Tradition and Individual Talent
-T.S.Eliot
Hello Everyone, I'm a Student of The Department of English,M.K.B.U. This blog is assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad as a Bridge Course. This blog is based on T.S. Eliot's one famous essay 'Tradition and Individual Talent '(1919).
Points to Ponder :-
Introduction
About T.S. Eliot
About the Essay
Questions based on this essay
Conclusion
Introduction :-
"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). 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 a cultural 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 critical capacity. It formulates Eliot's influential conception of the relationship between the poet and preceding literary traditions.
About T.S. Eliot :-
T.S. Eliot (Thomas Stearns Eliot) was born September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri. He was educated at Smith Academy in St. Louis (1898–1905); Milton Academy in Massachusetts (1905–1906); Harvard University,University of Paris-Sorbonne and Merton College, Oxford University . He devoted a further year (1915–1916) to a doctoral dissertation on the philosophy of F.H. Bradley, eventually published in 1964.
In 1927, T.S. Eliot became a British citizen. In 1915, he married his first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood (Vivienne Eliot). The marriage was thought to have influenced Eliot’s bleak masterpiece 'The Waste Land' .In 1957, at the age of 68, Eliot married Esmé Valerie Fletcher (Valerie Eliot), his secretary at Faber & Faber since 1950—she was almost 40 years his junior.
The 1948 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, T.S. Eliot is highly distinguished as a poet, a literary critic, a dramatist, an editor, and a publisher. In 1910 and 1911, while still a college student, he wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” published in Poetry magazine, and other poems that are landmarks in the history of modern literature. Eliot’s most notable works include The Waste Land (1922), Four Quartets (1943), and the play Murder in the Cathedral (1935). Eliot’s awards and honours include the British Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature. His play 'The Cocktail Party' won the 1950 Tony Award for Best Play. In 1964, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats was famously adapted in 1981 into 'the musical Cats', which won seven Tony Awards. Despite his enduring popularity, Eliot and his work have been criticised as having prejudiced views, particularly anti-Semitism.
Eliot was almost as renowned a literary critic as he was a poet. From 1916 through 1921, he contributed approximately 100 reviews and articles to various periodicals. He also made significant contributions as an editor and a publisher. From 1922 to 1939, Eliot edited a major journal, 'The Criterion', and from 1925 to 1965, he was an editor and a director in the publishing house of Faber & Faber.
Eliot’s career as a poet can be reasonably organised into three periods—the first coincided with his studies in Boston and Paris, culminating in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock '' in 1911. The second coincided with World War I and the financial and marital stress of his early years in London, culminating in 'The WasteLand' in 1922. The third coincided with Eliot’s angst at the economic depression and the rise of Nazism, culminating in the wartime Four Quartets in 1943. The poems of the first period were preceded by only a few exercises published in school magazines, but in 1910 and 1911, he wrote four poems that introduced themes to which, with variation and development, he returned time and again: “Portrait of a Lady,” “Preludes,” “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”T.S. Eliot died in 1965.
About the 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).
‘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.
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Questions based on this essay :-
1). How would you like to explain Eliot's concept of Tradition? Do you agree with it?
The concept of 'Tradition' begins with the dictionary meaning of the word 'Tradition'.
Dictionary meaning of Tradition :-At a particular place,over a period of time people live a life believing in surtain principal beliefs and carry out a way of life. One can see certain aspects of being negative and certain aspects of being positive.
According to T.S.Eliot 'Tradition' is not just following and imitating the dogmas or the customs of a given culture and tradition,it is much more than that'. Tradition is a larger term for him. He does not believe in slavish imitation of the tradition. He also describes modern critics point of views and says that according to them tradition means traditional.
For Eliot, Tradition has a three-fold significance. Firstly, tradition cannot be inherited and involves a great deal of labour and erudition. Secondly, it involves the historical sense which involves apperception not only of the pastness of the past, but also of its presence. Thirdly, the historical sense enables a writer to write not only with his own generation in mind, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature from Homer down to the literature of his own country forms a continuous literary tradition. He takes tradition in a very positive way and that we can find in his works.
"Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour".
Eliot compares different traditions with The country Europe , he says that Europe is divided into two or three parts after the world war and he says each nation has a history of their own generation, the same as traditions of different religions and cultures are differentiated from each other because traditions also change with the time .
I agree with Eliot's concept of tradition because he takes tradition in a very positive way, each and every person follows tradition in their life. Like language we got the tradition from our parents and family , so we have a deep affection towards our traditions and sometimes we follow tradition by forces of our religion and culture . I also believe that tradition is good in certain things but we should not follow it blindly.
2. What do you understand by Historical Sense? (Use these quotes to explain your understanding)
- "The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence"
- "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."
According to Eliot, all writers must have all the Literature's knowledge they want to write. The writer should write with the history in his bones.
He says that historical sence or knowledge is most important for the writers because they are going to write a literature and if they have the historical knowledge they can write better one. They can clear the mistakes in the earlier works and produce new works .
History sense or knowledge is most important not only for the writers but each and every person because, if they have the knowledge of their past then they can introduce the situations and also get the ideas how to live a life and what are the mistakes they should not do in their life. If they have knowledge about the past they can clear the mistakes and live their life happily.
- "The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence"
This quote suggests how historical sense helps us to live life . The word pastness means tradition lives in the present. Through this quote the writer says that our tradition always lives with us,it is not our past but it is our present.
For Example :-
'Mahabharata' is one of our holy books, it is based on the 'Kauravas and Pandavas' story. This story tells our religious history. On the other hand it is the story of our past but in our contemporary time we also find characters similar to this book. So, we can say that historical sence or knowledge is all about the past but it is our present also and if we have the knowledge about that then we can easily survive in these situations.
- "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."
In this quote Eliot describes how history is connected with our present. How history is repeatedly repits in our life. The word 'temporal',means does not have any past, and 'Temporal' means it exists even today.
As history does not describe the exact time but through the story it can be described. As per our history or the story of our holy books we can get the idea how that story lives in our day-to-day life. So, we can find the same history of our life as well as in our history.
3. Explain: " 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."
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.
Through this quote writers suggest that in poetry or other writings personality of a writer is not that important as much as poetry. Mostly writers write their work to escape from reality and to go into their imaginative world. In their writings writers try to express their feelings and emotions towards the society. In the writings poets or writers are not a part of this but their writings are most important. Writers write their works to escape from life and live in their imaginative world.
For Example :-
S. T. Coleridge (a romantic poet), writes his poems just because he wants to escape from their family and he wants to express his feelings and emotions toward the world.
Conclusion :-
Finally Eliot ends his essay with, Very few know when there is expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. 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 the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead,but al vist is already long.
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