Page 313 - DENG502_PROSE

Unit 29 : T.S. Eliot: Tradition and Individual Talent ...

like The Egoist; the main influences on him were Ezra Pound, and Eliot’s teacher Irving Babbitt, Notes
who had introduced him to the philosophy of Humanism at Harvard. The second period, roughly
from 1918 to 1930, was primarily one of regular contributions to the Athenaeum and the Times
Literary Supplement; the third period was one of lectures and addresses, after Eliot had established
himself as the leading poet of the age. As he grew older, he produced a lot of social and religious
criticism; books like The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) shed light on his literary criticism and
poetry. The later writings reveal a certain tiredness, a refusal to take his role as poet-critic seriously.
He often suggested in his later lectures that he ought not to be taken too seriously. His second
lecture on Milton, delivered in 1947, contradicts his first one, delivered in 1936, which declared
that “Milton’s poetry could only be an influence for the worse, upon any poet whatsoever” and
accused Milton of “having done damage to the English language from which it has not wholly
recovered”. His convoluted style of qualification and reservations grows more complex over the
years. In the words of George Watson, (he is commenting on Eliot’s two lectures on Milton),
“Argument advances crabwise.” His first book, The Sacred Wood : Essays on Poetry and Criticism
(1920), containing seminal essays like “Tradition and the Individual Talent” and “Hamlet”, is
central to his achievement as a critic. It is this early work which influenced the New Critics.

29.1 “Tradition and the Individual Talent”

“Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919) clearly expresses Eliot’s concepts about poetry and
the importance of tradition. Eliot emphasizes the need for critical thinking—”criticism is as inevitable
as breathing”. He feels that it is unfortunate that the word “tradition” is mentioned only with
pejorative implications, as when we call some poet “too traditional.” He questions the habit of
praising a poet primarily for those elements in his work which are more individual and differentiate
him from others. According to T.S. Eliot, even the most “individual” parts of a poet’s work may be
those which are most alive with the influence of his poetic ancestors. Eliot stresses the objective
and intellectual element. The whole of past literature will be “in the bones” of the poet with the
true historical sense,” a feeling that the 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.” No poet has his complete meaning alone. For proper evaluation, you must
set a poet, for contrast and comparison, among the dead poets. Eliot envisages a dynamic
relationship between past and present writers. “The existing monuments form an ideal order
among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art
among them.” An artist can be judged only by the standards of the past; this does not mean the
standards of dead critics. It means a judgement when two things, the old and the new, are measured
by each other. To some extent, this resembles Matthew Arnold’s “touchstone”; the “ideal order”
formed by the “existing monuments” provide the standard, a kind of touchstone, for evaluation.
As with Arnold’s touchstones, Eliot’s ideal order is subjective and in need of modification from
time to time.
Eliot lays stress on the artist knowing “the mind of Europe — the mind of his own country—a
mind which he learns in time to be much more important than his own private mind”. But he does
not mean pedantic knowledge, he means a consciousness of the past, and some persons have a
greater sensitivity to this historical awareness. As Eliot states, with epigrammatic brevity, “Some
can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential
history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum.” Throughout Eliot’s
poetry and criticism, we find this emphasis on the artist surrendering himself to some larger
authority. His later political and religious writings too valorized authority. It is interesting that
Eliot always worked within his own cultural space : religion meant Christianity, while literature,
culture and history meant exclusively European literature, culture or history. Tradition, for Eliot,
means an awareness of the history of Europe, not as dead facts but as an ever-changing yet
changeless presence, constantly interacting subconsciously with the individual poet.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 307