Tradition and the Individual Talent
T.S.
Eliot
I
In English writing we seldom speak of tradition,
though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence. We cannot
refer to "the tradition" or to "a tradition"; at mo.st,
we employ the adjective in saying that the poetry of so-and-so is
"traditional"
or even "too traditional." Seldom, perhaps, does
the word appear
except in a phrase of censure. If otherwise, it is vaguely approbative, with
the implication, as to the work approved, of some pleasing archaeological
reconstruction. You can hardly make the word agreeable to. English ears without
this comfortable reference to the reassuring science of archaeology.
Certainly the word
is not likely to appear in our appreciations of living or dead writers. Every nation,
every race, has not only its own creative, but its own
critical turn of mind; and is even more oblivious of the shortcomings and limitations
of its critical habits than of those of its creative genius. We know, or think
we know, from the enormous mass of critical writing that has appeared in the
French language the critical method or habit of the French; we only conclude
(we are such unconscious people) that the French are ''more critical" than we, and sometimes
even plume ourselves a little with the fact, as if the French were the less spontaneous.
Perhaps they are; but we might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable
as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes
in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion
about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.
One of the facts
that might come to light in this process is our tendency to. insist, when we praise
a poet, upon tho.se aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone
else. In these aspects or parts of his work we pretend to find what is
individual, what is the peculiar essence of the man. We dwell with satisfaction
upon the poet's difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate
predecessors; we endeavor to find something that can be isolated in order to be
enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often
find that not only the best, but the mo.st individual parts of his work may be
those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality mo.st
vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the
period of full maturity.
Yet if the only
form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the
immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes,
''tradition" should positively be discouraged. We have seen many such
simple currents soon lo.st in the sand; and 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 labor. It involves, in the first place, the historical
sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to
be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception,
not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense
compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but
with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within
it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence
and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of
the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal
together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what
makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his own
contemporaneity.
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 and comparison, among
the dead. I mean this as a principle of aesthetic, not merely historical,
criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not
one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that
happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing
monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the
introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing
order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the
supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so
slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of
art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and
the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English
literature will not find it preposterous that the 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.
In a peculiar
sense he will be aware also that he must inevitably be judged by the standards
of the past. I say judged, not amputated, by them; not judged to be as good as,
or worse or better than, the dead; and certainly not judged by the canons of
dead critics. It is a judgment, a comparison, in which two things are measured
by each other. To conform merely would be for the new work not really to
conform at all; it would not be new, and would therefore not be a work of art.
And we do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but
its fitting in is a test of its value-a test, it is true, which can only be
slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of
conformity. We say: It appears to conform, and is perhaps individual, or it
appears individual, and may conform; but we are hardly likely to find that it
is one and not the other.
To proceed to a
more intelligible exposition of the relation of the poet to the past: he can
neither take the past as a lump, an indiscriminate bolus, nor can he form
himself wholly on one or two private admirations, nor can he form himself
wholly upon one preferred period. The first course is inadmissible, the second
is an important experience of youth, and the third is a pleasant and highly
desirable supplement. The poet must be very conscious of the main current, which
does not at all flow invariably through the most distinguished reputations. He
must be quite aware of the obvious fact that art never improves, but that the
material of art is never quite the same. He must be aware that the mind of
Europe-the mind of his own country-a mind which he learns in time to be much
more important than his own private mind-is a mind which changes, and that this
change is a development which abandons nothing en route, which does not
superannuate either Shakespeare, or Homer, or the rock drawing of the
Magdalenian draftsmen. That this development, refinement perhaps, complication
certainly, is not, from the point of view of the artist, any improvement. Perhaps
not even an improvement from the point of view of the psychologist or not to the
extent which we imagine; perhaps only in the end based upon a complication in
economics and machinery. But the difference between the present and the past is
that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an
extent which the past's awareness of itself cannot show.
Someone said:
"The dead writers are remote from us because we know
so much more than
they did." Precisely, and they are that which we know.
I am alive to a
usual objection to what is clearly part of my program for the metier of poetry.
The objection is that the doctrine requires a ridiculous amount of erudition
(pedantry), a claim which can be rejected by appeal to the lives of poets in
any pantheon. It will even be affirmed that much learning deadens or perverts
poetic sensibility. While, however, we persist in believing that a poet ought
to know as much as will not encroach upon his necessary receptivity and
necessary laziness, it is not desirable to confine knowledge to whatever can be
put into a useful shape for examinations, drawing rooms, or the still more
pretentious modes of publicity. Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must
sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than
most men could from the whole British Museum. What is to be insisted upon is
that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he
should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career.
What happens is a
continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is
more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a
continual extinction of personality.
There remains to
define this process of depersonalization and its relation to the sense of
tradition. It is in this depersonalization that art may be
said to approach the condition of science. I, therefore, invite you to
consider, as a suggestive analogy, the action which takes place when a bit of
finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and
sulfur dioxide.
II
Honest criticism
and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.
If we attend to the confused cries of the newspaper critics and the
susurrus3 of popular repetition that follows, we shall hear the names of poets in
great numbers; if we seek not blue-book knowledge but the enjoyment of poetry,
and ask for a poem, we shall seldom find it. I have tried to point out the
importance of the relation of the poem to other poems by other authors, and
suggested the conception of poetry as a living whole of all the poetry that has
ever been written. The other aspect of this impersonal theory of poetry is the
relation of the poem to its author. And I hinted, by an analogy, that the mind
of the mature poet differs from that of the immature one not precisely in any
valuation of,"personality," not being necessarily more interesting, or
having "more to say," but rather by being a more finely perfected medium
in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new
combinations.
The analogy was
that of the catalyst. When the two gases previously mentioned are mixed in the
presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulfurous acid. This combination takes
place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid
contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently
unaffected; has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is
the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience
of the man himself; but, the more perfect the artist, the more completely
separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more
perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its
material.
The experience,
you will notice, the elements which enter the presence of the transforming
catalyst, are of two kinds: emotions and feelings. The effect of a
work of art upon the person who enjoys it is an experience
different in kind from any experience not of art. It may be formed
out of one emotion, or may be a combination of several; and
various feelings, inhering for the writer in particular words or
phrases or images, may be added to compose the final
result. Or great poetry may be made without the direct use of
any emotion whatever: composed out of feelings solely.
Canto XV of the Inferno
(Brunetto Latini)
is a working up
of the emotion evident in the situation; but the effect, though
single as that of any work of art, is obtained by considerable complexity of
detail. The last
quatrain gives an image, a feeling attaching to an image, which "came,"
which did not develop simply out of what precedes, but which was probably
in suspension in the poet's mind until the proper combination
arrived for it to add itself to. The poet's mind is in fact a
receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings,
phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which
can unite to form a new compound are present together.
If you compare
several representative passages of the greatest poetry you see how great is the
variety of types of combination, and also how completely any semi ethical
criterion of "sublimity" misses the mark. For it is not the "greatness,"
the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the
artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes
place, that counts. The episode of Paolo and Francesca employs a definite
emotion, but the intensity of the poetry is something quite different from
whatever intensity in the supposed experience it may give the impression of. It
is no more intense, furthermore, than Canto XXVI, the voyage of Ulysses, which
has not the direct dependence upon an emotion. Great variety is possible in the
process of transmutation of emotion: the murder of Agamemnon, or the agony of
Othello, gives an artistic effect apparently closer to a possible original than
the scenes from Dante. In the Agamemnon, the artistic emotion approximates to
the emotion of an actual spectator; in Othello to the emotion of the protagonist
himself. But the difference between art and the event is always absolute; the
combination which is the murder of Agamemnon is probably as complex as that
which is the voyage of Ulysses. In either case there has been a fusion of
elements. The ode of Keats contains a number of feelings
which have nothing particular to do with the nightingale, but which the nightingale,
partly, perhaps, because of its attractive name, and partly because of its
reputation, served to bring together.
The point of view
which I am struggling to attack is perhaps related to the metaphysical theory
of the substantial unity of the soul: for my meaning is, that the poet has,
not a "personality"
to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a
personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and
unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man
may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry
may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality:
I will
quote a passage
which is unfamiliar enough to be regarded with fresh attention in the light-or
darkness-of these observations:
And now methinks I could e'en
chide myself
For doting on her beauty, though
her death
Shall be revenged after no
common action.
Does the silkworm expend her
yellow labors
For thee? For thee does she undo
herself?
Are lordships sold to maintain
ladyships
For the poor benefit of a
bewildering minute?
Why does yon fellow falsify
highways,
And put his life between the
judge's lips,
To refine such a thing-keeps
horse and men
To beat their valors for her? .
. .
In this passage
(as is evident if it is taken in its context) there is a combination of positive
and negative emotions: an intensely strong attraction toward beauty and an
equally intense fascination by the ugliness which is contrasted with it and
which destroys it. This balance of contrasted emotion is in the dramatic
situation to which the speech is pertinent, but that situation alone is
inadequate to it. This is, so to speak, the structural emotion, provided by the
drama. But the whole effect, the dominant tone, is due to the fact that a number
of floating feelings, having an affinity to this emotion by no means
superficially evident, have combined with it to give us a new art emotion.
It is not in his
personal emotions, the emotions provoked by particular events in his life, that
the poet is in any way remarkable or interesting. His particular emotions may
be simple, or crude, or fiat. The emotion in his poetry will be a very complex thing,
but not with the complexity of the emotions of people who have very complex or
unusual emotions in life. One error, in fact, of eccentricity in poetry is to
seek for new human emotions to express; and in this search for novelty in the
wrong place it discovers the perverse. The business of the poet is not to find
new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry,
to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. And emotions which
he has never experienced will serve his turn as well
as those familiar to him. Consequently, we must believe that
"emotion recollected in tranquility" is an inexact formula. For it is
neither emotion, nor recollection, nor, without distortion of meaning,
tranquility. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration, of a
very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would
not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen
consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not
"recollected," and they finally unite in an atmosphere
which is "tranquil" only in
that it is a passive attending upon the event. Of course this is not quite the
whole story. There is a great deal, in the writing of poetry, which must
be conscious and deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is usually unconscious where
he ought to be 'Conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both
errors tend to make him "personal”.
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it
is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of
course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want
to escape from these things.
III
This essay
proposes to halt at the frontier of metaphysics or mysticism, and confine
itself to such practical conclusions as can be applied by the responsible
person interested in poetry. To divert interest from the poet to the poetry is
a laudable aim: for it would conduce to a juster estimation of actual poetry,
good and bad. There are many people who appreciate the expression of sincere
emotion in verse, and there is a smaller number of people who can appreciate technical
excellence. But very few- know when there is an expression of significant
emotion, emotion
which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. The emotion
of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach his impersonality without
surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to
know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the
present moment of the past, unless he is conscious; not of what is dead, but of
what is already living.
The End
