Consistency of "Tradition and individual talent" by TS Eliot

 Tradition and individual talent 

*In English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence. 

*Certainly the word (tradition) is not likely to appear in our appreciations of living or dead writers.

*Every nation, every race, has not only its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind; and is even more oblivious of the shortcomings and limitations of its critical habits than of those of its creative genius.

*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 the less spontaneous.

*we might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing.

*We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed.  

*The tradition ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, “tradition” should positively be discouraged. (No blind imitation of the tradition) 

*Novelty is better than repetition.

*Tradition is a matter of much wider significance.It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. 

* It involves, in the first place, the historical sense,

 *This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. 

*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. (A writer should know his history aswell as about other writers )

*Whoever has approved this idea of order(Historical sense), of the form of European, of English literature will not find it preposterous that 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.

*Writing process - The first course is inadmissible, the second is an important experience of youth, and the third is a pleasant and highly desirable supplement. The poet must be very conscious of the main current, which does not at all flow invariably through the most distinguished reputations.

*He must be aware that 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—is a mind which changes, and that this change is a development.

*The difference between the present and the past, is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past, in a way and to an extent which the past’s awareness of itself cannot show ( That's why it's a work of an author to posses historical sense to produce his writing in a modern way) 

*Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum.

*Impersonal Theory 

*The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

*There remains to define this process of depersonalization and its relation to the sense of tradition

*The action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide.

*Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.

*The other aspect of this Impersonal theory of poetry is the relation of the poem to its author.

                                  

                                       Pt

*Analogy  : O2 + So2 -------> So4

*When two gases (Oxygen + Sulphur dioxide) previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulphurous 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; has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. 

*The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. 

*the elements which enter the presence of the transforming catalyst, are of two kinds: emotions and feelings. 

*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.

*According to Eliot - Imposing personal feelings in writing  makes “sublimity” to miss the mark.

*Eg : In the Agamemnon, the artistic emotion approximates to the emotion of an actual spectator; 

(The actual emotion should automatically build up when the reader or spectator witness the work , writers should not gain consideration by imposing their  personal chaos in the work which forces to sympathize with the author) 

*Eg- The ode of Keats contains a number of feelings which have nothing particular to do with the nightingale.

* The poet has, not a “personality” to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality,

*Impressions and experiences and personality which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry.

*The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.

*Consequently, we must believe that “emotion recollected in tranquillity” is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor, without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. (attacks WordsWorth  - a romantic poet) 

*(According to Eliot writing poetry) - It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration, of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not “recollected,” and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is “tranquil” only in that it is a passive attending upon the event.

*There is a great deal, in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.

*Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

*The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done.

*And he (Writer) is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.