Tradition and the Individual Talent

The essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” written by T.S. Elliot, illustrates for us the many reasons poets should detach themselves from their writings and extract any personal elements they may want to be added. When writing, it is difficult to create a piece of work that does contain elements from previous ancestors and poets. Elliot speaks on the subject of “tradition” (2544), and how “it cannot be inherited” (2544) and that one must harp on historical events as well as events happening in the present in order to create a piece of writing that is not a replica of one’s own personality. Too often poets are applauded for their work, solely based on the individual and original aspects they included, however credit in due lies in past writers. Elliot says, “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” (2544). He is correct in that removing ourselves from the writing we can experience the power and emotion that lies within the writing, rather than feeling like this came directly from the poets, and outlines his life and feelings. Poets should use the emotions that they already have, rather than trying to find new emotions in order to “express feelings which are not actual emotions at all” (2458). Elliot believes that a “bad poet” is “personal” when he is awake but should be unaware, and unaware when he should be awake. The emotions one should use when writing are those that are those recollected while being in a tranquil state of mind. When the mind is experiencing tranquility and the body is in a relaxing environment is when the po...

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...he reader for interpretation. Modernists wrote to leave their reader “to create values and meanings on his own”(2113).

Although many characteristics in the Romantics period, Victorian age, and the Modernist period were very different the three pieces of poetry I have pointed out all have phenomenal authors who follow the essay T.S Elliot wrote without ever reading it. This proves that Elliot is correct in that a great writer must detach his personality and use his preceding poets as a guide to writing poetry. All three poems I have highlighted use the struggles of nature versus society, even though each poem comes from a different period of time. Thus highlighting the fact that each period of time changed so significantly writers began detaching their personality and simply writing emotions of the time, while highlighting the only beauty they could find, nature.