The extract is a critical work taken from T. S. Eliot’s Tradition and the Individual Talent, an essay in which Eliot explains his attitude to tradition and defines his conception of the impersonality in literature. The argumentative text, I am going to analyse, deals with the value of tradition and focuses his attention on the relationship between the work of art on an individual poet and that of past ones.

         The text is structured into brief sequences connected by the use of logical connectors and developing the argumentation.

Firstly the matter of tradition is problematically presented with reference to the literary world. Secondly a possible anti-thesis is advanced as a hypothesis and it is logically rejected. In addition Eliot clarifies his personal conception of tradition stating the thesis. Arguments are provided in the final part of the text. At the end the writer reflects on the results of his arguing by focuses its attention on the position of poets.

         The main idea stated in the essay is Eliot’s view on the relationship between works of art in time. According to him, a poet’s significance and appreciation depends on his/her relation to the previous, dead poets and artists. Indeed, he believes that the most individual aspects of a poet’s production refer to his/her ancestor poets. What is more, tradition is not a blind or timid adherence to past productions; it is a matter of much wider significance. To begin with it is not inherited but gained, secondly it involves the historical sense together with a perception of the present. Therefore a man has to write with the feeling of the whole of European literature and the sense of the timeless and of the temporal together.

The fundamental supporting argumentation provided by Eliot belongs to the world of art. He applies a principle of aesthetic to artistic production arguing that an order has to characterize the relation between existing texts and a new work of art. Past productions are compared to monuments creating an ideal order so that, when a new text arrives, it modifies the system designing a new balance. All in all, Eliot considers the poet’s condition. He states that a poet, who is aware of the strong interaction between the present and the past, has to face great difficulties and responsibilities.

         I find the extract interesting because of the resulting value of tradition. Eliot argues that no production is complete in itself because there is a pattern of new texts relating to previously produced works of art. I like the idea of a dynamic tradition that is innovative thanks to its reference to the past. In particular I appreciate the presentation of the concept of intertextuality through a particular view of tradition. What is more I believe that the aesthetic argumentation provided by the writer is as effective as intriguing. The idea that there is an order in literature given by the conformity and coherence between the old and the new makes really sense. The creation of order between texts explained by Eliot is similar to the physical principle of communicating vessels: adding a new component in a balanced system creates a new level of order.

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