TRADITION AND THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT – AN OVERVIEW

 

Originally printed as a three part article in the periodical The Egoist in 1919, Tradition and the Individual Talent was published in its entirety the following year in the collection The Sacred Wood. Though disclaimed by Eliot himself in the latter part of his career as one of his most juvenile pronouncements, the work continues to remain ever popular, and contains one of his most important postulations namely the impersonal theory of poetry. This theory which has come to be identified as the cornerstone of Eliot’s critical corpus has two aspects to it, tradition and individual talent, both of which reinforce the conception of poetry as an autonomous objective phenomenon.

 

Tradition

    According to Eliot, prior to taking up the endeavor of writing poetry, one must seek to acquire a sense or knowledge of two factors, poems by the past generations of poets and poems by those of the present. Obtaining this knowledge of poems by both past and present poets, is what the concept of tradition essentially signifies in Eliot’s view. Eliot however is fully aware of the fact that it is practically impossible to obtain a sense of all the poems that has ever been produced. Hence he specifies that in striving to cultivate a sense of tradition, a poet needs to only concentrate on attaining a knowledge of those important poems which supposedly constitute the main current. Tradition for Eliot therefore denotes procuring not an indiscriminate knowledge of all poems of the past and the present, but a discrete sense of those particular poems that count. Eliot however cautions that in tracing the poetic main current, one must not go by reputation. As he stipulates, it does not necessarily include only those poems and poets that have achieved renown over the years, but also those who have remained by and large ignored. It is notable that in urging a poet to acquire a sense of tradition, Eliot is insistent on the point that it must be sought consciously, for as he asserts it cannot be inherited but only obtained through hard labour. However, as he clarifies, this does not mean imitating the other poets and their works, for attaining a sense of tradition is aimed at ensuring continuity not copying. This is where the question of why one must inculcate a sense of tradition becomes critical. In Eliot’s conception all poems that have ever been produced, exemplifies a unified whole in which each individual poem is integrally interlinked with all others. This unified whole of poetry which Eliot characterizes as an ideal order, represents an organic phenomenon in that it keeps constantly evolving with every new poem that is produced. For Eliot this evolution invariably takes place through the medium of the poet, who is naturally obligated to accrue a knowledge of poetry as a whole, and pass it into the prospective new poem. This will ensure that the new poem continues the poetic main current, facilitating thereby the unified whole of poetry to evolve. The important point to contend with here is the implication that the poet ultimately represents nothing more than a formal cause or tool through whom the poetic main current is expanded, which conforms Eliot’s basic theorization of poetry as an objective entity.

Individual Talent

 

    According to Eliot, the feelings and emotions that characterizes a poet’s personality constitutes the basis for the creation of a poem. However, in the actual poem that is eventually created, those feelings and emotions must not find expression. The poetic process for Eliot thus represents a phenomenon of depersonalisation, in which the poet is expected to gradually obliterate or extinguish the personal self from the poem that is under production. Simply put, as the poem gradually emerges, that of the poet’s personality must correspondingly diminish, with the end result that in the final version of the poem created, no trace of the poet’s personal impressions are found. The ability of a poet to gradually extricate or detach the personal self during the process of poetic creation is ultimately what individual talent denotes. The key point to note here is that in Eliot’s view it is not the actual feelings and emotions that count, rather the intensity to which they are subjected during the creative process which really matters. This is exactly why he forbids their direct expression in the poem. Eliot himself offers us an analogy to illustrate his point. The analogy is that of a chemical reaction in a chamber involving two elements namely oxygen and Sulphur-di-oxide, which combine together in the presence of platinum to produce sulphurous acid. The thing to note here is that the two elements in question are mutually inert, that is, they would not react with each other without the presence of platinum, which represents a catalyst. However, in the final product that is produced no trace of platinum is found, and the platinum itself for its part remains completely unaffected. In the analogy, the two elements oxygen and Sulphur-di-oxide represent the feelings and emotions that underlie the poet’s personality, the raw material from which the poem is produced. The catalyst platinum exemplifies the poet’s mind, which makes the reaction possible but remains neutral all the way through. The final product sulphurous acid signifies the poem produced, which bears no trace of the poet’s personality, consolidating thereby its basic conceptulisation as an objective entity.

 

Backlash with Wordsworth

 

    Eliot’s formulation of poetry as an objective phenomenon is explicitly targeted at challenging the subjective notion of it posited by Wordsworth. For Wordsworth, poetry typifies an expressive entity that represents a sort of receptacle into which the poet pours forth feelings and emotions. The process of poetic creation is therefore one of personal expression in the view of Wordsworth. For Eliot on the contrary, poetry exemplifies merely a medium in which feelings and emotions combine in unpredictable ways, manifesting themselves in a transformed state that bears no resemblance to the poet’s personality. The creative process therefore exemplifies one of depersonalization in Eliot’s perspective. The important thing to note here is that Eliot is not so much against the expression of feelings and emotions as such in poetry, but is only opposed to the personal expression of it which directly refers back to the poet. This is to say, he approves of feelings and emotions being expressed in poetry, provided they come to acquire an impersonal character in the poem. In fact, he himself prescribes a method by which poets could manifest emotions in art in an indirect or impersonal manner called objective correlative.

 

Objective Correlative

 

    Objective correlative is a concept that does not form a part of Tradition and the Individual Talent, but another essay by Eliot called Hamlet. In it, Eliot basically presents the notion as an impersonal method of depicting emotions in art. As the very term suggests, the method involves conveying emotion through finding an appropriate factor for it in the external world, such as an object or event which would serve to evoke the emotion in question. The classic example is the storm scene in King Lear. Stripped of his retinue and banished into the wilderness by the two daughters he trusted so much, Lear takes refuge in a dilapidated hut when a storm begins to rage outside. This storm apparently serves as a perfect invocation of the anguish experienced by Lear at the betrayal, and it typifies an impersonal representation in that it is a natural event that is commonly felt by all. The storm therefore marks an objective correlative that sets forth Lear’s emotional state of mind.

 

Unification of Sensibility

 

    This idea too does not form a part of Tradition and the Individual Talent, but another essay by Eliot called Metaphysical Poets. However, it does have relevance to the ideas discussed in the former. In poetry, there are apparently two contradictory sensibilities, feelings or emotions dubbed the sensibility of the heart, and thought or intellect labelled sensibility of the head. In Eliot’s view, a dissociation of sensibility occurs when one of the two sensibilities predominates over the other in a poem. Conversely, a unification of sensibility represents a condition in which both these sensibilities fuse together as a harmonious whole in a poem. In the essay where he formulates the notion, Eliot proclaims that in the poetry of the so called metaphysical poets there is unification of sensibility, for they simultaneously engage both the heart and the head. This proclamation proved critical in that it catapulted metaphysical poetry into the mainstream of English poetry, where it had till that point remained largely overlooked. This is why Eliot in Tradition and the Individual Talent states that the poetic main current does not necessarily flow through only the famous poets and their notable works. After all, today metaphysical poetry has become a prominent part of the main current of English poetry, but at the time when Eliot wrote his essay they were largely obscure.