Analysis of the extract taken from “Tradition and Individual Talent” (1919)

The extract belongs to T.S. Eliot’s essay “Tradition and Individual Talent” written in 1919. The essay is divided into three parts: The Concept of "Tradition"; The Theory of Impersonal Poetry; The Conclusion. The passage is taken from the first section of the essay, and it deals with the relation between the poet and the tradition, the present and the past, the new and the old.

The first paragraph has the function  to introduce the subject of discussion, the relationship between the poet and the tradition, starting from a consideration  on the way common people and critics use to judge a poet. They use to focus on the differences between the poet and his predecessors: more a poet seems distant from the past, more he is considered innovative and therefore he is appreciated. Eliot denies such a tendency, stating that “the most individual part of a work are those in which the dead poets assert their immortality”. In other words, Eliot considers a text innovative and individual when it includes all the past and the tradition in itself.

After such premise, Eliot clarifies what he means for “tradition”, something that can’t be inherited but obtained with great labour. First of all, tradition implies the historical sense, that is the perception of the pastness and of the presence of the past, a sense of the timelss and of the temporal together. A traditional poet is aware of the coexistence of past and present, two dimensions that transform and distort one the other, that dialogue together. Practically, the historical sense implies at the same time the knowledge of the whole past literature and the consciousness of your place in time, of your contemporaneity.

The opening reflection ends with a significant conclusion, that coincides with the thesis of the second paragraph: “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. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast or comparison, among the dead”. The period enounces the principal thesis of the extract, condensing Eliot’s thought.

The second paragraph has the function  to adduce the due argumentations to the thesis. Eliot expresses his conception of the tradition as an existing order among the whole literary heritage. The composition of a new work, the entrance of novelty in such order, compels a readjustment of the relations, the conformity between the old and the new: “the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past”.

In the third paragraph Eliot analyses the consequences on the poet of the inextricable bond between past and present. He must be aware not only of his responsibilities in the present, but also of the judgment coming from of the past, whose standards are the criteria of comparison. Conformity and individuality, apparently contradictory, are often two complementary features of the same work.  

In the fourth paragraph, Eliot proceeds in a more intelligible exposition of the relation of the poet to the past, or better of the poet’s approach to the past. Firstly he must be conscious of the main current of his time. Secondly he must be aware of the obvious fact that art never improves, but the material of art is never quite the same. Thirdly, he must know that the mind of Europe is a mind which changes carrying the whole tradition in itself. That is why a conscious present consists in an awareness of the past.

At this point, Eliot presents the usual objection about the ridiculous amount of erudition that seems to be necessary in Eliot’s poetics. The writer immediately rejects the objection, underlining the difference between mere erudition, useless and superficial, and culture, knowledge easily absorbed or hardly conquered.

In conclusion, the poet should aim at acquire the consciousness of the past, developing it throughout his career. Therefore the progress of an artist means a continual surrender of himself, a self-sacrifice, an extinction of personality, an infinite process of depersonalization where art may be said to approach to the condition of science. The passage ends with a significant analogy with a chemical reaction, where the poet is compared to a bit of finely filiated platinum introduced into a chamber rich of oxygen and sulphur dioxide.