Learning Paths » 5B Interacting
Notes about T.S. Eliot's Tradition and the Individual Talent (Lines 21-24)
Mr Eliot advances his thesis: a writer is traditional when he is aware of his position in time. Time is seen under the perspective of temporal and timeless. Timeless makes a work of art classical.
What a writer writes must be timeless (it belongs to all the periods) and at the same time it is a product of writer's period. In this way Mr Eliot explains who is an innovative artist: he asserts his immortality in a stronger way. What makes a writer autorevole is being in the time and out of it (timeless).
Moreover tradition belongs to the classical writer: he does not invent anything.
Creativeness is a product of awareness.