"Tradition and Individual Talent" is an 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 interrelation between traditional and individual talent. The essay brought into being a 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 the term. It begins with a historical sense and goes on acquiring new dimensions along a 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 values during the process called civilization. Eliot beings with a description that makes tradition a term of abuse and develops into 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 agreeable to English ears without this comfortable reference to the reassuring science of archaeology. The above-quoted lines from one of the most celebrated critical endeavors 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 a historical sense. The identification discussed above makes it clear that the tradition according to Eliot is something more than a mere conglomeration of dead works. The identification of tradition with a historical sense serves to ratify the stature of tradition in assessing the works and function of pets and poetry. He elaborates on the idea of historical sense and says: 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.
Eliot in the above-quoted line puts forth a dynamic manifestation of tradition which shapes the minds of different poets of different generations. Eliot also inkles that the poet's conformity to tradition is an act of rigorous intellectual efforts that constitutes 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 a time of his contemporaneity.
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 ones with a capacity for mutual interaction. The old and the new interpenetrate and this interpenetration results in a new order defined in terms of the simultaneous existence of the values of the past and the present. The survival of the past ratifies its 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.
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'. Raman Selden observes that 'the standard theories of literature often combine these apparently disparate modes of thinking'. It is remarkable that these apparently disparate modes of thinking are disciplined by values.
The relation between the new work of art and 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 Eliot's poetics. It is again noteworthy that tradition and individual talent are not in sharp contrast with each other but they are mutually complementary. Eliot conceives tradition and individual talent as unifiable and shows 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. Individual talent is needed to acquire a sense of tradition. Eliot lays good emphasis on the idea of interactivity between 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 forms 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 an order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, and values of each work of art towards the whole are readjusted; and this in conformity between the old and the new.
The above-quoted lines make clear the cyclic interdependence between tradition and individual talent. Shusterman's view again obliges 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'.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 in the restructuring of the same tradition with different emphases. 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 individual talent can be. This is the way Eliot subtly reconciles tradition and individual talent.
Eliot's views on tradition paves way for the theorization of 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 beliefs but 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 way. 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.
It is clear from the above quotation that Eliot lays heavy stress on the two different aspects 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 in 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'.Eliot in these lines discovers a new possibility of universal meaning, which is 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 sulfurous 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.
The analogy that Eliot puts forth makes it clear that 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 'translate', '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.
No comments: