- Tradition and the Individual Talent (1920) by T.S.Eliot -

STRUCTURE and MAIN IDEAS

-        First statement = the common approach of people to poetry: satisfaction upon a poet's difference from his immediate predecessors

-        Clarification of statement = people search something that can be isolated in order to enjoy it

-        Refutation = in reality, the most individual parts are those parts in which the dead poets assert their immortality most vigorously

-        Second statement = the form of tradition consisting in following the ways of the immediate generation before us is to be discouraged

-        Supporting example = many such simple currents got lost

-        First restatement = novelty is better than repetition, tradition has a wider significance: you can't only inherit it, but gain it with labour

-        Supporting arguments and clarifications =

1-     Tradition involves the historical sense, a perception of the presence of the past: a writer should write with the feeling that the whole literature of Europe from Homer and the whole literature of his country have a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.

2-     Historical sense: sense of timeless, sense of temporal, and sense of both together. It makes a writer traditional and at the same time conscious of his space and time

-        Third statement = 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

-        Supporting arguments and clarifications =

1-     Writers cannot be evaluated alone, they must be set, for contrast and comparison, among the dead with an aesthetic criticism

-        Fourth statement = every new work of art modifies the existent order of literature

-        Supporting arguments and clarifications =

1-     After every novelty, the whole existing order is altered: the relations, proportions and values of each work are readjusted

2-     The past is altered by the present as much as the present is modified by the past: the poets must be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.

CONTENT

The essay introduces, thought the criticize of common people's attitude to poetry, Eliot's concepts of tradition and individual talent.

Eliot points out that what we now define as a novelty, is indeed nothing new: it is a product of the influence of preexistent works of art. Novelty is, in Eliot's words "better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance". The essayist suggests that poets should not only limit to copy their predecessors, but instead they should write keeping in mind the whole literature of the past (with "historical sense").

To Eliot, no poet has his complete meaning alone, to make an appreciation of an artist, people should make a comparison between him and the other dead poets.

Every new work, in fact, modifies the existing model of literature: it alters the past just as the present is altered by the past. Poets should pay attention to that, while writing, if they want to create something new and interesting, but traditional.