It is an extract from Eliot’s TRADITION AND THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT. The title makes me expect that the essay will be about the relationship of a poet or an artist with tradition and his own individuality.

The essay deals with the value of tradition and it tells to the reader that there is a strong relationship between the modern poet and they who wrote before him.

In the 1^st sequence there is the thesis of the essay: we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets,…, assert their immortality most vigorously. He makes this statement referring to the period of maturity of poets because they does no more follow their generation way of writing. Eliot wants to affirm that every poet is strictly linked to the one before him.

In the next sequence Eliot explains that to understand that a poet must be in possess of the historical sense. According to that a poet must understand the strong connection of the past to the present and that everything has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. The possession of this historical sense makes the poet understand conscious of his place in time.

In the 3^rd sequence he explains intertextuality. The intelligent reader should not value him alone but he has to put him in contrast and comparison between the dead poets, because no poet has his complete meaning alone. When there is a new work it is compared to works that came before and changes the concept of art there have been until that moment. This happens because there is a formal idea of every art and when a new work comes out it modifies the pre-established and complete order. The poet has to understand that not only past is altered by present but also that present is directed by the past. He who knows these principles is aware of his responsibilities.