CCR 720: Eliot (1920) "Tradition and the Individual Talent"

Eliot, T.S. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” Perspecta, Vol. 19 (1982), pp. 36-42. (originally published in 1920).

Executive Summary:

Eliot seems to have two goals in this short piece of literary criticism: 1) to illustrate how literary criticism should not view poets as unoriginal when they call upon or resonate with previously written poetry; and 2) to illustrate how poets themselves must rely on past poetry in their new contexts not in order to produce new ideas, but in order to process and transmit ideas through the poet's understanding and reordering of historical writings in his new era.

The essay is presented in three sections. In the first section, Eliot critiques practices of literary criticism for finding flaws in artists being traditional (in other words, for finding artists unoriginal if they resemble any of their writerly predecessors). Although he acknowledges that blindly following traditions of earlier authors should be discouraged, Eliot argues that a poet’s strongest moments of originality can be identified as his ability to fit in with past work while writing for the modern day. As a consequence of poets being compared to historical works in criticism, of poets having to address historical and social changes over time, and of poets needing to be conscious of the past and presence he writes from and within, Eliot concludes that gaining knowledge about the past will eventual lead to a poet’s abandonment of unique inner-self since he must attend to more important contextual issues of time: “What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality” (39).

Second, Eliot posits his “Impersonal theory” as being the mature poet’s ability to use poetry as a means to vary his historical knowledge of poetry into new combinations—a practice where the poet creates art by separating himself from the content, absorbing information and the feelings of others, and then communicating this already authored material in new ways in accordance with new times: "The poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together” (40). In his last section, Eliot concludes by reestablishing his claim that criticism should focus on poetry not the poet and that poets must necessarily surrender themselves to the influences of past works and the present moment in order to successfully produce impersonal art, which he sees as the only way to illustrate true feelings.

Quotable Quotes:

· In this passage, Eliot criticizes literary criticism for praising an author for originality when his work differs from other writers. Eliot counters that a writer’s work can be the most original when he calls upon his predecessors. Thus, Eliot asserts that a shortcoming of literary criticism is:

“our tendency to insist, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of is work in which he least resembles anyone else. In these aspects of parts of his work we pretend to find what is individual, what is the peculiar essence of the man. We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavor to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity” (pp. 36-37).

· Eliot argues that writers can never be critiqued as individuals since they rely on those around them for our understanding and critique of them and their work. For me, this has resonance with the scholarly practice of reviewing literature as a means to establish yourself and your argument as a contribution to the field. Besides the quote below, he elaborates on this by referring to how artists must know historical and present day art.

“No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead” (37).

Contextual info:

· Eliot is a well known American Nobel Prize of Literature winner, who wrote during the modernism period (publishing between 1915 and 1965). Besides being a literary critic, he was also an author of famous poems and plays such as The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, Ash Wednesday, and Four Quartets. He was born in America but lived in England, and attributes both of his citzenships as being influential to his writing.

· Criticism on Eliot: Eliot has been criticized for his practice of interweaving quotes within his work, and has thus been charged as unoriginal and/or a plagiarist. His defense included recognition of the fragmented nature of writing today, calling attention to his style of juxtaposition to affirm his unique take on things.

· Eliot’s criticisms: According to his short biography on nobelprize.com, Eliot advocated traditional approaches to literature (perhaps related to his religious practices in Christianity). This may be seen as contradictory since he has often been viewed as stemming away from traditional approaches. He has also been suggested to have influenced New Criticism, although he heavily criticized this approach later in his career. You see this echoed in his comments such as “Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry” (39), or “It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoked by particular events in his life, that the poet is in any way remarkable or interesting” (41), or “To divert interest from the poet to the poetry is a laudable aim: for it would conduce to a juster estimation of actual poetry, good and bad” (42).

· Perspecta is a student edited journal published at Yale (The Yale Architectural Journal). The journal publishes new scholars from around the world as well as older theoretical works, but from what I cang gather, it’s themes are dedicated to scholars interested in architecture. I can’t find info online regarding this edition of the journal.