Concept of 'tradition' in Eliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent".

The essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" was 1st published in 1919 in the "Times Literary Supplement" as a critical article which may be regarded as an unofficial manifesto of  Eliot's critical thinking, for it contains all those principles which his criticism has been derived ever since. The seeds which have been sown here come to fruition in his subsequent essays.

    The essay is divided into three parts. In the very 1st part Eliot discussed about the concept of "tradition" and  its relevance in literature. Eliot begins his essay by pointing out that English critical mind is not sure of the concept of tradition. They use the term as a pejorative one, not for appreciation. In English when one says that the writing is "traditional or even too traditional", he means the writing is only a replica or imitation of old texts. It is actually used in the sense of robbery or plagiarism.

    The English " praise a poet upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else." In one word they want to find the individuality or uniqueness in a poet's writing. But Eliot says that if they examine the matter with an unprejudiced mind, they will realise that the best and the most individual part of a poet's work is that which shows the maximum influence of the past writer:
 "Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice 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, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously.

    Actually we have a wrong concept about tradition. Eliot in this essay clears the idea of tradition. Going to do so, he says, ".... novelty is better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour." What Eliot means to say is that tradition does not mean repetition or follow something blindly. You must have the power to make something new with the experience of the previous writers.

     In order to make the  concept of tradition more clear Eliot speaks about 'historical sense' and he also says that this "historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence." For example we may say that, when Eliot wrote "Waste Land" after the World War 1, Tiresias becomes again relevant, and Thebes and Europe become similar in term of experience. Eliot here takes the character from classical  "Oedipus Rex", but he makes it relevant in the present context. And it also grows interest among the readers about the past writer Sophocles.

    When Eliot says about the relationship of the present to the past, and the historical sense, he says, " This historical sense which is a sense of the timeless as well as the temporal together, is what makes a writer  traditional." He means to say that tradition is not a static idea, rather it is a dynamic idea, it is ever-changing, ever-developing.

    He again says that "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 ....." Here Eliot reflects his reaction against Romantic subjectivism and emotionalism. Tradition is a living culture which is inherited from  the past and also has an important function in forming the present - ".....Past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities."

    Eliot himself is influenced by Arnold's touchstone method. He says, "...he must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past......it is a judgement, a comparison, in which two things are measured by each other."

    Eliot now gives a broader sense of tradition. He says that the tradition does not mean that the poet should "take the past as a lump, an indiscriminate bolus." The poet does not "form himself wholly on one or two private admirations" or "upon one preferred period". Tradition means " main current which does not at all flow invariably through the most distinguished reputations." He believes that it is the awareness of tradition that sharpens the sensibility, which has a vital part to play in the process of poetic creation.

    Though the Romantic theory  which has been debased first into ninetyism and then into Georgian bucolics did not attach any significance to tradition and thought that freedom from tradition is very essential for artistic creation, Eliot as a classicist and strong supporter of tradition condemned the Romantic school and praised highly the classical school which achieved "an elegance and a dignity absent from the popular and pretentious verse of the romantic poets."

   Not only in this essay, but also in " The Function of Criticism" Eliot says that the difference between the Classical and the Romantic school is that between "the complete and the fragmentary, the adult and the immature, the orderly and the chaotic." And this 'complete', 'adult' and 'orderly' writing can only be possible through maintaining a connection with tradition.