individual talent such novelty should be encourage because it suggests the genius of the writer.

      Eliot has also given his personal idea about the depersonalization of art, which is also called impersonal poetry. He says that emotions and feelings are related to poetry but they should be expressed indirectly and objectively. In other words, Eliot says that emotions of the poet are expressed in poetry but the poet should in personified them. His concept is against the concept of words being involved in poetry. Instead, the poet should not be identified as the direct speaker in poetry but he should indirectly through the characters or other object, which is called objective correlative. So Eliot says “poetry is not the turning loose of emotions but escape from emotion. It is not the expression of personality but escape from it

             In order to support his concept of depersonalized art, Eliot use and analogy related to a gas chamber. In a gas chamber during the process of forming sulpheric asid, sulpheris dioxide and Oxygen are needed but they do not react until a plate of platinum is kept. When the platinum is kept there, it causes reaction between them so that, sulpheric acid is formed. In the acid platinum does not become present. This analogy is applied in the process of poetic creation.

                   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 who have not become impersonal. He appreciates metaphysical such as a John Donne is to be impersonal in poetry.

      Conclusion:-

              

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