"Tradition and Individual
Talent" is the essay of lasting significance in the history of modern
criticism. The essay brought into being two principal aspects of Eliot's
critical domain – tradition and impersonality in art and poetry, that rated
over the realm of criticism. The essay also brings forth Eliot's views on the
inter–relation between traditional and individual talent. The essay brought
into being the new approach with poets of everlasting significance and it also
provided the parameters for the assessment of the genius and the shortcomings
of the masters but contributed to the history of English Literature. The idea
of tradition with all its magnificence, has a meaning beyond the conventional
sense of term. It begins with a historical sense and goes on acquiring new
dimensions along political and cultural dimension, and this creates a system of
axes for the assessment of the worth and genius of a poet.
The idea of Eliot's theory of tradition is
based on the inevitable phenomenon of the continuity of the values during the
process called civilization. Eliot beings with a description that makes
tradition a term of abuse and develops to a metaphor of unquestionable
authenticity. 'Seldom perhaps', he says, 'does the word appear except in a
phrase of censure'. He further says :
You can hardly make the word aggreable to
English ears without this comfortable reference to the reassuring science of
archaeology.1
The above quoted lines from one of the most
celebrated critical endeavours make it clear that Eliot aims at developing a
new concept and structuring a new approach to the very phenomenon called
poetry. Eliot, after beginning with the seemingly derogatory implications of
the term imparts a new meaning and magnificence to the term when he identifies tradition
with historical sense. The identification discussed above makes it clear that
the tradition according to Eliot is something more than mere conglomeration of
dead works. The identification of tradition with historical sense serves to
ratify the stature of tradition in assessing the works and function of pets and
poetry. He elaborates the idea of historical sense and says :
and the historical sense invokes a perception
not only of the partners of the past but also of its presence : The historical
sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones
but with a feeling that whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within
it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence
and composes a simultaneous order.2
Eliot in the above quoted line puts forth a
dynamic manifestation of tradition which shapes the minds of different poets of
different generation. Eliot also inkles that the poet's conformity into
tradition is an act of rigorous intellectual efforts that constitute a poet in
him. Eliot further defines the idea of historical sense and says :
The
historical sense which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal,
and of timeless and temporal together, is what makes a writer tradition. And it
is at the same time what makes a writer most acute by conscious of his
place in time of his contemporaneity .3
The excerpt from the essay makes it clear that
Eliot pus the whole term in a much wider context than it is otherwise used before.
Eliot takes tradition to be an embodiment of values and beliefs shared by a
race which leads to the idea that there is a process of natural selection and
rejection. The values and the belief that die with the passage of time are
subject to rejection. The values and beliefs that constitute the tradition are
living one with capacity of mutual interaction. The old and the new
interpenetrate and this interpenetration results into a new order defined in
terms of the simultaneous existence of the values of the past and the present.
The survival of past ratifies the presentness of it. The simultaneous existence
of the past and the present, of the old and the new. It is, thus, evident that
the poet is guided chiefly by the dynamics of the tradition. Eliot further
elaborates:
No
poet, no artist has a complete meaning alone. His significance, his
appreciation in the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists.
You cannot value him alone, you must set him from contrast and comparison among
the dead.4
Eliot reaffirms that the poet, in order to
survive as a poet must invite close contrast and comparison with the dead
poets. Unless, a poet is capable of doing that he ceases to matter in the
history of poetry. Richard Shusterman rightly observes that the 'enduring
demands preserved in a tradition make it capable of functioning as a
synchronize structural system'.5 Raman Selden observes that 'the standard
theories of literature often combine these apparently disparate modes of
thinking'.6 It is remarkable that these apparently disparate modes of thinking
are disciplined by values.
The relation between the new work of art and
the tradition is another very complex idea enshrined in the essay. It is,
however, true that the complete meaning of the poet is realized through his
relationship with the tradition but the importance of individual talent cannot
be set aside in a discussion on the Eliot's poetics. It is again noteworthy
that the tradition and individual talent are not at a sharp contrast with each
other but they are mutually complimentary. Eliot conceives tradition and
individual talent as unifiable and show that the two have an equally important
role to play in poetic creation. The views of Jean Michael Rabate capture our
attention. He commenting on the function of historical sense in the caste of an
individual talent says :
This requires that the "bones"
belong to the individual who recomposes simultaneity at every moment without
losing a combination of the timeless and the merely temporal.7
Individual talent is needed to acquire the
sense of tradition. Eliot lays good emphasis on the idea of interactivity
between the tradition and individual talent. If the individual talent needs to
acquire tradition, then the individual talent in turn modifies tradition. Eliot
ratifies the dynamic nature of tradition.
The existing monument form an ideal order
among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the 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; and so the relations,
proportions, values of each work of art towards the whole are readjusted; and
this in conformity between the old and the new.8
The above quoted lines make clear the cyclic
interdependence between tradition and individual talent. Shusterman's view
again oblige inclusion, 'Old and new elements', he points out, 'derive their
meaning from their reciprocal relations of contrast and coherence, in a larger
whole of tradition which they themselves constitute as parts'.9 It is evident
from the views of Shusterman that tradition is not anything fixed or static but
it is something dynamic and everchanging. Every new participation in the
tradition results into restructuring of the same tradition with different
emphasis. It is constantly growing and changing and becoming different from
what it has been earlier. The past directs the present and is modified by the
present. This is an apt revelation of the traditional capabilities of a poet.
The past helps us understand the present and the present throws light on the
past. The new work of art is judged by the standards set by the past. It is in
the light of the past alone that an individual talent can be. This is the way
Eliot subtly reconciles the tradition and the individual talent.
Eliot's views on tradition paves way for the
theorization of the impersonality in art and poetry. Divergent views about
Eliot's theory of objectivity have been discussed but it is observed that
critics tend to generalize the theory to a common experience. It is noticeable
that the impersonality that Eliot discusses in his criticism does not imply a
mechanical objectivity of a hoarding painter, but, it owes its genesis to the
personality that emerges out of the creative personality of the poet. It is
understandable that Eliot denies an outright and blind adherence to some
peculiar faiths and belief but an emancipation from what is very personal on
peculiar. He says :
...... the poet has not a personality to
express but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality,
in which impressions and experience combine in a peculiar and unexpected ways.
Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place
in the poetry, and those important in the poetry may play quite a negligible
part in the man, the personality.10
It is
clear from the above quotation that Eliot lays heavy stress on the two
different aspect of a creator what he is as an individual and at the same time
what he is as a creator; It is an easy inference from the above equation that
Eliot's to his critical theories discards the emotion of strictly personal
significance and centers his ideals on the transformation of what is personal
but something of universal significance.
The above quoted excerpts from "Tradition
and Individual Talent" put forth a belligerently anti romantic view of
poetry which lays emphasis on poetry and discards the very idea of the
personality of the poet. It is obligatory to remember Aristotle as this point
of time who, against all odds takes 'plot' to be the 'soul of the tragedy' and
claims that 'there can be tragedy than a character but not without a plot'.11
Eliot in these lines discovers a new possibility of a universal meaning, which
free from the whims and eccentricities of the poet and has a wider
significance. The comparison made out by Eliot between the mind of the poet and
the catalyst in a chemical reaction further confirms the point of view. He says
:
When the two gases, previously mentioned are
mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum they form sulphurous acid. This
combination takes place, only if the platinum is present, nevertheless the
newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is
apparently unaffected.12
The analogy that Eliot puts forth makes it
clear that the poetry is something entirely different from what is the personal
identity of the poet. This is principally the reason that Eliot, all along the
length and breadth of his critical writings, makes frequent use of terms like
'transmate', 'transform', 'digest', etc. He further suggests :
... but the more perfect the artist, the more
completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which
creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions
which are its material.13
Eliot puts forth similar views in his
celebrated essay – "The Metaphysical Poets", and emerges with a more
candid elaboration of the mechanism of poetic expression. He asserts :
When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for
its work, it is constantly amalgamatic disparate experience; the ordinary
experience is chaotic, irregular and fragmentary. The latter falls in love or
reads spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or
with noise of a typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet
these experiences are always forming new wholes.14
It is obvious that Eliot aims at the recreation
of a non–mechanical unity and of the store of impressions and experiences in
the poet's mind. The views of William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks invite our
attention. They point out :
Such an emphasis was bound to bring down upon
Eliot, the charges that has had reduced the poet to an automaton who secreted
his poet in same unconscious and brainless way and that he had thus committed
himself to the most romantic theory possible.15
Edward Lobb comes out with a just explanation
of the possibility of levelling such charges against the theory of Eliot. Lobb
points out that 'as a living thing, the poet's mind can create a non–mechanical
unity out of diverse, even contradictory elements.'16 Lobb compares him with
Coleridge who 'found this ability to reconcile "opposite on discordant
qualities" to be the characteristic of power of the living imagination'.16
The views of Lobb make it clear that the impersonality that Eliot aims at is
not a mechanical impersonality but the impersonality of that owes its genesis
to values prevailing in spatio–temporal continum. He in his essay –
"Yeats" (1940) reiterated the importance of personality in
considering his later poetry to be superior to his earlier poetry as that is
more profound revelation in the last phase of poetic existence. He says :
There are two forms of impersonality; that
which is natural to a skilful craftman and that which is more and more achieved
by a maturing artist. The first is that of what I have called 'anthology
pieces' of lyric by Loveless or Suckling or Campion a fine poet than either.
The second personality is that of the poet who out of intense and passionate
experience, is able to express a general truth; retaining all the peculiarity
of his experience and make it a general symbol.17
It is obvious from the above quoted excerpt
that the impersonality of first type is the impersonality without a
personality. He makes the idea more clear in "Tradition and Individual
Talent" when he says :
Poetry
is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emtion; it is not an
expression of the personality but an escape from the personality. But, of
course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want
to escape from them.18
It is obvious from the above quotations that
personality and emotions are pre–requisites of the impersonality.
In order that Eliot's views on impersonality
of poetry acquire the clarity of vision and theory, it is obligatory to compare
Eliot's view on poetry with those of Wordsworth who represents the apex of
Romantic idealogy. Wordsworth in the
Preface to Lyrical Ballads, defines poetry and says :
Poetry is spontaneous overflow
of powerful feelings : it takes its origin from the emotions recollected in
tranquility till by a species of reaction tranquility gradually disappears and
the emotion, kindered to that, which was before the subject of contemplation,
is gradually produced and does actually exists in the mind of the poet.13
It is clear from the above definition of
William Wordsworth that he aims at purifying the emotion to the most personal
by 'a specie of reaction' and the possibility of 'concentration' or 'digestion'
or 'transmutation' or formation of 'new wholes' is virtually in existent in the
Romantic view of poetry.
Eliot's theory of impersonality of art gets
apt justification in his essay, "Hamlet and His Problems". He says :
The only way of expressing an emotion is by
finding an "objective correlative"; in other words a set of objects,
a situation, a chain of events, which shall be formula of that, particular
emotion, such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory
experiences are given, the emotion is immediately evoked. If you examine any of
Shakespeare's more successful tragedies, you will find this exact equivalence;
you will find that the state of mind of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep has
been communicated to you by a skilful accumulation of imagined sensory
impressions; the words of Macbeth hearing of his wife's death strike us as if
given the sequence of events, these words were automatically released by the
last event in the series.20
Eliot's views expressed earlier, make the idea
very clear that the emotion to be expressed in a work of art has a contextual
significance only, and outside the context of the work of art, the emotion
ceases to mean, and this results into a chaos. Eliot further says that 'Hamlet
(the man) is dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in
excess of the facts as they appear'.21 The theory of objective–correlative
fully ratifies Eliot's adherence on the inevitability of impersonality of the
emotion of art. Wimsatt and Brooks rightly observes that 'the doctrine of the
objective correlative' places thoroughly anti–romantic stress on
craftsmanship.'22
It is also observed that the concept of
impersonality continually grows and acquires new shades. Later by the time of
the pulication of After Strange Gods the idea of impersonality was apparalled
in new form. Later Eliot propounded the view that the great work of art
conforms to the idea of Christian orthodoxy. What Eliot exalted most in his
earlier writings, the development of a point of view, and his concept of
impersonality, later merged with the confinement of the work to the principles
and dogmas propounded by Christian orthodoxy. In After Strange Gods he
categorizes writer according to the faith and beliefs expressed in their works.
It is thus clear that "Tradition and
Individual Talent" is one of the most important essay of Eliot. It puts
forth two very important aspects of his critical mindset – tradition and
impersonality of art and poetry that determine the nature and scope of his
criticism.
References
1T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and Individual
Talent", The Sacred Wood (London : Metheun, 1965) 47.
2Eliot, "Tradition and Individual
Talent", The Sacred Wood, 49.
3Eliot, "Tradition and Individual
Talent", The Sacred Wood, 49.
4Eliot, "Tradition and Individual
Talent", The Sacred Wood, 49.
5Richard Shusterman, The Eliot and the
Philosophy of Criticism (London : Duckworths, 1988) 181.
6Raman Seldon, The Theory of Criticism (New
York : Longman, 1990) 405.
7Jean Michael Rabate, "Tradition and T.S.
Eliot", The Cambridge Comparison to T. S. Eliot, ed., A. David Moody
(London : Cambridge University Press, 1994) 214.
8Eliot, "Tradition and Individual
Talent", The Sacred Wood, 50.
9Shusterman 187.
10Eliot, "Tradition and Individual
Talent", The Sacred Wood, 56.
11Aristotle, The Poetics, Trans. S. H.
Butcher. Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Arts (New Delhi : Kalyani,
reprint 1987) 27.
12Eliot, "Tradition and Individual
Talent", The Sacred Wood, 54.
13Eliot, "Tradition and Individual
Talent", The Sacred Wood, 54.
14T. S. Eliot, "The Metaphysical
Poets", Selected Essays (London : Faber and Faber, 1976) 248.
15William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks,
Literary Criticism : A Short History (New Delhi : Oxford and I.B.H. Publishing,
1957) 665.
16Edward Lobb, T. S. Eliot and the Romantic
Critical Tradition (London : Rowledge and Kegan Paul, 1981) 129.
17Eliot, "Yeats", Selected Essays,
149.
18Eliot, "Tradition and Individual
Talent", Selected Essays, 58.
19William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical
Ballads (New Delhi : Macmillan, 1981) 23.
20Eliot, "Hamlet and His Problems",
The Sacred Wood, 100–101.
21Eliot, "Hamlet and His Problems",
The Sacred Wood, 101.
22Wimsatt and Brooks 668.
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