Write an essay of about 500 words in which you give a detailed description of the concepts and concerns raised by T.S. Eliot in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” and his theory of depersonalisation.

 T.S. Eliot was one of the most pivotal critics of his time. He was also a renowned poet, playwright and publisher (1888-1965). The combination of critic and writer grafts T.S. Eliot’s credo together, quite finely. His concepts and concerns raised in his critic of “Tradition and the Individual Talent” has been one of the most extraordinary and influential criticism of his entire works.

 

Eliot places great emphasis on the idea of tradition but rejects tradition that is ‘blind’ or conforms to a ‘timid adherence’ to successful compositions of the past. Such ‘tradition should be “positively” discouraged he critics. He says of Individual talent that he/she cannot stand alone without the predecessors; they complete one another in timeless fashion. He emphasis how the 20th century poets are meant to be the foundation of 21st century poets. Thus, individual talent is significant in isolation of newness in uniqueness amongst its predecessors and not only immediate, but earlier generations compliment individual talent by isolating the components brought in as “new” but, only because of the evident past and “difference” (Eliot, 2020). Eliot’s theory of depersonalisation is profound. He uses the example of 2 gases, oxygen and sulphur dioxide reacting with platinum in a chamber. The platinum is inert and acts a catalyst. The direct comparison would be a mature and immature poet producing poetic works. The mature poet is not necessarily more intriguing or has “more to say” but rather “being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feeling is at liberty to enter new combinations”. These therefore, make up the compositions of Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent”.

 

What Eliot encapsulates is “the relation of past to poet” and “the relation poem to author”. The past is not really dead and lives in the present if you allow yourself to approach a poem with an open mind.  “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.” And the second of Eliot’s depersonalisation theory concepts, that a poet ‘greatness’ does’ lie in putting his personality into his “work”. Sometimes it is not necessary that these feeling be his, they can also be ‘other’ peoples’ feelings per say (Literary, 2010). This is because his mind is like a catalyst and remains unaffected for a time.

“Therefore, Eliot’s belief of poetry is not a ‘turning loose of emotion, but an escape and it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. These famous words highlight Eliot’s theory as a concern from the concepts mentioned above, that the “progress of an author is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality” (Jebu, 2019). If it isn’t, many poetic pieces would not be able to adhere to past and present. Thus, Eliot has widened the significant gap that alternates through time even as he mentions Shakespeare and the lot to bring across his concepts and concerns.