MB UNIUD

Eliot's essay has, of course, an argumentative structure. He begins explaining an antithesis that is a common error of contemporary and past critics of literature. The argumentation against the antithesis enables him to introduce the first thesis, dealing with two different definitions of the term "tradition" in literature. The extract ends with a second thesis about the value and the role of the poet-artist, demonstrated by an argumentation about the function of the present and of the past in literature.

I think that the reader could find two main connected ideas in the extract. The first one is, as I have already said, the concept of tradition. Eliot opposes the old meaning of literary tradition, that is blind or timid adherence to its successes, to a new one: the writer must have his own generation in his bones, but he should feel that the whole literature has a simultaneous existence. While the first definition, belonging to the generation previous to  Eliot, should be discouraged, the second must be obtained, even if with great labour. As a matter of fact in order to reach this aim, the writer must have an historical sense, that involves the perception of the presence of the past. The latter two substantives could seem an oxymoron, but they permit not only to take advantage of past literature, but also to criticize a poet-artist. His role is discussed in the second part.

The following thesis states that the poet can't have his complete meaning alone (he needs past literature) but he has anyway great difficulties and responsibility. As a matter of fact, before a new work is written, a complete order exists. But when a new work takes part in literature, the previous order is altered and there are new relationships between the different works. It has a very important consequence: not only the present depends on the past, but also the past depends on the present. So the poet-artist has the great possibility to "change the past"!

I think that Eliot is right: a modern writer should perfectly know past literature, to interpret it in a new way (this is what can make him or her innovative). Anyway I don't think that a writer could really change the relationships in past literature: he can, at most, change the contemporary reader's point of view about them.