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Name :- Bambha Kajal A.
Sem :- 2
Roll no :-17
Batch :- 2017-2019
Paper no :- Literary Criticism
Sem :- 2
Batch :- 2017-2019
Enrollment no :- 2069108420180002
Email id :-kajalbambha16@gmail.com
Submitted to :-
Department of English,MKBU
Topic :-
Eliot's concept of tradition and its role in poetic creationIntroduction : -
"Tradition and the Individual Talent" in 1919 is an essay written by poet and literary critic He is the essay was first published in The Egoist and later in Eliot's first book of criticism, The Scared wood 1920 The essay is also available in Eliot's "Selected Prose" and 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 and S.T 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 the literary tradition which precedes them.
T. S. Eliot was very practical. He called himself a
classicist in literature. According to Eliot, a critic must
obey the objective standards to analyze any work. He thought criticism as a
science. Eliot’s criticism became revolutionary at that time. Twenty century got metaphysical revival because of Eliot. He first recognized or accepted the
uniqueness of ‘metaphysical poets’ of 17th century. Eliot came with
new ideas in criticism’s world in19th century. Eliot believed that when the old
and new will become readjusted, it will be the end of criticism.
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 and S.T 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 the literary tradition which precedes them.
He says :-
From time to time it
is desirable, that some critic shall appear to review the past of our
literature and set the poets and the poems in a new order.
Eliot
demands, from any critic, ability for judgment and powerful liberty of mind to
identify and to interpret. Eliot planned numerous critical concepts that gained
wide currency and had a broad influence on criticism. ‘Objective correlative’,
‘Dissociation of sensibility’, ‘Unification of sensibility’, ‘Theory of Depersonalize are few of Eliot’s theories, which becomes ‘cliché’ now. He
emphasizes on ‘a highly developed sense of fact’. He gave new direction and new
tools of criticism.
Main
Concepts of the Essay:
This essay is divided into three parts:
Now I am explaining the main concepts of the essay.
"No poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation o the dead poets and artists. You can’t value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison among the dead"
“The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.”
The essay “Tradition and Individual
Talent” was first published in “The Egoist”. “The Egoist” was a literary
magazine, which is considered today as “England’s Most Important Modernist
Periodical”. This essay was later published in “The Sacred Wood”, which is
Eliot’s first book of criticism.
This essay is divided into three parts:
1.
The concept of
tradition
2.
The theory of
impersonal poetry
3.
The conclusion
with a gist that “the poet’s sense of tradition and the impersonality of poetry
are complimentary things.”
Now I am explaining the main concepts of the essay.
1.
The Concept of
Tradition:
In
first pat Eliot speaks about tradition, He says: Seldom, perhaps does the
word (tradition) appear except in a phrase of censure It means in English
writings they don’t see the word ‘tradition’ in positive way.
He
says about Englishmen’s attitude towards French Literature. Englishmen have a
habit to feel proud on themselves. That is the proud for their creativity and
more for their ‘less’ criticality. In French there is a mass of critical
writing. Eliot compares English with French that they (French) have habit of
critical method and English have habit of ‘conclusion’
. He says :-
" we only conclude
(we are such unconscious people) that the French are more critical than we; and
sometimes even plume ourselves a little with the fact, as if the French were
less spontaneous"
Eliot
seems quite in favor of such ‘criticality’. He thinks “criticism
is as inevitable as breathing”. Then he talks about tradition.
The Englishmen, while analyzing the poet, admire those aspects which are
different from the poet’s predecessors. Means, they want to get ‘newness’ and
‘uniqueness’ from every poet to praise them. They always find isolation of the
poet from his (mainly) immediate predecessors. Then Eliot says, if we put aside
such prejudice; we can come to know that the poet’s individuality, which we are
finding, is very much connected with his ancestors. According to Eliot the most
individual part of any work is the part in which the dead poets are mirrored
vigorously. And such resemblance is mostly seen in the period of maturity of
the poet, not in the period of his adolescence. So, by this he say that
tradition and individuality go together.
Then Eliot talks about tradition and ‘historical sense’. He
says that if the form of tradition remained only in blind adherence of dead
people or ancestors, then it would be lost or such tradition should be
destroyed. But, he says that tradition is not in following p regeneration.This word carries much wider meaning. According to Eliot, in every traditions
also there is a bit of novelty.
He says :-
"Tradition is a
matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it
you must obtain it by great labor. It involves in the first place, the
historical sense"
This
historical sense is inevitable for any poet and with this historical sense
they should have perception about its presence as well as about its ‘pastness
of past’. This historical sense forces a man to write not only with his own
generation, but with the whole age of the English literature. Historical sense
makes a poet to feel that the whole of the literature from Homer and the whole
of the literature of his own generation has a simultaneous existence. It
harmonizes two different things ‘timelessness’ and ‘temporarily’ in poet’s
work. This makes a poet traditional.
Eliot says:-
"No poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation o the dead poets and artists. You can’t value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison among the dead"
By this statement Eliot wants to prove that nothing can be
individual in keeps some bits of past. Eliot says about ‘conformity between the old and the
new’. When a new work is created then the whole time is created with it. It
makes vast changes in the universe of literature. Anything happens with that
new work that is simultaneously happening with its preceded works. Means when a
new work of art comes it is automatically connected with its past. So, Eliot
says that nothing and nobody can be valued alone. There is some ideal order
between the existing monuments. The whole order of existing monument is
readjusted with the addition of new work. So, by this Eliot breaks that belief
that ‘past is unchangeable’. He says that past and present has a strong
connection with each other. That is the conformity between the old and the new.
Eliot says:-
"the past should be
altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the
poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and
responsibilities"
When
a poet is being judged, in that process two things are being
measured by each other. Eliot says about a more
intelligible exposition of the relation of the poet to the past.
A poet cannot use the past as a shapeless mass, or he cannot fit himself in one
or two private admirations, and also he cannot fit himself in one preferred
period. The port must know that ‘art never improves, but the substance of the
art is changing’. Eliot puts one anonymous quote here:
The dead writers are
remote from us because we know so much more than they did.He
talks about necessary of knowledge for poets. He rejects that belief that a
poet requires a huge amount of learning. He believes that “much learning
deadens or perverts poetic sensibility.” He is not in favor of confining the
knowledge for examination, library or publicity. Knowledge is a matter of
absorption. What he wants to be insisted is that a poet first must develop the
awareness of the past. With this discussion Eliot softly comes on the point of
‘depersonalization’. At the end of the first part he starts making structure
for second part. So, at the end he says:
“The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.”
Theory of Impersonality :-
T.S. Eliot’s impersonal
conception of art and the fullest expression of his classicist attitude towards
art and poetry are essentially given by him in his essay Tradition and the
Individual Talent.
Eliot explains his theory
of impersonality by examining first, the relation of the poet to the past and
secondly, the relation of the poem to its author. According to his view the
past is never dead, it lives in the present. No poet or no artist has his
complete meaning alone.His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation
of his relation to the dead poets and artists.” Above all, the artist or the
poet has to work in the long established tradition of the literature to which
he belongs. We cannot value the poet alone; we must set him for comparison and
contrast among the dead poets of his language.
In the next part of the
theory he examines the relation of the poet to the poem. According to him, the
poem has no relation to the poet. The difference between the mind of a mature
poet and an immature one is that, a mature poet has more finely perfected
medium. Eliot thinks that the poet and the poem are two separate things. The
feeling or emotion or vision resulting from the poem is something different
from feeling, emotion, and vision in the mind of the poet. The art emotion is
different from personal emotion. In other words the poet should be passive and
impersonal.
To explain the theory,
Eliot has brought the analogy of chemical reaction. When oxygen and
sulphur di-oxide are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form
sulphurus acid. This combination takes place only when platinum is presence. Platinum
is the catalyst that helps to process of chemical reaction, but it itself is apparently
unaffected. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. Its presence may be necessary
for partly or exclusively to operate for the combination of the experience in
order to give birth to a piece of poetry.
Eliot says that, the
business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones
and in working them up in poetry, to express feelings which are not actual
emotions at all.
The emotion of art is impersonal.
It has its life in the poem and not in the history of poets. So, honest
criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the
poetry. The biography of the poet is not to be studied; the structure of the
poem and its evocation powers are important.
Conclusion :-
T.S.Eliot spread his concept of
Tradition which reflects his reaction against Romantic subjectivism and emotionalism. He
describes the concept of historical senses very useful for better understanding
of poetic sense or literary sense.At the end, in
this third part Eliot says that this essay stops at the starting of mysticism.
And it can be applied by the responsible person, who really interested in
poetry. It is very hard thing to take interest in poetry and to keep a poet
aside. We usually read poem with the name and fame of the poet.
Workcited :-
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