T.S.

Eliot's Tradition and the Individual Talent

T.S. Eliot explores the responsibility which befalls the successful poet and the means by which his
work should be judged by critics.
According to Eliot, a successful poet is fully conscious of literary works created by past artists,
ensuring the continuity of traditions set through literary history. As, literary hindsight benefits the
modern artist, and cultivates the idea of tradition. Eliot adds that tradition cannot be inherited, and if
you want it you must obtain it by great labor.! "or it is the modern poet#s responsibility to nurture this
tradition through intense and respectful study.
$e deems it necessary for an artist to conform to traditions created by their predecessors while at the
same time declaring their individuality. $e says that if an artist is able to follow a measure of
conformity which bridges their work with that of established works, then they are a success.
$e also says that %oetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion& it is not the
expression of personality, but an escape from personality.! That is, it may be the goal of the reader to
seek solace in great works of poetry, but great poets create these works only when they have abandoned
their most humane traits.
$e also points out that,'riticism is as inevitable as breathing,!. 'riticism and the creation of artworks
go hand in hand& one could not exist without the other. (ust as modern poets should ideally respect the
roots of literature, so must literary critics respect the work of poets. Eliot insists that honest criticism
and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.!
)f to imagine is to misinterpret, which makes all poems antithetical to their precursors, then to imagine
after a poet is to learn his own metaphors for his acts of reading.! *+loom,
Every poem is thus, a misinterpretation of a parent-poem and a poem isn#t overcoming anxiety& it is
that anxiety. +loom felt the same applied to criticism too and so there can be no interpretations only
misinterpretations which make criticism a species of prose poetry. "or +loom, %oetry is the anxiety of
influence and is misalliance, misunderstanding and misinterpretation personified.
)n poetry there is both contraction and expansion for the ratios of revision are contracting while the
actual making of a poem is its expansion. .ood poetry must have the revisionary ratios along with
freshness of perspective.
/. Clinamen0 the method of misreading or misinterpreting a poem. The poet denies the content of the
poem itself, and misinterprets it such that it relates to external meanings rather than the meanings as
intended by the poet. This method corrects! the new poem by allowing the old one to move in the
direction of the present.
1. Tessera0 the techni2ue of completing! the original poem. The new poem is written as an endnote to
the first, influenced by, yet moving away from the original poem.
3. Kenosis0 refers to the reduction of one#s own poetry, removing all traces of repetition with the first,
and doing the same with the first, so that in the end, the two are uni2ue and individual.
4. Daemonization0 welcomes the opinion of a third party, though this third party is the poet himself. $e
looks at the original poem as a reaction to an earlier work, and as simply another piece of poetic
tradition. +y viewing the similarities between the two, the original poem suddenly loses some of the
uni2ueness originally perceived& as a result, the new poem in progress gains a newfound individuality.
5. Askesis0 involves the separation of oneself, thus, the poem from all other people and influences. As
the person becomes separated, so too does his work, minimi6ing the similarities to the original poem.
7. Apophrades0 the process of acknowledging past poetic influences such that it seems that the new!
poet is also the creator of the original. This method allows for a role reversal whereby the earlier poet
now mirrors the new.