Q; Appreciate critically on Eliot’s essay “Tradition and Individual Talents.”
“Tradition and the Individual Talents” was first Published in 1919 and soon
after included in The Sacred Wood: essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920). “Tradition and the Individual Talents” (1919) is an essay written by the poet
and literary critic T. S. Eliot. Who is considered to be one of the 20th century’s greatest poets, as well as a central
figure in the English-language Modernist
poetry. In the
course of the essay, it emphasizes the importance of the artist’s relationship
with the past in shaping their own unique artistic expression. Moreover, his
own work is heavily influenced by non-western Traditions. However, it should be
recognized that Eliot supported many Eastern and thus Non-European works of literature such as the Mahabharata.
The essay explores Eliot’s views on the relationship between tradition and the Individual
artist’s creativity and originality. He argues that the true novelty and value
of a new literary work lies not in its absolute originality, but rather in how
it builds upon and alters the entire existing order or tradition of literature.
He famously states “No poet, no
artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.” As Eliot
explains, “Shakespeare acquired more
essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British
Museum.” In his
broadcast talk “The Unity of
European Culture,” he said, “Long ago I
studied the ancient Indian languages and While I was chiefly interested at that
time in Philosophy, I read a little poetry too; and I Know that my own poetry
shows the influence of Indian thought and sensibility.”
In conclusion, Eliot’s “Tradition and individual Talents” is a complex and unusual, involving
something he describes as “the historical
sense” which is a
perception of “the pastness of
the past but also of its ‘presence.” In
particular, Eliot’s arguments about impersonality in the
creative enterprise prefigure post-structuralism’s death of the author that reminding
us that postmodernist claims about the individual rest on a false contrast: abnegation
and deconstruction are themselves at the heart of modernity (Hughes 1979; Strathern 1990. Appignanesi and Garratt 1995). On the other hand, Harold Bloom disagrees with Eliot’s condescension towards Romantic poetry,
which in The Metaphysical Poets (1921) he criticises for its “dissociation Of sensibility.”
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