Tradition and the 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).[1] The essay is
also available in Eliot's "Selected Prose" and "Selected Essays".
While Eliot is most often known for his poetry, he also contributed to the field of literary criticism. In this dual role, he
acted as poet-critic, comparable to Sir Philip Sidney and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
is one of the more well-known works that Eliot produced in his critic capacity. It formulates Eliot's influential conception
of the relationship between the poet and preceding literary tradition.

Content of the essay

This essay is divided into three parts: firstly, the concept of "Tradition," then, the Theory of Impersonal Poetry, and
finally the conclusion.
Eliot presents his conception of tradition and the definition of the poet and poetry in relation to it. He wishes to correct
the fact that, as he perceives it, "in English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name
in deploring its absence." Eliot posits that, though the English tradition generally upholds the belief that art progresses
through change – a separation from tradition, literary advancements are instead recognized only when they conform to
the tradition. Eliot, a classicist, felt that the true incorporation of tradition into literature was unrecognized, that tradition,
a word that "seldom... appear[s] except in a phrase of censure," was actually a thus-far unrealized element of literary
criticism.
For Eliot, the term "tradition" is imbued with a special and complex character. It represents a "simultaneous order," by
which Eliot means a historical timelessness – a fusion of past and present – and, at the same time, a sense of present
temporality. A poet must embody "the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer," while, simultaneously, expressing
their contemporary environment. Eliot challenges the common perception that a poet's greatness and individuality lie in
their departure from their predecessors; he argues that "the most individual parts of his [the poet's] work may be those
in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously." Eliot claims that this "historical sense"
is not only a resemblance to traditional works but an awareness and understanding of their relation to his poetry.
This fidelity to tradition, however, does not require the great poet to forfeit novelty in an act of surrender to repetition.
Rather, Eliot has a much more dynamic and progressive conception of the poetic process: novelty is possible only
through tapping into tradition. When a poet engages in the creation of new work, they realize an aesthetic "ideal order,"
as it has been established by the literary tradition that has come before them. As such, the act of artistic creation does
not take place in a vacuum. The introduction of a new work alters the cohesion of this existing order, and causes a
readjustment of the old to accommodate the new. The inclusion of the new work alters the way in which the past is
seen; elements of the past that are noted and realized. In Eliot’s own words, "What happens when a new work of art is
created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art that preceded it." Eliot refers to this organic
tradition, this developing canon, as the "mind of Europe." The private mind is subsumed by this more massive one.
This leads to Eliot’s so-called "Impersonal Theory" of poetry. Since the poet engages in a "continual surrender of
himself" to the vast order of tradition, artistic creation is a process of depersonalization. The mature poet is viewed as a
medium, through which tradition is channeled and elaborated. They compare the poet to a catalyst in a chemical
reaction, in which the reactants are feelings, and emotions that are synthesized to create an artistic image that captures
and relays these same feelings and emotions. While the mind of the poet is necessary for the production, it emerges
unaffected by the process. The artist stores feelings and emotions and properly unites them into a specific combination,
which is the artistic product. What lend greatness to a work of art are not the feelings and emotions themselves, but the
nature of the artistic process by which they are synthesized. The artist is responsible for creating "the pressure, so to
speak, under which the fusion takes place." And, it is the intensity of fusion that renders art great. In this view, Eliot
rejects the theory that art expresses metaphysical unity in the soul of the poet. The poet is a depersonalized vessel, a
mere medium.
Great works do not express the personal emotion of the poet. The poet does not reveal their own unique and novel
emotions, but rather, by drawing on ordinary ones and channeling them through the intensity of poetry, they express
feelings that surpass, altogether, experienced emotion. This is what Eliot intends when he discusses poetry as an
"escape from emotion." Since successful poetry is impersonal and, therefore, exists independent of its poet, it outlives
the poet and can incorporate into the timeless "ideal order" of the "living" literary tradition.
Another essay found in Selected Essays relates to this notion of the impersonal poet. In "Hamlet and His Problems"
Eliot presents the phrase "objective correlative." The theory is that the expression of emotion in art can be achieved by a
specific, and almost formulaic, prescription of a set of objects, including events and situations. A particular emotion is
created by presenting its correlated objective sign. The author is depersonalized in this conception, since he is the mere
effecter of the sign. And, it is the sign, and not the poet, which creates emotion.
The implications here separate Eliot's idea of talent from the conventional definition (just as his idea of Tradition is
separate from the conventional definition), one so far from it, perhaps, that he chooses never to directly label it as talent.
Whereas the conventional definition of talent, especially in the arts, is a genius that one is born with. Not so for Eliot.
Instead, talent is acquired through a careful study of poetry, claiming that Tradition, "cannot be inherited, and if you want
it, you must obtain it by great labour." Eliot asserts that it is absolutely necessary for the poet to study, to have an
understanding of the poets before them, and to be well versed enough that they can understand and incorporate the
"mind of Europe" into their poetry. But the poet's study is unique – it is knowledge that "does not encroach," and that
does not "deaden or pervert poetic sensibility." It is, to put it most simply, a poetic knowledge – knowledge observed
through a poetic lens. This ideal implies that knowledge gleaned by a poet is not knowledge of facts, but knowledge
which leads to a greater understanding of the mind of Europe. As Eliot explains, "Shakespeare acquired more essential
history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum."

Eliot and New Criticism

Unwittingly, Eliot inspired and informed the movement of New Criticism. This is somewhat ironic, since he later criticized
their intensely detailed analysis of texts as unnecessarily tedious. Yet, he does share with them the same focus on the
aesthetic and stylistic qualities of poetry, rather than on its ideological content. The New Critics resemble Eliot in their
close analysis of particular passages and poems.

Criticism of Eliot
Eliot's theory of literary tradition has been criticized for its limited definition of what constitutes the canon of that tradition.
He assumes the authority to choose what represents great poetry, and his choices have been criticized on several
fronts. For example, Harold Bloom disagrees with Eliot's condescension towards Romantic poetry, which, in The
Metaphysical Poets (1921) he criticizes for its "dissociation of sensibility." Moreover, many believe Eliot's discussion of
the literary tradition as the "mind of Europe" reeks of Euro-centrism. However, it should be recognized that Eliot
supported many Eastern and thus non-European works of literature such as the Mahabharata. Eliot was arguing the
importance of a complete sensibility: he didn't particularly care what it was at the time of tradition and the individual
talent. His own work is heavily influenced by non-Western traditions. In his broadcast talk "The Unity of European
Culture," he said, "Long ago I studied the ancient Indian languages and while I was chiefly interested at that time in
Philosophy, I read a little poetry too; and I know that my own poetry shows the influence of Indian thought and
sensibility." His self-evaluation was confirmed by B. P. N. Sinha, who writes that Eliot went beyond Indian ideas to
Indian form: "The West has preoccupied itself almost exclusively with the philosophy and thoughts of India. One
consequence of this has been a total neglect of Indian forms of expression, i.e. of its literature. T. S. Eliot is the one
major poet whose work bears evidence of intercourse with this aspect of Indian culture" (qtd. in The Composition of The
Four Quartets). He does not account for a non-white and non-masculine tradition. As such, his notion of tradition stands
at odds with feminist, post-colonial and minority theories.
Harold Bloom presents a conception of tradition that differs from that of Eliot. Whereas Eliot believes that the great poet
is faithful to his predecessors and evolves in a concordant manner, Bloom (according to his theory of "anxiety of
influence") envisions the "strong poet" to engage in a much more aggressive and tumultuous rebellion against tradition.
In 1964, his last year, Eliot published in a reprint of The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, a series of lectures he
gave at Harvard University in 1932 and 1933, a new preface in which he called "Tradition and the Individual Talent" the
most juvenile of his essays (although he also indicated that he did not repudiate it.)[2]

Primary works of literary criticism by T. S. EliotHomage to John Dryden: Three Essays on Poetry of the
Seventeenth Century. London: L. and Virginia Woolf, 1927.

 On Poetry and Poets. London: Faber and Faber, 1957.

 The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. London Menthuen, 1950.
 Selected Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950.
 The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry. Ed. Ronald Schuchard. London: Faber and Faber, 1993.

Synopsis: Tradition and the Individual Talent by T. S. Eliot

The essay Tradition and the 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.

Eliot argues that a great poem always asserts and that the poet must develop a sense of the pastness 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 is really essential
for any work of art. This historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness 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. Thus to write poetry is to write with a consciousness of the timeless and temporal
and of the interrelation between the two. In any work the past should be altered by the present just as the preset
is directed by the past.

In this way, present affects the past as past effects the present because present poet adopts the tradition of past
with hard labor. A good writer or poet identifies his position in present with the comparison to past writers.
Therefore, the combination of temporal and timeless is, as whole tradition.

The meaning of the poem is not possible in isolation. Not poet, no any artist has his complete meaning unless we
link him/ her to a chain of all poets. Impotence and value of any poet can’t be judged in isolation. So there must
be the tradition to compare are with another.

To create a good poem, one should surrender the self. This self sacrifice of personality gives birth to a good poem.
One should negate his mind. In doing so one loses his individuality and his personality. 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.

The progress of the artist is a continual self-sacrifice a continual extinction of personality is the individual talent.

To make the concept of depersonalization clear, Eliot brings analogy of creating sulphuroic acid.

Sulpher dioxide (Feeling) + oxygen (Emotion) + platinum (Mind of Poet) = Sulphurous Acid (Poem) (No trace of
Poet’s Personality)

As the platinum itself remains unaffected, the mind of the poet remains unaffected also. Poet's personality is just
an agent or medium to active the relation between emotion and feelings. So, the poet is never a creator, but like
catalyst.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion. Eliot point is more like what Keats uses his
term ‘negative capability’.

Eliot stands against Romantic poets who think that poetry is spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and
personal emotions. Romantic writer says poetry is expression of personality and inspiration. But Eliot says poetry
is not so but an escape from personality. Poetry is organization rather than inspiration. So, the critic should be
objective while treating the poems. The belief that there is a poet speaking in a poem should be checked.
Hamlet and His problem Objective Correlative

In the essay “Hamlet and his problem" Eliot argues that the play Hamlet and the Character Hamlet both are
problematic. He says that Hamlet is an artistic failure, because it has not any objective correlative. Here in this
play, Shakespeare could not balance between fact and feelings. External situation is needed to express the
feelings of character. But in Hamlet, there is no relation between external situation and the feeling of Hamlet.

The madness of Hamlet has not proper relation with his mother's guilt. There are no clear events that are
matching with expressed emotion. Matching of events with expressed emotion is what Eliot calls objective
correlative.

But, in Hamlet, Hamlet goes mad due to his mother’s elopement. This elopement is very minor issue to go mad.
So here is not objective correlative. Hamlet lacks objective correlative. Objective refers to situation, events,
condition and objective correlative means the proper relationship between situation and expression of feelings.
Thus Hamlet is an artistic failure.

Detailed Summary: “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” one of Eliot’s early essays, typifies his critical
stance and concerns; it has been called his most influential single essay. Divided into three parts,
appearing in The Egoist in September and December, 1919, the essay insists upon taking tradition into
account when formulating criticism—“aesthetic, not merely historical criticism.”

Eliot opens the essay by revivifying the word “tradition” and arguing that criticism, for which the French
were then noted more than the English, in his view “is as inevitable as breathing.” The first principle of
criticism that he asserts is to focus not solely upon what is unique in a poet but upon what he shares with
“the dead poets, his ancestors.” This sharing, when it is not the mere and unquestioning following of
established poetic practice, involves the historical sense, a sense that the whole of literary Europe and of
one’s own country “has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.”

A correlative principle is that no poet or artist has his or her complete meaning in isolation but must be
judged, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. As Eliot sees it, the order of art is complete before
a new work of art is created, but with that new creation all the prior works forming an ideal order are
modified, and the order itself is altered.

One of the essay’s memorable and enduring phrases concerns the objection that the living know so
much more than the dead writers could have: Eliot counters by asserting, “Precisely, and they are that
which we know.” In gaining that knowledge, the artist engages in a “continual surrender” to tradition, and
his or her progress “is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.” The definition of
depersonalization that Eliot offers forms another of the essay’s enduring phrases: As the novelist
Gustave Flaubert and the English critic Walter Pater had written before him, Eliot seeks a scientific base
for his works and likens the poet’s mind to “a bit of finely filiated platinum . . . introduced into a chamber
containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide.”

The poet’s mind, then, is a catalyst, as Eliot explains it in the essay’s second part. His point is that the
poet’s transforming mind stores up feelings, phrases, and images until all the particles that can form a
new work of art come together to do so. The poet has not so much a personality to express as a medium
for the expression of complex emotion that is separable from the poet’s own emotions. Poetry, Eliot
emphasizes, is not a turning loose of personal emotion but a consciously deliberate escape from it. The
emotion of art, he reminds his readers in the essay’s final section, is impersonal.

Only rarely in the history of English literature has a critical essay, such as “Tradition and the Individual
Talent,” so changed the way people understand poetry. Anyone who has any real interest in modern
poetry—reader, critic, or poet—has had to confront this essay and decide for himself or herself its
strengths and weaknesses.

One of the important ways that the essay has altered literary criticism has to do with the meaning of the
title’s key words, “tradition” and “individual talent.” In the very first paragraph, Eliot indicates that, by
“tradition,” he does not mean what people usually mean in talking about literature; ordinarily, a
“traditional” writer is perhaps an old-fashioned writer, one who uses tried-and-true plots and a steady,
understandable style. Rather, Eliot uses “tradition” in a more objective and historical sense: His definition
of tradition is paradoxical because he says that the historical sense of tradition is a keen understanding
of both what is timeless and what is not. A true poet understands “not only the pastness of the past, but .
. . its presence.”

This is less confusing than it appears: Eliot simply means that for a poet writing in the tradition—a poet
who understands his or her heritage—all the great poetry of the past is alive. When the poet writes a
poem, great poems of the past help to enliven the modern work. This dynamic relationship is not finished
when the poem is written, however, because the new poem casts a new light on the poems that came
before. In the same way that the tradition of great poetry helped shape a new, modern poem, the
contemporary poem changes the way one looks at the poems that shaped it.

Another apparent contradiction lies in Eliot’s use of “individual” in “individual talent.” He says that a poet’s
true individuality lies in the ways he or she embodies the immortality of poetic “ancestors.” In a sense,
poets who know what they are doing “plug into” tradition; electrified by the greatness of the past, they
achieve a sharper profile, a greater individuality.

It is important to stress that Eliot is not saying that good poets should simply copy the poetry of the past.
In fact, he argues just the opposite: Good poets bring something new into the world—“novelty,” he writes,
“is better than repetition”—that makes an important advance on what has come before. To do this, the
poet has to know what is truly new and different; a poet can do this only by having a thorough knowledge
of the classic and traditional. To have this kind of knowledge means, in turn, that the poet needs to know
not only about the poetry of his or her own language but also about the poetry of other nations and
cultures.

In a crucial metaphor about midway in the essay, Eliot compares the poet to a catalyst in chemistry. He
describes what happens when two gases are combined in the presence of a piece of platinum: A new
compound is formed, but the platinum is unaffected. The platinum is the poet’s mind, which uses tradition
and personal experience (the two gases) to create a poem. In this kind of literary combustion, the poet
remains “impersonal.” That is, he or she manages to separate individual facts of life from the work of art
that is being created. As Eliot says, “the poet has, not a ’personality’ to express, but a particular
medium,” which is the medium of poetry.

In a third, concluding section of the essay, Eliot draws an important conclusion, one that has been crucial
to the way poetry has been studied since the 1920’s. The essay shifts the study of a poem from an
emphasis on the poet as a person, to the study of the poem isolated from the poet. After reading this
essay, critics would increasingly concentrate on the internal structure of poetry—the tropes, figures, and
themes of the work. At the same time, critics would banish the life of the writer from the study of his or
her writings; the poet’s personality, as Eliot seemed to imply, was irrelevant to the artwork produced. The
peak of this theory was reached with the New Critics and their successors in Britain and the United
States from about 1930 through the 1950’s. Later years, however, have seen a waning of the impersonal
theory of poetry and a return of the poet to his or her work.

1. What is T. S. Eliot's View on Historical Sense in "Tradition and the Individual Talent."?
Eliot writes about "historical sense" in "Tradition and the Individual Talent." He writes that the historical sense
"involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence" and it is "a sense of the timeless as
well as of the temporal and of the timeless and the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional."

In this essay, Eliot does not describe "traditional" as old-fashioned. Rather, for him, traditional means that a poem is
a particular part of the general whole of all poetry in history. The individual talent emerges from an awareness of
his/her present poetic contribution and epoch as a continuation of that history of poetry. The present poet who is
aware of his/her place AND the whole of this history is more able to be individual.

In this essay, Eliot also describes the good poet as one who does not dwell on emotion or his/her own personality.
For Eliot, "emotion reflected in tranquility," the Romantic ethos for good poetry is an inadequate formula for
poetry. For Eliot, the poet must depersonalize himself and treat his mind more like a medium for a chemical
reaction. Therefore, the poet's mind, in order to create new poetry in a traditional continuum, must act as a catalyst,
applying pressure and new combinations of the already established, traditional elements in the reaction.

This analogy of the chemical reaction and combining things in new combinations is similar to Eliot's ideas about
the individuality of a poet within a continuing poetic tradition. To know the past traditions (to become historically
aware = historical sense), the poet must labor as a chemist learns about former experiments, elements, reactions,
combinations, etc. Only then, by divorcing his personality from his poetic creation, can the poet immerse his work
within the historical medium of all poetry throughout history. Another way to think of this is that the entire history
of poetry is one giant chemical reaction. A new poem which has individuality and historical sense will not only be
informed by the past, but since it is part of the entire history of poetry, it will affect interpretations of the poems of
the past as well. In this sense, historical sense is indispensable for the mature poet and every poem with historical
sense affects every other poem in history.

Like the chemical reaction that Eliot uses as an analogy of the poet's depersonalized mind, each element (poem) in
this historical tradition of poetry affects every other element (poem). The past informs the present poetry. And if the
present poetry was created with this historical sense, then the present poetry will also inform the past.

2. What is T.S. Eliot's concept of "tradition" and "individual talent" as put forth in his essay
"Tradition and the Individual Talent"?

In a sense, Eliot's tradition resembles what structuralist linguists call "langue" and the individual talent or piece of
writing resembles "parole." Writers do not invent ex nihilo, as romantics might claim. Instead, one writes in a
language that has evolved over millennia. The genres in which one writes are often handed down over centuries, as
are stylistic expectations. Even when an artist violates such traditions, such as one might find in a mock epic,
absurdist, or avant-garde work, such breaks are only meaningful against the background of the traditions against
which they rebel.

For Eliot, what is to be prized in poetry and other arts is not some unachievable ideal of pure originality, but instead
incremental and personal manipulation of an inherited tradition, building on what has gone before. Rather than
admire the myth of the untutored naive poet writing from pure inspiration, Eliot suggests that the best poets read
widely and deeply, and the very depth of their connection to tradition is what allows them to transmute it into
something both old and new, deeply rooted in their culture and yet original. It is not the artist's unique personality
in and of itself that matters, but rather the way the artist has something—like Keats's negative capability—that
allows tradition to speak through him that is important. Poetry is not an exercise in individuality and egotism for
Eliot, but rather an escape from individuality.

T.S. Eliot was a renowned literary critic as well as poet. In 1919 he wrote the critical essay "Tradition and the
Individual Talent." Ironically in a 1964 publication of lectures given at Harvard University in the 1930s, he labeled
"Tradition and the Individual Talent" a juvenile work, though without denying its statements.
 The concepts that Eliot lays out in the essay are that today's poetry of genius is inescapably built on the traditions of
a culture's forerunners in poetry and that talent is the poet's ability to master the tradition of poetry and give it voice
in new poetry that represents the poet's current day culture.

The poet's task is to study the masters of earlier times and incorporate their genius into his work, thereby echoing
what Elliot called the "mind of Europe." Though an innovative new application to literary endeavors, the notion that
creative breakthroughs come only following rigorous study of the previous masters had previously been a
cornerstone of training in the physical arts, e.g., painting and sculpture.

3. How might one briefly outline T. S. Eliot's ideas in his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent"?

In the course of his influential essay “Traditional and the Individual Talent,” T. S. Eliot makes a number of key
points, including the following:

 Ideally, poetic “tradition” does not refer simply to what has been done in the recent past but to the whole history of
the art. Serious poets have an obligation to familiarize themselves with the history of poetry, and doing so requires
hard work. Merely and slavishly imitating one’s immediate predecessors is...

4. How can I discuss the roles of the tradition and individual talent (artists) using this passage from Eliot's
essay "Tradition and Individual Talent"? "…the past should be altered by the present as much as the present
is directed by the past.”

T.S. Eliot viewed Western cultural/artistic history as a continuum wherein contemporary artists are inevitably
influenced and shaped by the artists that came before them. Eliot argues that in order for contemporary artists to be
successful and their work meaningful, they must participate in the ongoing meta-dialog represented by the loosely
defined (but readily understood) institution of European cultural expression.

Arguing for a sense of continuity in the arts, Eliot also takes a position.

‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ was first published in 1919 in the literary magazine The Egoist. It was published in two
parts, in the September and December issues. The essay was written by a young American poet named T. S. Eliot (1888-
1965), who had been living in London for the last few years, and who had published his first volume of poems, Prufrock and
Other Observations, in 1917.

‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ (1919) sees Eliot defending the role of tradition in helping new writers to be modern.
This is one of the central paradoxes of Eliot’s writing – indeed, of much modernism – that in order to move forward it often
looks to the past, even more directly and more pointedly than previous poets had. This theory of tradition also highlights
Eliot’s anti-Romanticism. Unlike the Romantics’ idea of original creation and inspiration, Eliot’s concept of tradition
foregrounds how important older writers are to contemporary writers: Homer and Dante are Eliot’s contemporaries because
they inform his work as much as those alive in the twentieth century do. James Joyce looked back to ancient Greek myth
(the story of Odysseus) for his novel set in modern Dublin, Ulysses (1922). Ezra Pound often looked back to the troubadours
and poets of the Middle Ages. H. D.’s Imagist poetry was steeped in Greek references and ideas. As Eliot puts it, ‘Some one
said: “The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.” Precisely, and they are that
which we know.’ He goes on to argue that a modern poet should write with the literature of all previous ages ‘in his bones’,
as though Homer and Shakespeare were his (or her) contemporaries: ‘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. And it is at
the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.’

In short, knowledge of writers of the past makes contemporary writers both part of that tradition and part of the
contemporary scene. Eliot’s own poetry, for instance, is simultaneously in the tradition of Homer and Dante and the work of
a modern poet, and it is because of his debt to Homer and Dante that he is both modern and traditional. If this sounds like a
paradox, consider how Shakespeare is often considered both a ‘timeless’ poet (‘Not of an age, but for all time’, as his friend
Ben Jonson said) whose work is constantly being reinvented, but is also understood in the context of Elizabethan and
Jacobean social and political attitudes. Similarly, in using Dante in his own poetry, Eliot at once makes Dante ‘modern’ and
contemporary, and himself – by association – part of the wider poetic tradition.

Eliot’s essay goes on to champion impersonality over personality. That is, the poet’s personality does not matter, as it’s the
poetry that s/he produces that is important. Famously, he observes: ‘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. But, of course, only those who have
personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.’

This is more or less a direct riposte to William Wordsworth’s statement (in the ‘Preface’ to Lyrical Ballads in 1800) that
‘poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’. Once again, Eliot sets himself apart from such a Romantic notion
of poetry. This is in keeping with his earlier argument about the importance of tradition: the poet’s personality does not
matter, only how their work responds to, and fits into, the poetic tradition.

Eliot’s example of Homer is pertinent here: we know nothing of the poet who wrote The Odyssey for certain, but we don’t
need to. The Odyssey itself is what matters, not the man (or men – or woman!) who wrote it. Poetry should be timeless and
universal, transcending the circumstances out of which it grew, and transcending the poet’s own generation and lifetime.
(Eliot’s argument raises an interesting question: can self-evidently personal poetry – e.g. by confessional poets like Sylvia
Plath, or Romantics like Wordsworth – not also be timeless and universal? Evidently it can, as these poets’ works have
outlived the poets who wrote them.)

We might also bear in mind that Eliot knew that great poets often incorporated part of themselves into their work – he
would do it himself, so that, although it would be naive to read The Waste Land as being ‘about’ Eliot’s failed marriage to his
first wife, we can nevertheless see aspects of his marriage informing the poem. And in ‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of
Seneca’, Eliot would acknowledge that the poet of poets, Shakespeare, must have done such a thing: the Bard ‘was occupied
with the struggle – which alone constitutes life for a poet – to transmute his personal and private agonies into something
rich and strange, something universal and impersonal’. For Eliot, great poets turn personal experience into impersonal
poetry, but this nevertheless means that their poetry often stems from the personal. It is the poet’s task to transmute
personal feelings into something more universal. Eliot is rather vague about how a poet is to do this – leaving others to
ponder it at length.

The essay Tradition and Individual Talent was first published in 1919, in the Times Literary Supplement, as a
critical article. The essay may be regarded as an unofficial manifesto of Eliot’s critical creed, for it contains all those
critical principles from which his criticism has been derived ever since. The seeds which have been sown here come
to fruition in his subsequent essays. It is a declaration of Eliot’s critical creed, and these principles are the basis of
all his subsequent criticism.

Its Three Parts

The essay is divided into three parts. The first part gives us Eliot’s concept of tradition, and in the second part is
developed his theory of the impersonality of poetry. The short, third part is in the nature of a conclusion, or
summing up of the whole discussion.

Traditional Elements: Their Significance

Eliot begins the essay by pointing out that the word ‘tradition’ is generally regarded as a word of censure. It is a
word disagreeable to the English ears. When the English praise a poet, they praise him for those-aspects of his
work which are ‘individual’ and original. It is supposed that his chief merit lies in such parts. This undue stress on
individuality shows that the English have an uncritical turn of mind. They praise the poet for the wrong thing. If
they examine the matter critically with an unprejudiced mind, they will realise that the best and the most
individual part of a poet’s work is that which shows the maximum influence of the writers of the past. To quote his
own words: “Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice, we shall often find that not only the best, but
the most individual part of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality
most vigorously.’
The Literary Tradition: Ways in Which It Can Be Acquired
This brings Eliot to a consideration of the value and significance of tradition. Tradition does not mean a blind
adherence to the ways of the previous generation or generations. This would be mere slavish imitation, a mere
repetition of what has already been achieved, and “novelty is better than repetition.” Tradition in the sense of
passive repetition is to be discouraged. For Eliot, Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. Tradition in the
true sense of the term cannot be inherited, it can only be obtained by hard labour. This labour is the labour of
knowing the past writers. It is the critical labour of sifting the good from the bad, and of knowing what is good and
useful. Tradition can be obtained only by those who have the historical sense. The historical sense involves a
perception, “not only of the pastness of the past, but also of its presence: One who has the historic sense feels that
the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer down to his own day, including the literature of his own country,
forms one continuous literary tradition” He realises that the past exists in the present, and that the past and the
present form one simultaneous order. This historical sense is the sense of the timeless and the temporal, as well as
of the timeless and the temporal together. It is this historic sense which makes a writer traditional. A writer with
the sense of tradition is fully conscious of his own generation, of his place in the present, but he is also acutely
conscious of his relationship with the writers of the past. In brief, the sense of tradition implies (a) a recognition of
the continuity of literature, (b) a critical judgment as to which of the writers of the past continue to be significant in
the present, and (c) a knowledge of these significant writers obtained through painstaking effort. Tradition
represents the accumulated wisdom and experience of ages, and so its knowledge is essential for really great and
noble achievements.

Dynamic Conception of Tradition: Its Value

Emphasising further the value of tradition, Eliot points out that no writer has his value and significance in
isolation. To judge the work of a poet or an artist, we must compare and contrast his work with the works of poets
and artist in the past. Such comparison and contrast is essential for forming an idea of the real worth and
significance of a new writer and his work. Eliot’s conception of tradition is a dynamic one. According to his view,
tradition is not anything fixed and static; it is constantly changing, growing, and becoming different from what it
is. A writer in the present must seek guidance from the past, he must conform to the literary tradition. But just as
the past directs and guides the present, so the present alters and modifies the past. When a new work of art is
created, if it is really new and original, the whole literary tradition is modified, though ever so slightly. The
relationship between the past and the present is not one-sided; it is a reciprocal relationship. The past directs the
present, and is itself modified and altered by the present. To quote the words of Eliot himself: “The existing
monuments form and ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (really new)
work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the
supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered.” Every great poet like Virgil,
Dante, or Shakespeare, adds somebiing to the literary tradition out of which the future poetry will be written.

The Function of Tradition

The work of a poet in the present is to be compared and contrasted with works of the past, and judged by the
standards of the past. But this judgment does not mean determining good or bad. It does not mean deciding
whether the present work is better or worse than works of the past. An author in the present is certainly not to be
judged by the principles and the standards of the past. The comparison is to be made for knowing the facts, all the
facts, about the new work of art. The comparison is made for the purposes of analysis, and for forming a better
understanding of the new. Moreover, this comparison is reciprocal. The past helps us to understand the present,
and the present throws light on the past. It is in this way alone that we can form an idea of what is really individual
and new. It is by comparison alone that we can sift the traditional from the individual elements in a given work of
art.

Sense of Tradition: Its Real Meaning

Eliot now explains further what he means by a sense of tradition. The sense of tradition does not mean that the
poet should try to know the past as a whole, take it to be a lump or mass without any discrimination. Such a course
is impossible as well as undesirable. The past must be examined critically and only the significant in it should be
acquired. The sense of tradition does not also mean that the poet should know only a few poets whom he admires.
This is a sign of immaturity and inexperience. Neither should a poet be content merely to know some particular age
or period which he likes. This may be pleasant and delightful, but it will not constitute a sense of tradition. A sense
of tradition in the real sense means a consciousness, “of the main current, which does not at all flow invariably
through the most distinguished reputations”. In other words, to know the tradition, the poet must judge critically
what are the main trends and what are not. He must confine himself to the main trends to the exclusion of all that
is incidental or topical. The poet must possess the critical gift in ample measure. He must also realise that the main
literary trends are not determined by the great poets alone. Smaller poets also are significant. They are not to be
ignored.

Works of Art: Their Permanence

The poet must also realise that art never improves, though its material is never the same. The mind of Europe may
change, but this change does not mean that great writers like Shakespeare and Homer have grown outdated and
lost their significance. The great works of art never lose their significance, for there is no qualitative improvement
in art. There may be refinement, there may be development, but from the point of view of the artist there is no
improvement. (For example, it will not be correct to say that the art of Shakespeare is better and higher than that
of Eliot. Their works are of different kinds, for the material on which they worked was different.)

Awareness of the Past: The Poet’s Duty to Acquire It

T.S. Eliot is conscious of the criticism that will be made of his theory of tradition. His view of tradition requires, it
will be said, a ridiculous amount of erudition. It will be pointed out that there have been great poets who were not
learned, and further that too much learning kills sensibility. However, knowledge does not merely mean bookish
knowledge, and the capacity for acquiring knowledge differs from person to person. Some can absorb knowledge
easily, while others must sweat for it. Shakespeare, for example, could know more of Roman history from Plutarch
than most men can from the British Museum. It is the duty of every poet to acquire, to the best of his ability, this
knowledge of the past, and he must continue to acquire this consciousness throughout his career. Such awareness
of tradition, sharpens poetic creation.

Impersonality of Poetry: Extinction of Personality

The artist must continually surrender himself to something which is more valuable than himself, i.e. the literary
tradition. He must allow his poetic sensibility to be shaped and modified by the past. He must continue to acquire
the sense of tradition throughout his career. In the beginning, his self, his individuality, may assert itself, but as his
powers mature there must be greater and greater extinction of personality. He must acquire greater and greater
objectivity. His emotions and passions must be depersonalised; he must be as impersonal and objective as a
scientist. The personality of the artist is not important; the important thing is his sense of tradition. A good poem is
a living whole of all the poetry that has ever been written. He must forget his personal joys and sorrows, and he
absorbed in acquiring a sense of tradition and expressing it in his poetry. Thus, the poet’s personality is merely a
medium, having the same significance as a catalytic agent, or a receptacle in which chemical reactions take place.
That is why Eliot holds that, “Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon
thepoetry.”

The Poetic Process: The Analogy of the Catalyst

In the second part of the essay, Eliot develops further his theory of the impersonality of poetry. He compares the
mind of the poet to a catalyst and the process of poetic creation to the process of a chemical reaction. Just as
chemical reactions take place in the presence of a catalyst alone, so also the poet’s mind is the catalytic agent for
combining different emotions into something new. Suppose there is a jar containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide.
These two gases combine to form sulphurous acid when a fine filament of platinum is introduced into the jar. The
combination takes place only in the presence of the piece of platinum, but the metal itself does not undergo any
change. It remains inert, neutral and unaffected. The mind of the poet is like the catalytic agent. It is necessary for
new combinations of emotions and experiences to take place, but it itself does not undergo any change during the
process of poetic combination. The mind of the poet is constantly forming emotions and experiences into new
wholes, but the new combination does not contain even a trace of the poet’s mind, just as the newly formed
sulphurous acid does not contain any trace of platinum. In the case of a young and immature poet, his mind, his
personal emotions and experiences, may find some expression in his composition, but, says Eliot, “the more
perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him “will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates.”
The test of the maturity of an artist is the completeness with which his men digests and transmutes the passions
which form the substance of his poetry. The man suffers, i.e. has experiences, but it is his mind which transforms
his experiences into something new and different. The personality of the poet does not find expression in his
poetry; it acts like a catalytic agent in the process of poetic composition.

Emotions and Feelings

The experiences which enter the poetic process, says Eliot, may be of two kinds. They are emotions and feelings.
Poetry may be composed out of emotions only or out of feelings only, or out of both. T.S. Eliot here distinguishes
between emotions and feelings, but he does not state what this difference is, “Nowhere else in his writings”, says
A.G. George, “is this distinction maintained’, neither does he adequately distinguish between the meaning of the
two words”. The distinction should, therefore, be ignored, more so as it has no bearing on his impersonal theory of
poetry.

Poetry as Organisation: Intensity of the Poetic Process

Eliot next compares the poet’s mind to a jar or receptacle in which are stored numberless feelings, emotions, etc.,
which remain there in an unorganised and chaotic form till, “all the particles which can unite to form a new
compound are present together.” Thus poetry is organisation rather than inspiration. And the greatness of a poem
does not depend upon the greatness or even the intensity of the emotions, which are the components of the poem,
but upon the intensity of the process of poetic composition. Just as a chemical reaction takes place under pressure,
so also intensity is needed for the fusion of emotions. The more intense the poetic process, the greater the poem.
There is always a difference between the artistic emotion and the personal emotions of the poet. For example, the
famous Ode to Nightingale of Keats contains a number of emotions which have nothing to do with the Nightingale.
“The difference between art and the event is always absolute.” The poet has no personality to express, he is merely
a medium in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and
experiences which are important for the man may find no place in his poetry, and those which become important
in the poetry may have no significance for the man. Eliot thus rejects romantic subjectivism.

Artistic Emotion: The Value of Concentration

The emotion of poetry is different from the personal emotions of the poet. His personal emotions may be simple or
crude, but the emotion of his poetry may be complex and refined. It is the mistaken notion that the poet must
express new emotions that results in much eccentricity in poetry. It is not the business of the poet to find new
emotions. He may express only ordinary emotions, but he must impart to them a new significance and a new
meaning. And it is not necessary that they should be his personal emotions. Even emotions which he has never
personally experienced can serve the purpose of poetry. (For example, emotions which result from the reading of
books can serve his turn.) Eliot rejects Wordsworth’s theory of poetry having, “its origin in emotions recollected in
tranquillity”, and points out that in the process of poetic composition there is neither emotion, nor recollection,
nor tranquillity. In the poetic process, there is only concentration of a number of experiences, and a new thing
results from this concentration. And this process of concentration is neither conscious nor deliberate; it is a passive
one. There is, no doubt, that there are elements in the poetic process which are conscious and deliberate. The
difference between a good and a bad poet is that a bad poet is conscious where he should be unconscious and
unconscious where he should be conscious. It is this consciousness of the wrong kind which makes a poem
personal, whereas mature art must be impersonal. But Eliot does not tell us when a poet should be conscious, and
when not. The point has been left vague and indeterminate.

Poetry, an Escape from Personality and Personal Emotions

The poet concludes: “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.” Thus Eliot does not deny personality or emotion to the poet. Only,
he must depersonalise his emotions. There should be an extinction of his personality. This impersonality can be
achieved only when poet surrenders himself completely to the work that is to be done. And the poet can know what
is to be done, only if he acquires a sense of tradition, the historic sense, which makes him conscious, not only of the
present, but also of the present moment of the past, not only of what is dead, but of what is already living.

A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’A reading of Eliot’s classic essay‘Tradition and the
Individual Talent’ was first published in 1919 in the literary magazine The Egoist. It was published in two parts, in the
September and December issues. The essay was written by a young American poet named T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), who had
been living in London for the last few years, and who had published his first volume of poems, Prufrock and Other
Observations, in 1917. You can read ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ here.‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ (1919)
sees Eliot defending the role of tradition in helping new writers to be modern. This is one of the central paradoxes of Eliot’s
writing – indeed, of much modernism – that in order to move forward it often looks to the past, even more directly and
more pointedly than previous poets had. This theory of tradition also highlights Eliot’s anti-Romanticism. Unlike the
Romantics’ idea of original creation and inspiration, Eliot’s concept of tradition foregrounds how important older writers are
to contemporary writers: Homer and Dante are Eliot’s contemporaries because they inform his work as much as those alive
in the twentieth century do. James Joyce looked back to ancient Greek myth (the story of Odysseus) for his novel set in
modern Dublin, Ulysses (1922). Ezra Pound often looked back to the troubadours and poets of the Middle Ages. H. D.’s
Imagist poetry was steeped in Greek references and ideas. As Eliot puts it, ‘Some one said: “The dead writers are remote
from us because we know so much more than they did.” Precisely, and they are that which we know.’ He goes on to argue
that a modern poet should write with the literature of all previous ages ‘in his bones’, as though Homer and Shakespeare
were his (or her) contemporaries: ‘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. And it is at the same time what makes a writer
most acutely conscious of his place in time,of his contemporaneity.’ In short, knowledge of writers of the past makes
contemporary writers both part of that tradition and part of the contemporary scene. Eliot’s own poetry, for instance, is
simultaneously in the tradition of Homer and Dante and the work of a modern poet, and it is because of his debt to Homer
and Dante that he is both modern and traditional. If this sounds like a paradox, consider how Shakespeare is often
considered both a ‘timeless’ poet (‘Not of an age, but for all time’, as his friend BenJonson said) whose work is constantly
being reinvented, but is also understood in the context of Elizabethan and Jacobean social and political attitudes. Similarly,
in using Dante in his own poetry, Eliot at once makes Dante ‘modern’ and contemporary, and himself – by association – part
of the wider poetic tradition.Eliot’s essay goes on to champion impersonality over personality. That is, the poet’s personality
does not matter, as it’s the poetry that s/he produces that is important. Famously, he observes: ‘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. But, of
course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.’This is
more or less a direct riposte to William Wordsworth’s statement (in the ‘Preface’ to Lyrical Ballads in 1800) that ‘poetry is
the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’. Once again, Eliot sets himself apart from such a Romantic notion of poetry.
This is in keeping with his earlier argument about the importance of tradition: the poet’s personality does not matter, only
how their work responds to, and fits into, the poetic tradition.Eliot’s example of Homer is pertinent here: we know nothing
of the poet who wrote The Odyssey for certain, but we don’t need to. The Odyssey itself is what matters, not the man (or
men – or woman!) who wrote it. Poetry should be timeless and universal, transcending the circumstances out of which it
grew, and transcending the poet’s own generation and lifetime. (Eliot’s argument raises an interesting question: can self-
evidently personal poetry – e.g. by confessional poets like Sylvia Plath, or Romantics like Wordsworth – not also be timeless
and universal? Evidently it can, as these poets’ works have outlived the poets who wrote them.) We might also bear in
mind that Eliot knew that great poets often incorporated part of themselves into their work – he would do it himself, so
that, although it would be naive to read The Waste Land as being ‘about’ Eliot’s failed marriage to his first wife, we can
nevertheless see aspects of his marriage informing the poem. And in ‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’, Eliot would
acknowledge that the poet of poets, Shakespeare, must have done such a thing: the Bard ‘was occupied with the struggle –
which alone constitutes life for a poet – to transmute his personal andprivate agonies into something rich and strange,
something universal and impersonal’. For Eliot, great poets turn personal experience into impersonal poetry, but this
nevertheless means that their poetry often stems from the personal. It is the poet’s task to transmute personal feelings into
something more universal. Eliot is rather vague about how a poet is to do this – leaving others to ponder it at length.

Tradition and the Individual Talent – Analysis

Tradition and the Individual Talent was originally published across two installments of the Egoist in 1919 and later, in 1920,
became part of T.S. Eliot’s full length book of essays on poetry and criticism, The Sacred Wood. Literary modernism is visible
throughout the essay in the self-consciousness Eliot writes of with regards to writing poetry. The Waste Land, like much
literature of the modernist era breaks away from traditional ways of writing and uses Eliot’s own understanding of tradition,
literary allusion, in a unique way. This essay will be focusing on the arguments made by Eliot, with regards to literary
tradition, in Tradition and the Individual Talent and how The Waste Land relates to those arguments. Eliot begins Tradition
and the Individual Talent by arguing it is the poet’s treatment of their position within the historic context of literature that
demonstrates talent. The essay asserts that the poet should use their knowledge of the writers of the past to influence their
work. He states that “we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual part of his work may be those in
which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. ‘Eliot explains that to write with tradition in
mind does not mean imitating, as this would lead to repetition and “novelty is better than repetition.” He defines tradition
as something only to be gained by the labour of knowing literature of the past and by being critically aware of what
techniques and content is of value. The poet should be aware of the simultaneous order of literary tradition, dating back to
the classics. Tradition is the accumulated wisdom and experience of literature through the ages and is, according to Eliot,
essential for great achievements within poetry. Eliot argues that no writer or piece of literature has value or significance
when isolated from the literary cannon. In order to judge a work of art or literature it must be compared to works of the
past. He believes that tradition is constantly changing due to adding new work to the literary cannon. He suggests that the
author should conform to literary tradition and be informed by the past, but that by doing so the work of the author
modifies the work they have been informed by. It is important for the poet to be aware of their own position within the
present but also their relevance in relation to literature of the past. The modern author adds meaning to the traditional text
by incorporating its influence into their work. Eliot acknowledges that the new work of art, when original, modifies the
literary tradition in a small way. The relationship between past and present is not one-way, the present can alter the past,
just as the past informs the present. Eliot then acknowledges that knowledge of the past as a whole would be impossible. In
order to gain a good sense of tradition one must critically examine the past, focusing on works of art that are considered to
be of high value. He explains that the definition of a sense of tradition is to be critically aware of trends and techniques
which became typical of a particular age, movement or even author, and to have the ability to recognise deviation from this.
An author with a good sense of tradition should also be aware that the main literary trends do not come, solely, from the
most recognised poets, but they must be aware of trends set by poets of lesser recognition. Although the work of present
poets is compared and contrasted to poets of the past, it does not determine whether the work of the present is better than
the work of the past. Standards and principles are recognised to have changed. The comparison is made in order to analyse
the new work, creating a deeper understanding of the text. It is only through this comparison the traditional and the
individual elements can be determined. Eliot claims that art never improves. He argues that, despite changes in thinking,
great writers such as Shakespeare and Homer remain relevant. He recognises that artists work with different materials and
their art is a product of different eras, therefore it would be impossible to measure a qualitative improvement in any school
of art.Eliot is aware that questions will be asked about the great level of knowledge that would be required of any one poet
in order to meet his understanding of tradition. The essay will be criticised on the basis that there are great poets who did
not have the level of education that Eliot is claiming is required. Eliot goes on to argue that it should be the duty of every
poet to build their knowledge of the past for the duration of their career. He believes that it is knowledge of tradition that
encourages and strengthens the poets ability to write great work. Eliot recognises that, at the start of a poet’s career,
individuality will assert itself, but he notes that it is the sign of an immature poet and that as they continue to write one
should lose the sense of the poet’s personality within the work they create. The poet should become objective with
maturity. This therefore makes it irrelevant who wrote the poem under analysis, the relevance lies in the poem’s delivery of
literary tradition. Eliot notes the necessity of the poet experiencing new situations and emotions without any changes being
visible in their poetic voice. He states “the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him “will be the man
who suffers and the mind which creates.” He notes that the personality of the poet should not be expressed in their work
but should remain unchanged by external factors.

Eliot expresses that poetry may be formed from singular or various feelings, emotions or a combination of the two. He
argues that poetry is in fact the organisation of emotions and feelings rather than inspiration. He believes that the quality of
the poetry is not determined by the intensity of feelings or emotions but the intensity of the process of creating and
ordering those feelings as part of poetic composition. The more pressure involved in the creative process the better the
quality of the end product.

Eliot goes on to note the difference between personal emotions of the poet and the emotion of poetry itself. While personal
emotions may be simple, the expression of these emotions may be complex. While it is not the role of the poet to express
new emotions, the poet should express ordinary emotions in new ways. Eliot then goes on to reject Wordsworth’s theory of
poetry that is has “its origin in emotions recollected in tranquillity”. He believes that the composition of poetry does not
require emotion, recollection or tranquillity, but that original poetry results from concentration on experiences. He also
argues that this concentration should not be deliberate but passive. Poetry should be an escape from the poet, not a
reflection of them. Eliot is not denying the poet personality but is declaring that the impersonality required to create good
poetry can only be achieved when the poet surrenders themselves to the poetry they create. In part three of the essay, Eliot
concludes that the poet is only capable of surrendering themselves to their work if they have acquired a good sense of
tradition. “And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present
moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.” By this he means that the poet
should be conscious not only of their position within the literary cannon of the past but also where they belong in the
literature of the present and how their poetry is relevant as a statement of the world in which it is created.

The arguments made by Eliot suggest he is of the didactic school of poetic literary theory, believing that poetry should
educate as well as entertain. Tradition and the Individual Talent sets out rules to be a great poet. Although he does not go to
the extreme of being a neo-Classical critic, his theories do bear some resembalance in that he speaks of the classics being as
relevant to poetry now as ever. This suggests that Eliot believes alluding to classical poets can improve the quality of the
poetry. While Tradition and the Individual Talent does argue for originality it does so in a way that relies upon literature of
the past. This still fits with the understanding of literary modernity as suggested by Ezra Pound’s statement “Make it new”
as, rather than making something completely original, Eliot is suggesting you take the traditional and make that new by
attributing new meanings to what has been expressed.
Eliot does not allow for the expression of new emotions. The arguments Eliot makes for the absence of the individuals
experiences within their poetry is limiting the originality and uniqueness of poetry. While Eliot allows for originality in the
way in which poets react and respond to the literary and historic tradition, he limits free expression of the self. Whilst the
poet often takes influence from the past there should be unlimited freedom for expressing new ideas and emotions relating
to the new material and the world in which they live. The ideas expressed in Tradition and the Individual discourages poets
who are less well educated and therefore could discourage naturally talented poets from creating truly unique poems.

Overall the essay is flawed not in the expression of Eliots arguments but in the rigidity of rules he places on a creative
process, which should be free from rules and allowing for complete creative freedom.

In Tradition and the Individual Talent, Eliot stated that ‘the most individual parts of [the author’s] work may be those in
which the dead poetsassert their immortality most vigorously.’ When placing this alongside his argument that the
experienced and mature poets converse with literary tradition in their work, it is hardly surprising that The Waste Land is full
of literary allusions. The way Eliot alludes to literary tradition is in itself a source of originality, fitting with his arguments,
however, emotions, personality and the personal experience of T.S. Eliot are disguised within The Waste Land. These aspects
become clear when studied from a biographical perspective. The Waste Land is often read as an attempt to put the ideas of
Tradition and the Individual Talent into practice, but the remaining part of this essay will focus on how Eliot fails to separate
his personal experiences from the creative process.

The Waste Land was written in 1922 during a period when T. S. Eliot was under orders from his physician to take three
months rest. It is generally believed that this was due to a nervous breakdown. As a result of this Eliot was treated for
neurasthenia[1] under the care of Dr. Vittoz in Lausanne, Switzerland. Because the majority of The Waste Land was
composed during the period of Eliot’s treatment, the poem can be viewed as representative of Eliot’s psychological
condition and his healing. It is due to this that Eliot’s emotions and personality are visible in the themes, structure, language
and even grammar of the poem. This is something which Tradition and the Individual Talent claims should be absent in the
work of a great poet.

It is perhaps due to 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’ there have been relatively few critics to study Eliot’s poetry
alongside biographical examinations of the poet. Lyndall Gordon states that the more that is known of Eliot’s biographical
life ‘the clearer it seems that the ‘impersonal’ façade of his poetry-the multiple faces and voices-masks an often quite literal
reworking of personal experience.’[2]

Eliot claimed that Tiresias is the ‘most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest’ it is therefore likely that
Tiresias, as the main consciousness of The Waste Land, represents Eliot in his struggle to gain ‘brain control.’ Tiresias fits
Vittoz’s understanding of the neurasthenic as living ‘very little in the present and his thoughts always turn to the past or the
future.’[3 Tiresias figured in this sense can be understood as ‘throbbing between two lives’ (l. 218) where the lives represent
the two different aspects of his mind, the conscious and the subjective. Tiresias can be assigned the role of the
characterisation of Eliot’s illness as the positive driving force of inspiration within the poem. Eliot himself wrote on the
theory of the impact of illness on art in a positive light: ‘it is a commonplace that some forms of illness are extremely
favourable, not only to religious illumination, but to artistic and literary composition’.

Eliot took a rest break in Margate in October 1921 which proved unsuccessful:

‘On Margate Sands. I can connect Nothing with Nothing. (l. 300-302)

This demonstrates the symptom of hopelessness. There are no connections to be found between the speaker’s thoughts.
The conscious and subjective aspects of the mind are unable to communicate with one another.

There are multiple references in the poem to blindness, deafness, muteness and difficulties with the sensation of touch.
Vittoz has stated that the neurasthenic ‘often looks without seeing’ and ‘listen[s] without hearing’ (p. 44). The narrator,
whether it is considered to be Tiresias, Eliot or another refers to all of these issues: ‘I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I
was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of the light, the silence.'(l. 38-41) It is the
neurasthenic condition that could be preventing the speaker from connecting emotions to senses which results in further
hopelessness. This is followed by a quotation from Tristran and Isolde, ‘Oed’ und leer das Meer’ (Desolate and empty the
sea) which again furthers the state of despair associated with neurasthenia. Along with the narrator and Tiresias there
appears to be another character who, as Vittoz would describe, ‘looks without seeing’ and ‘listen[s] without hearing’: ‘”My
nerves a bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me. “Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. “What are you thinking of?
What thinking? What? “I never know what you are thinking. Think.”‘ (l. 110-113) The reference to nerves in line 110 should
be attributed to insomnia, another symptom of neurasthenia. This furthers the argument that Eliot’s neurasthenia has
impacted the poem greatly. Here we also see a lack of control in Eliot’s writing, he writes the question “Why do you never
speak” without a question mark and the incomplete sentence “What thinking?” There is a severe lack of control in the poem
so any semblance of narrative becomes blurred along with the sense of time, characters and their voices. The poem does
seem to progress towards a sense of peace. It is in this way that it can be understood as Eliot’s process of recovery. In order
to progress from this state of confusion Eliot must go through Vittoz’s therapy in order to reach the point of ‘shantih.’ Vitozz
wrote that several times a day the patient should repeat ideas of calm three times, this can explain the closing line
‘Shantishantishanti’ (l. 434). In the manuscript version this movement can also be seen from the poem beginning with ‘the
horror, the horror’ to ending with the words ‘still and quiet.’ In What the Thunder Said the tone of the poem begins to find
its direction, or demonstrates the narrator approaching ‘brain control’. ‘DA Damyata: The boat responded Gaily, the hand
expert with sail and oar The sea was calm, your heart would have responded Gaily, when invited, beating obedient To
controlling hands’ (l. 418-423) At this point in the poem Eliot is approaching a point of recovery. The poem has moved from
the uncontrolled nature of neurasthenia to a calmer state of mind thanks ‘to controlling hands.’ When linked to Vittoz’s
technique of placing his hands on his patient’s temple in order to feel brain activity this passage is clearly in appreciation of
his therapy. He spent time in the mountains recovering the symptoms of insomnia, hopelessness and confusion, ‘In the
mountains, there you feel free./I read, much of the night, and go south in winter’ (l. 17-18). These repeated references to
symptoms, treatments and Eliot’s own experience of recovery certainly suggest neurasthenia is central to The Waste Land.
This argument does not dispute the understanding of The Waste Land as a reflection on modern society. T.S. Eliot’s
neurasthenia was a product of the financially focused post World War Britain in which he lived. The Waste Land can be seen
as reflective of the sensibility of the time in Britain, struggling between the wars and trying to gain control, the poem could
therefore be understood as diagnosing the society in which he lived. Whichever interpretation one believes, The Waste
Land was composed as a result of T.S. Eliot’s mental health problems, whether it be an awareness of neurasthenia in order
to diagnose society with or the expression of his internal struggle. This is clear through the fragmented nature of the text.
The unannounced changes in speaker, time and location are as a result of Eliot’s mental state and yet have been studied in
great depth without considering the biographical aspects of the context of the poem. The reason for neglecting this way of
reading the text is likely to be a result of Eliot’s own arguments in Tradition and the Individual Talent, that “The emotion of
art is impersonal.” The emotion of The Waste Land however is very personal to the poet, T.S. Eliot.

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) British poet, playwright, essayist, publisher, social and literary critic. One of the
twentieth century’s major poets. Contributions: Objective Correlation; Theory of Impersonality; Concept of
tradition; and Disassociation of sensibility. Essays: Tradition and Individual Talent (1919); Hamlet and his
problems (1920); and Metaphysical Poets (1921). Introduction: “Tradition and Individual Talent” (1919) is an essay
written by the poet and literary critic T.S. Eliot. The essay was first published in “The Egoist” (1919) and later in
Eliot’s book of criticism, “The Sacred Wood” (1920). Tradition and Individual Talent is one of the more well-known
work that Eliot produced in his critic capacity. It formulates Eliot’s influential conception of the relationship
between the poet and the literary tradition which precedes him. This essay is divided into three parts. These are: 1.
the concept of “Tradition” 2. The theory of Impersonal Poetry 3. The conclusion or summing up. The concept of
Tradition: Eliot presents his conception of tradition and the definition of poet and poetry in relation to it. For him,
the term “tradition” is imbued with a special and complex character. It represents a “simultaneous order”, by
which Eliot means a historical timelessness- a fusion of past and present, and at the same time, a sense of present
temporality. He claims that this “historical sense” is not only a resemblance of traditional works but an awareness
and understanding of their relation to his poetry. The historical sense involves a perception, not only the pastness
of past, but of its presence. The difference between present and past is that, the conscious present is an awareness
of the past in away and to an extent which the past’s awareness of itself cannot show. When a poet engages in a
new work he realizes an aesthetic “ideal order”, as it has been established by the literary tradition that has come
before him. As such, the act of artistic creation does not take place in a vacuum. The inclusion of new work alters
the way in which the past is seen, elements of past that are noted and realized. The progress of an artist is a
continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. This leads to Eliot’s so called “ Impersonal Theory” of
poetry. The theory of impersonal poetry: honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet
but upon poetry. Eliot compares the poet’s mind to a catalyst, (- in which the reactants are feelings and emotion
that are synthesized to create an artistic image that captures these same feelings and emotion. –While the mind of
poet is necessary for production, it emerges unaffected by the process. – The artist stores feelings and emotions,
and properly unites them into a specific combination, which is the artistic product.) The poet has, not a
“personality” to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which
impression and experience combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. (- Impression and experience which are
important for the man may not take place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry, may play
quite an ignorable part in the man, the personality.) It is not his personal emotions, the emotions provoked by
particular event in his life that the poet is in any way remarkable or interesting. (- his particular emotions may be
simple, crude or flat. – Great work do not express the personal emotion of the poet. – and the poet does not reveal
his own unique and novel emotions, but rather, by drawing an ordinary ones and channeling them through the
intensity of poetry.) According to Eliot ‘poetry is not turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion: it is not
the expression of personality, but an escape from personality’. (- but, of course, only those who have personality
and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.) Since, successful poetry is impersonal and,
therefore, exists independent of its poet, it outlives the poet and can incorporate into the timeless “ideal order” of
the “living” literary tradition. * ‘Talent’, especially in the arts, is a genius that one is born with. Instead talent is
acquired through a careful study of poetry. Conclusion: Tradition and individual talent (1919) is an essay written by
Eliot. According to him, the emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without
surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives
in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead , but
of what is already living.