T. S. Eliot’s aesthetic in “Tradition and the Individual Talent” borders on a sort of mysticism. Ostensibly concerned with the foundation and history of poetry, Eliot only addresses the contemporaneous effects of poetry — both on the poet and the poet’s milieu. The poet, to Eliot, rewords, or (re)creates, not new art, but new form in an individual expression. The poet lives and expresses “the present moment of the past” concentrating on poetry’s living substance (34).
Seemingly, poetry, no matter when or where it was written, still has life. Eliot uses this idea as a basis for his aesthetic theory; this idea, too, represents the only really lucid point of his essay. Indeed, any poetry read or experienced by a reader has a life, even though it may have been written centuries ago. While Eliot’s canon is composed of traditional figures — Homer, Donne, Dante, Shakespeare — his idea may transcend that boundary and include marginal expressions. In Eliot’s system, the poet acts as the catalyst, incorporating the expression of the old into the new, but the poet does not ultimately matter in continuing artistic expression.
Reminiscent of Aristotle, the poet’s function is cathartic. Poetry combines both “feelings” and “emotions” and gives them a form. These feelings are not new, but the poet’s expression of them needs to be to have some relevancy to the poet’s age, the poet himself, and the literary tradition. Theses feelings are also not conscious within the poet when composing — the poet does not “recollect” feelings and emotions, but allows them to speak through the verse. Eliot’s explanation as to how this process happens occurs in a mystical realm that remains, at least in this essay, ineffable. Eliot states that “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” (33). Poetry engages emotion, and through that engagement, provides a release. This release is not one of poetical personality, but is seemingly controlled by that ineffable and mystical experience sug-gesting Plato’s communion with the forms.
Like Aristotle’s definition of catharsis, Eliot’s is also vague in the sense of who experiences the catharsis, the poet of the reader. More so than Aristotle, Eliot’s poet seems to experience the release, but would not a reader, too, want (or need) to escape emotion and personality? Eliot indicates that the act of poetical composition is a “continual surrender” of the poet’s personality to “something which is more valuable” (30). This “process of depersonalization” seems to place more emphasis on poetical tradition and readership than it does on the poet. Indeed, the contemporary poet’s expression, because it alters the entire tradition, remains important, but the poet’s individual experiences and emotions become diminished to the point of irrelevancy (29). The poet is a repository, a receptacle for storing impressions and images that are then combined in unique, unexpected ways in the medium (31, 32). The medium, then, and not the poet, becomes more important. Therefore, the readership (the poet is also a reader) of the tradition and the tradition’s relevancy to that readership becomes paramount.
This readership, then, sets the value of the individual poet by placing the poet’s work among the work of the dead poets (29). How much of this placement and judgment, I must wonder, is an unconscious process? And would literature be what it is today without the conscious or unconscious influence of the dead poets? Eliot states, supporting a traditional notion of the canon, that the art of the dead writers is precisely “that which we know” (30). Would there have been a Shakespeare without a Dante, a Donne without a Shakespeare? Indeed, would our language, culture, values, emotions have developed the same way had it not been for the dead poets? At the risk of supporting Harold Bloom, I must agree with Eliot. The canon is the canon because it has made us who we are. Even though much of it represents jaundiced views, sexist language, racial inequalities, it remains a statement of who we are and how we have evolved. Will an African-American understand Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”? Yes, I think he will because he lives in our culture. Will a lesbian have the capacity to grasp the ruminations of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary? Again, yes, I believe she will. Will the white, Jewish male be capable of empathizing with Alice Walker’s The Color Purple? Yes, yes, and again, yes. Each of these has added its own recreation of the of the stuff of art. Each has its own medium and experiences, but still represents an expression of humanity.
Vico suggests that every literature professor has the responsibility of choosing the best authors of the canon to include in her/his curriculum. Eliot’s essay supports this notion by advo-cating, at least implicitly, the notion of canon, for the works that stand the test of time (30). That is, the professor’s selection of literature must have a continuing relevance for each generation; its significance must conform to the tradition of the dead poets and artists (29). This tradition, Eliot suggests, does not mean a blind conformity to style and medium, but a tradition of greatness that incorporates novelty and difference into its ever-increasing folds (28, 29). Bloom suggests, in The Western Canon, that canonical usually began as a violent reaction or rebellion to current trends. This heterodox movement, adds Eliot, conforms by its non-conformity: “To conform merely [to previous forms of art] would be for the new work not really to conform at all” (29-30). The tradition, usually perceived as a pejorative criticism, becomes the way of the canon. This idea, then, does not isolate the canon to the elite, but opens the canon up to new possibilities of expression to new poets with new experiences. All poets, then must conform to tradition to produce new expressions of old artistic ideas — ideas that are nothing less than humanity.
