In the first section of “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” it seems as though Eliot espouses the development of skill in a poet. He harps on the value of the past, tradition, previous writers, and so on as essential to the present and the contemporary writer’s approach to composing poetry. He says, “the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career.” One may read this as a loyalty to the canon, in which case the poet adopts and develops the former ideas and strategies of “existing monuments”; however, I rather read the statement as a plea for the poet to load her technical composition arsenal. An inventor who uses her knowledge of the wheel will theoretically be much more successful that an inventor who rejects all prior knowledge, thus working to reinvent already established devices. Likewise, I think that Eliot emphasizes the importance of studying poets who have established successful careers, so that these new poet may learn and employ already developed and perfected forms and strategies to achieve a certain effect.
This idea substantiates the value of skill in poetry over the often too prevalent notion of expression. However, this knowledge of, respect for, and incorporation of tradition in the first section of “Tradition and the Individual Talent” is lost as the essay moves toward the second and third sections. As I read these sections, I found myself asking Eliot, “Why must the poet always feel? Why can he never think?” Eliot insists that the poet, in order to be of poetic value, must lose his mind and personality, which I would argue gives the poet her uniqueness. He believes that she must reject any natural emotion so that she may create a “significant” artistic emotion. She must surrender her personality, which involves personal history and makes the art personal. He intimates, “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.” So is the best writing process, according to Eliot, the act of repressing the self and emotions? No wonder so many poets were depressed, died young, or committed suicide. That’s a lot of stress!
In this portion, Eliot also gives the example of a filament of platinum being the catalyst for oxygen and sulphur dioxide. The platinum represents the poet’s mind and the gases represent the “numberless feelings, phrases, images” which float around in the poet’s head “until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.” As you so aptly noted in your 1984 response, Dr. Sparks, this analogy is very problematic for the modern reader. Aside from the feminist reading of the phallic filament, Eliot forces his ideal poet into a powerless position. The poet can only create the right conditions and hope for a reaction. The creative process becomes “involuntary, unconscious,…automatic [and a] mechanical creation…” (Sparks). This idea contradicts the reverence for tradition and the “monuments” as the teacher of skill and, worse, Eliot never resolves or unifies this conflict.
I wholly expected a dramatic unification at the conclusion of Eliot’s essay, but instead I was left with ambivalent and oppositional logic, rather than emotions, floating around in my head. Though there are some golden nuggets in this essay, each reader must decide which nugget will most benefit her because of the problematic nature of this beast. However, I must point out that if this duality worked for Eliot, there must be some artistic value in his composition techniques.
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