NOTES OF 20^TH AND 28^TH MARCH 2012

The extract from the essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, published in 1920 by T.S. Eliot, deals with the importance of tradition and the significance of innovation.

The central question the author tries to give an answer is what kind of relation there is between the past artists and the present ones. On this view Mr Eliot wonders what makes a new work of art, whatever art it is, innovative, but he focuses especially on poetry works.

Mr Eliot does not agree with the idea that a work of art is appreciable just if it is unique.

He believes that more I can glimpse past artists and tradition in a work more it would be considered innovative.

A work of art is innovative when it is in all the ages.

Paradoxically, a work to be new has to be old.

The artistic production of old poets has to be considered in their period of full maturity, not in their period of adolescence.

Mr Eliot talks about the concept of impersonality in art. He considers in particular modernistic art which is impersonal because it is an inclusive art: indeed it unifies the plurality of languages used in art.

The concept of impersonality is connected to the innovation’s one. If an artist wants to be innovative he has to be able to express his personality combining it to those of other artists.

However using tradition doesn’t mean handing down what antiques wrote.

Being innovative doesn’t mean replicating what others did before.

The thesis supported by Mr Eliot is that an innovative work of art is the one that shows tradition throughout the personal use of the artist.

If an artist wants to appropriate of tradition he has to appropriate of the sense of history and time. This makes the poet to write not only with anything he has in his bones but with everything there was.

Considering the historical sense, Mr. Eliot explains the relevance of seeing the writer’s position under the perspective of TEMPORAL and TIMELESS which are concepts to understand what makes a writer traditional.

Temporal means that the writer is the product of the age he lives into.

Timeless identifies something that is true in all the ages: it is what makes a work classical.

So an innovative work of art has to be both inside and outside of time.

A writer is aware of his role and his work’s when he has understood what has been.