Critical Analysis of Eliot’s Preludes

"Preludes" further ratifies a distinct symbolic worth of woman in the poetry of Eliot. "Preludes" I & II were written in October 1910 and III was written in July 1911 in Paris and IV in November 1911 at Harvard. In "Preludes" there is no direct involvement of a woman character, but, the second person pronoun often reminds us of the presence of a woman around the speaker.

"Preludes" are conspicuous for harmony of mood and tone. "Preludes" put–forth a world of sufferings, a hysteria and neurosis defined around the woman who is also a listener . Urban images occur again with implications of waste and wild, and the woman serves to define an urban hell around herself. The opening lines of Preludes II ratify the idea of urban hell. The morning comes to consciousness,

Of faint stale smell of beer

From the saw–dust trampled street

Will all its muddy feet that press

To early coffee stands.

With the other masquerades

          (14–19)

The opening of Preludes III immediately alarms us about the presence of a woman dressed in dross and waste:

You tossed a blanket from the bed.

You lay upon your back and waited :

You dozed, and watched the night revealing.

The thousand sordid images

Of which your soul was constituted.

                                                                     (24–29)  

The images of suffering, loneliness and isolation become more transparent in Preludes IV.

        Wipe your hand across your mouth and laugh :

The  worlds  revolve  like ancient women gathering

                      fuel in the vacant lot (52-54)

F.R. Leavis rightly points out that Eliot "notes the nervous tension and suppressed hysteria of this world of frustrated  rudderless cultured well to do people" (Lewis Pursuit, 69). The views of F.R. Leavis sum up the real picture of Europe in the first two decades of this century. 

Works Cited

Lewis, F.R. The Common Pursuit. London : Chatto and Windus, 1959.

Eliot- The Portrait of a Lady (Part-1)

English Literature: Views & Reviews: Eliot- The Portrait of a Lady

Eliot- The Portrait of a Lady (Part-2)

"Portrait of a Lady" is another very significant poem of his collection. It is clear that the title of the poem has been taken from Henry James' celebrated novel The Portrait of a Lady. The poem offers a sharp contrast to the poem discussed above. There is marked complimentation between the ideas expressed in the "Love Song" and "The Portrait". However, the perception attributed to these two poems merge into one complete aesthetic unity. J.C.C. Mays rightly observes that "same story told by two voices merge, allowing more to a different but complimentary point of view" (112). May view fully expresses the thematic interdependence existing between these two major poems.
The narrator relies heavily on the atmosphere and the delineation of urban surroundings to illustrate inertia and mutual alienation. The season imagery also plays a dominant role in the caste of imagery. The speaker of the poem visits an elderly woman on four different occasions. the speaker meticulously specifies the months – December, April, August and October, to show the advancement of time and action.
The narrator relies heavily on the atmosphere and the delineation of urban surroundings to illustrate inertia and mutual alienation. The season imagery also plays a dominant role in the caste of imagery. The speaker of the poem visits an elderly woman on four different occasions. the speaker meticulously specifies the months – December, April, August and October, to show the advancement of time and action.
The poem expresses among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon (L.1) which makes the first line of the poem "Four waxed candles in the darkened room" (L. 4) recreate the urban atmosphere of "The Love Song" and "four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead" (L. 5) create the atmosphere of "Juliet's tomb" (L. 6). The reference to Shakespeare's Romance and Juliet accounts for the reenactment of the theme of life in death and death in life. Juliet in the play was taken to be dead whereas she was only in coma. The metaphorical contents of the December image are justified by the image of Juliet's tomb and it recolours the thematic implications of the allusion in Shakespeare. The succeeding time further ratifies the symbolic magnificence of the allusion when the speaker says :
Prepared for all the things to be said or left unsaid.
(L-7)
In the second stanza begins with the image of Lilac symbolizing love and friendship. It is again ironical that neurosis pervades the milieu:
I keep my countenance.
I remain self possessed.
Except when a street plano, mechanical and tired,
Reiterates some worn out common songs.
With the smell of hyacinth across the garden.
Recalling things that other people have desired.
Are these ideas right or wrong.
(Ll. 77–83)
The pervasion of melancholy and inertia continues to dominate the perception even in the October where the lady has nothing but a false hope to life with. She says:


You hardly know when you are coming back.
You will find so much to learn.
My smile fells heavily among the bric a brac.
(Ll. 90–92)
The lines quoted above ratify the parallel between the Prufrock and the Lady in the poem who is equally sensitive. Eliot also constructs a parallel between the Lady in his "Portrait" and Isabel Archer. Eliot obliquely brings into prominence the features of the Isabel and then he transplants the character into a new soil. Eliot's Lady is a sensitive intellect but the most striking covalency is observed when we realize the characters as independent. 'The independence of Isabel', says Arnold Kettle, 'is the quality about her most often emphasized' (p. 22). It is a conspicuous aspect of the poetic technique of Eliot that he transplants the character in a new soil and creates a new metaphor. The independence of the Jamescan character when planted in a new soil results into the scepticism and neurosis expressed in fake optimism:
We must leave it now to fate
You will write at any rate
Perhaps, it is not too late.
I shall sit here serving tea to friends.
(Ll101–104)
"Portrait of the Lady" thus becomes a milestone in the development of Eliot's poetry and the treatment of woman. The Lady in the "Portrait" grows into a complete metaphor which enshrine the vision of the poet. The loss of vitality and the lack of action together make her a living metaphor of life in death and death in life. The flower images further strengthen the meaning and motif as the vitality is realized only at sensual level and life ceases to exist beyond the limits of sensuality. The view of Grover Smith capture attention. He rightly points out:

By penetrating to the depth of the lady's lonely and empty life, the
young man has committed a psychological rape : this is for worse than
fornication, for he has not respected her human condition. (p14)

Works Cited
Eliot, T.S. Collected Poems 1909–1962. Calcutta : Rupa and Company, 1994.
Mays, J.C.C. "Early Poems : from Prufrock to Gerontion". The Cambridge Guide to T.S .Eliot, ed. A. David Moody, London : Cambridge University Press, 1994, 108–120.
Smith Grover. T. S. Eliot : Poetry and Plays, Chicago : University of Chicago, 1951.

Eliot' The Love Song of J. Alfred Prurfock

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is one of the most anthologized poems of T.S. Eliot. Technically, as well as thematically, the poem marks a complete break away from the Victorian poetry and relics of Romanticism that can be witnessed in the early poems of W.B. Yeats. In the poem, the protagonist J. Alfred Prufrock, endures sudden variation and moods depicted ironically. These are the moods of cynicism, repulsion and disillusionment. The irony is manifest at its best through the antithetic impulses of initation and withdrawal. The images of urbanity invite a reader's attention. According to Peter Acroyd the images used on the poems ("The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Portrait of a Lady") are the images inspired by Eliot's stay in Boston. Tracing the origin of the image and characters used in Prufrock, Acroyd says that "it was the life of Boston" and the "people who came close to shifting him altogether" that the poet "incorported into the two great poems of his early maturity" (Acroyd, 39). The most important aspect of the poem is the unique fusion of the character and the urban setting. Eliot himself confesses that 'we cannot isolate' the character 'with the environment' (Aeroyd, 39). It is interesting to note that the atomsphere and the character have been so completely fused together.
Women in the poems also have two distinct origins. On one hand, it serves to define and delineate the psyche of the protagonist and on the other hand, it helps us visualizing the whole atmosphere of the poem. The poem advances upon the resonating node and anti nodes of these two main sources of the emotion of the poem.

The paradoxical strain between the inner and the outer of the protagonist becomes clear in the opening lines of the poem.

Let us go then, you and I
When the evening is spread and against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon the table
(Ll 1 to 3)
In the succeeding line Eliot brings into prominence the urban backdrop against which the action of the dramatic monologue is set. The images like "restless nights in one night cheap hotels" (L. 6) and "streets that follow like a hidious argument" (L. 8) confirm the urban background supporting the lack of certitude and spiritual hollowness of the protagonist. Women appear in the monologue immediately after the first stanza of the poem.
The line quoted above present a generalized picture of contemporary society and the women in these lines are aptly metaphorical to the intellectual vacuum pervading the society. Austin Warren rightly puts in when he say:
The background of the drawing room, the women talking of
Michelangelo, represent the art chatter ocultivated
who talk of the art of the past, who a
They and Prufrock represent air effect, and decadent
and decayed world in which women and men talk, instead
of acting and loving.(p291)
The views of Austin Warren make clear the meaning inherent in the metaphor. The urban images employed to illustrate the picture of a cat emerging as the evening.


The yellow toy that rubs its back upon the window panes.
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes.
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains.
(Ll 15-18.)
Eliot brings forth the idea of inverted divinity and correlates it with destiny. The image of cat imparts new metaphorical shades to the women in the life of the protagonist who represents an eternal conflict subsisting between a sensitive intellect and a group of hostile forces operating upon the destiny of the protagonist. The protagonist mocks at himself and say:

Do I dare
Disturb the universe ?
In a minute there is time,
For decision and revisions which a minute will reverse

F.R. Lewis rightly observes that through Prufrock Eliot expresses "a modern sensibility, the wave of feeling, the mode of experience of on fully alive in his own age" (Bearings, 75). The reverberation of the decisions and revision oblige him a hallucinatory perceptions and ratify the pervasion of evil forces and omnipotence of inverted divinity realized through hallucinatory perceptions and expressed in surrealistic images;

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea.
By sea girls wreathed with sea weed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
(Ll. 129–131)
"The Love Song of J. Aflred Prufrock" sets into being a privileged treatment of women that represents and illustrates a larger aspect of human destiny comprising all forms of superior forces, social, as well as cultural. "The Love Song of J. Aflred Prufrock" sets into being a privileged treatment of women that represents and illustrates a larger aspect of human destiny comprising all forms of superior forces, social, as well as cultural.
Works Cited
Eliot, T.S. Collected Poems 1909–1962. Calcutta : Rupa and Company, 1994.
Lewis, F.R. New Bearings in English Poetry. London : Chatto and Windus, 1959.

The Poetry of T.S. Eliot

The new post in my blog, aim at a critical scrutiny of the poetry of T.S.Eliot. it is unambiguous that Eliot is the most prominent figure as far as the English poetry is concerned, yet the fact can’t be denied that the poetry of Eliot suffers a possibility of misinterpretation chiefly due to richness of allusions and references. The forthcoming posts in this blog aim at line by line analysis of the major works of Eliot. It is unfortunate that the poet has always been alleged for the maltreatment of women in his poetry, thus the special attention has been paid on the exploration of the symbolic worth of the women in the poetry of Eliot

Thomas Sterns Eliot was born on 26 September 1888 in St. Louis in Missouri in the family of a Calvinist. He was the youngest of the seven children of his parents – Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Champe Sterns. It is important to note that the family of Eliot played a vital role in shaping the ideas and ideals that determine the essentials of his literature. The conservative inclinations of Eliot that play pivotal role in his life and works can be traced back to his grandfather W.G. Eliot who laid great emphasis on the role of law and religion in shaping the society and maintaining its morals and standards. Eliot acknowledges his debt to his grandfather when he says that 'the standard of conduct was that which my grandfather had set'. He further confides that the "moral judgements" and the 'decision between duty and self indulgence were taken as if like Moses', his 'grandfather had brought down the labels of law, any deviation from which would be sinful' (Acroyd 3).

Eliot's childhood was very happy, however, there are shades of dissatisfaction and reservations against the strict rather oppressive land of upbringing. The combined influence of Unitarianism and Calvinism exercised some very complex influences in the mind of the poet. It can be observed easily that the paradoxical influences of Calvinism and Unitarianism operate on his mind all through his poetic career.

Harvard years constitute another major influence in the mind of the poet. In Harvard, Eliot come in contact with Santayana and Babbit who consolidated the foundation of classicism. These years witnessed the flowering of Eliot's intellect. On Babbit's inspiration, Eliot learnt Sanskrit and Pali and studied Indian philosophy, which shaped his intellect. Besides Indian classic writings, Dante is the most conspicuous influence on the mind of the poet. He completed Graduation in 1909 and Post Graduation in 1910. He left for Paris to study French literature and came close to the works of Ezra Pound, which is another significant influence on him. He returned to Harvard and enrolled himself as a student of philosophy.

Eliot reached London 1914. The literary scene in England was chaotic and fragmented due to absence of any governing literary principle. Early modernist dominated the literary scene whole situation was dominated by T.E. Hulme and Ford Maddox Ford. Eliot's first collection of poems Prufrock and Other Observations appeared in 1917. The collection has twelve poems and the title poem of the collection, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is the most important and well–known poem of the collection. It was followed by Poem 1920. It is clear from the title itself that this collection appeared in 1920. This collection has twelve poems. One of them is "Gerontion", a milestone in Eliot's poetic career. The publication of Poems 1920 was followed by the emergence of The Waste Land which proved to be a historic event not only for Eliot but for the whole tradition of English poetry. The poem metamorphosed English poetry by adding new dimensions to it in terms of technical innovativeness and thematic boldness. The poem also illustrates Eliot's ideals of form and function of poetry in the larger perspective. The Waste Land illustrates Eliot's ideals and predilections of poetry to perfection. Eliot's formed a group with the publishing house – Faber and Gawyer that later became Faber and Faber. Another significant event took place in the life of Eliot that in June 1927. He was confirmed in the Church of England and in November in the same year, he was granted citizenship of Great Britain. The poems revealing Eliot's spiritual doubts and conflicts were published during this period. "Journey of the Magi" was published in 1927, it was followed by "A Song of Simeon" (1928), "Annmula" (1929) and "Marina" (1930). Eliot's poetic career came to a planned end with the publication of Four Quartets. The long poem like, The Waste Land, is divided into four parts. "Burnt Norton" is the first part of the poem. It is followed by "East Cooker". "Dry Salvage" and the last part of the poem is "Little Gidding". Four Quartets offer a sharp contrast to The Waste Land from the point of view of thematic evolution. The Waste Land represents the culmination of the theme of spiritual hollowness whereas Four Quartets is the poem about the recovery of spiritual bliss.
Eliot, in his critical writings, has been expressing his deep inclination towards drama. The predominance of dramatic objectivity in poetry has always been a critical parameter of defining significance. The predominance of object makes clear Eliot's inclination towards drama. The first play written by Eliot was The Rocks which was performed at Sadler's Wealth Theatre from 28 May to 9 June 1930. Eliot, thereafter, was commissioned to write Murder in the Cathedral in 1935 for Canterbury festival. Eliot's next play – The Family Reunion was performed in 1939. The Cocktail Party (1949) was a great success. His later plays are The Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman(1958).
During the late forties, Eliot's status as an International intellect grew enormously. He was involved in delivering lectures in England and America. He received a number of awards and fellowships. In 1948, he was awarded the Order of Merit, the highest British decoration, and the Noble Prize. The happiest moment in his life came on 10 January 1956 when he married Valerie Fletcher who had, for long, been a devoted Secretary to him. Eliot admits that without the satisfaction of a happy marriage, no achievement, no honour could give me satisfaction (Acroyd 175–176).
Eliot fell sick during the winter of 1962 and the recovery was slow and difficult. He died on 4 January 1965.

References:
Acroyd, Peter. T. S. Eliot, London : Cardinal, 1984.

critical review of "Tradition and Individual Talent" by Eliot (Part-2)

"Tradition and Individual Talent" is the essay of lasting significance in the history of modern criticism. The essay brought into being two principal aspects of Eliot's critical domain – tradition and impersonality in art and poetry, that rated over the realm of criticism. The essay also brings forth Eliot's views on the inter–relation between traditional and individual talent. The essay brought into being the new approach with poets of everlasting significance and it also provided the parameters for the assessment of the genius and the shortcomings of the masters but contributed to the history of English Literature. The idea of tradition with all its magnificence, has a meaning beyond the conventional sense of term. It begins with a historical sense and goes on acquiring new dimensions along political and cultural dimension, and this creates a system of axes for the assessment of the worth and genius of a poet.
The idea of Eliot's theory of tradition is based on the inevitable phenomenon of the continuity of the values during the process called civilization. Eliot beings with a description that makes tradition a term of abuse and develops to a metaphor of unquestionable authenticity. 'Seldom perhaps', he says, 'does the word appear except in a phrase of censure'. He further says :
You can hardly make the word aggreable to English ears without this comfortable reference to the reassuring science of archaeology.1
The above quoted lines from one of the most celebrated critical endeavours make it clear that Eliot aims at developing a new concept and structuring a new approach to the very phenomenon called poetry. Eliot, after beginning with the seemingly derogatory implications of the term imparts a new meaning and magnificence to the term when he identifies tradition with historical sense. The identification discussed above makes it clear that the tradition according to Eliot is something more than mere conglomeration of dead works. The identification of tradition with historical sense serves to ratify the stature of tradition in assessing the works and function of pets and poetry. He elaborates the idea of historical sense and says :
and the historical sense invokes a perception not only of the partners of the past but also 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 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.2
Eliot in the above quoted line puts forth a dynamic manifestation of tradition which shapes the minds of different poets of different generation. Eliot also inkles that the poet's conformity into tradition is an act of rigorous intellectual efforts that constitute a poet in him. Eliot further defines the idea of historical sense and says :
The historical sense which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal, and of timeless and temporal together, is what makes a writer tradition. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acute by conscious of his place in time of his contemporaneity .3
The excerpt from the essay makes it clear that Eliot pus the whole term in a much wider context than it is otherwise used before. Eliot takes tradition to be an embodiment of values and beliefs shared by a race which leads to the idea that there is a process of natural selection and rejection. The values and the belief that die with the passage of time are subject to rejection. The values and beliefs that constitute the tradition are living one with capacity of mutual interaction. The old and the new interpenetrate and this interpenetration results into a new order defined in terms of the simultaneous existence of the values of the past and the present. The survival of past ratifies the presentness of it. The simultaneous existence of the past and the present, of the old and the new. It is, thus, evident that the poet is guided chiefly by the dynamics of the tradition. Eliot further elaborates:
No poet, no artist has a complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation in the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone, you must set him from contrast and comparison among the dead.4
Eliot reaffirms that the poet, in order to survive as a poet must invite close contrast and comparison with the dead poets. Unless, a poet is capable of doing that he ceases to matter in the history of poetry. Richard Shusterman rightly observes that the 'enduring demands preserved in a tradition make it capable of functioning as a synchronize structural system'.5 Raman Selden observes that 'the standard theories of literature often combine these apparently disparate modes of thinking'.6 It is remarkable that these apparently disparate modes of thinking are disciplined by values.
The relation between the new work of art and the tradition is another very complex idea enshrined in the essay. It is, however, true that the complete meaning of the poet is realized through his relationship with the tradition but the importance of individual talent cannot be set aside in a discussion on the Eliot's poetics. It is again noteworthy that the tradition and individual talent are not at a sharp contrast with each other but they are mutually complimentary. Eliot conceives tradition and individual talent as unifiable and show that the two have an equally important role to play in poetic creation. The views of Jean Michael Rabate capture our attention. He commenting on the function of historical sense in the caste of an individual talent says :
This requires that the "bones" belong to the individual who recomposes simultaneity at every moment without losing a combination of the timeless and the merely temporal.7
Individual talent is needed to acquire the sense of tradition. Eliot lays good emphasis on the idea of interactivity between the tradition and individual talent. If the individual talent needs to acquire tradition, then the individual talent in turn modifies tradition. Eliot ratifies the dynamic nature of tradition.
The existing monument 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 towards the whole are readjusted; and this in conformity between the old and the new.8
The above quoted lines make clear the cyclic interdependence between tradition and individual talent. Shusterman's view again oblige inclusion, 'Old and new elements', he points out, 'derive their meaning from their reciprocal relations of contrast and coherence, in a larger whole of tradition which they themselves constitute as parts'.9 It is evident from the views of Shusterman that tradition is not anything fixed or static but it is something dynamic and everchanging. Every new participation in the tradition results into restructuring of the same tradition with different emphasis. It is constantly growing and changing and becoming different from what it has been earlier. The past directs the present and is modified by the present. This is an apt revelation of the traditional capabilities of a poet. The past helps us understand the present and the present throws light on the past. The new work of art is judged by the standards set by the past. It is in the light of the past alone that an individual talent can be. This is the way Eliot subtly reconciles the tradition and the individual talent.
Eliot's views on tradition paves way for the theorization of the impersonality in art and poetry. Divergent views about Eliot's theory of objectivity have been discussed but it is observed that critics tend to generalize the theory to a common experience. It is noticeable that the impersonality that Eliot discusses in his criticism does not imply a mechanical objectivity of a hoarding painter, but, it owes its genesis to the personality that emerges out of the creative personality of the poet. It is understandable that Eliot denies an outright and blind adherence to some peculiar faiths and belief but an emancipation from what is very personal on peculiar. He says :
...... 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 experience combine in a peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.10
It is clear from the above quotation that Eliot lays heavy stress on the two different aspect of a creator what he is as an individual and at the same time what he is as a creator; It is an easy inference from the above equation that Eliot's to his critical theories discards the emotion of strictly personal significance and centers his ideals on the transformation of what is personal but something of universal significance.
The above quoted excerpts from "Tradition and Individual Talent" put forth a belligerently anti romantic view of poetry which lays emphasis on poetry and discards the very idea of the personality of the poet. It is obligatory to remember Aristotle as this point of time who, against all odds takes 'plot' to be the 'soul of the tragedy' and claims that 'there can be tragedy than a character but not without a plot'.11 Eliot in these lines discovers a new possibility of a universal meaning, which free from the whims and eccentricities of the poet and has a wider significance. The comparison made out by Eliot between the mind of the poet and the catalyst in a chemical reaction further confirms the point of view. He says :
When the two gases, previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum they form sulphurous 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.12
The analogy that Eliot puts forth makes it clear that the poetry is something entirely different from what is the personal identity of the poet. This is principally the reason that Eliot, all along the length and breadth of his critical writings, makes frequent use of terms like 'transmate', 'transform', 'digest', etc. He further suggests :
... 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.13
Eliot puts forth similar views in his celebrated essay – "The Metaphysical Poets", and emerges with a more candid elaboration of the mechanism of poetic expression. He asserts :
When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamatic disparate experience; the ordinary experience is chaotic, irregular and fragmentary. The latter falls in love or reads spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with noise of a typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.14
It is obvious that Eliot aims at the recreation of a non–mechanical unity and of the store of impressions and experiences in the poet's mind. The views of William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks invite our attention. They point out :
Such an emphasis was bound to bring down upon Eliot, the charges that has had reduced the poet to an automaton who secreted his poet in same unconscious and brainless way and that he had thus committed himself to the most romantic theory possible.15
Edward Lobb comes out with a just explanation of the possibility of levelling such charges against the theory of Eliot. Lobb points out that 'as a living thing, the poet's mind can create a non–mechanical unity out of diverse, even contradictory elements.'16 Lobb compares him with Coleridge who 'found this ability to reconcile "opposite on discordant qualities" to be the characteristic of power of the living imagination'.16 The views of Lobb make it clear that the impersonality that Eliot aims at is not a mechanical impersonality but the impersonality of that owes its genesis to values prevailing in spatio–temporal continum. He in his essay – "Yeats" (1940) reiterated the importance of personality in considering his later poetry to be superior to his earlier poetry as that is more profound revelation in the last phase of poetic existence. He says :
There are two forms of impersonality; that which is natural to a skilful craftman and that which is more and more achieved by a maturing artist. The first is that of what I have called 'anthology pieces' of lyric by Loveless or Suckling or Campion a fine poet than either. The second personality is that of the poet who out of intense and passionate experience, is able to express a general truth; retaining all the peculiarity of his experience and make it a general symbol.17
It is obvious from the above quoted excerpt that the impersonality of first type is the impersonality without a personality. He makes the idea more clear in "Tradition and Individual Talent" when he says :
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emtion; it is not an expression of the personality but an escape from the personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from them.18
It is obvious from the above quotations that personality and emotions are pre–requisites of the impersonality.
In order that Eliot's views on impersonality of poetry acquire the clarity of vision and theory, it is obligatory to compare Eliot's view on poetry with those of Wordsworth who represents the apex of Romantic idealogy. Wordsworth in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, defines poetry and says :
Poetry is spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings : it takes its origin from the emotions recollected in tranquility till by a species of reaction tranquility gradually disappears and the emotion, kindered to that, which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced and does actually exists in the mind of the poet.13
It is clear from the above definition of William Wordsworth that he aims at purifying the emotion to the most personal by 'a specie of reaction' and the possibility of 'concentration' or 'digestion' or 'transmutation' or formation of 'new wholes' is virtually in existent in the Romantic view of poetry.
Eliot's theory of impersonality of art gets apt justification in his essay, "Hamlet and His Problems". He says :
The only way of expressing an emotion is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events, which shall be formula of that, particular emotion, such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experiences are given, the emotion is immediately evoked. If you examine any of Shakespeare's more successful tragedies, you will find this exact equivalence; you will find that the state of mind of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep has been communicated to you by a skilful accumulation of imagined sensory impressions; the words of Macbeth hearing of his wife's death strike us as if given the sequence of events, these words were automatically released by the last event in the series.20
Eliot's views expressed earlier, make the idea very clear that the emotion to be expressed in a work of art has a contextual significance only, and outside the context of the work of art, the emotion ceases to mean, and this results into a chaos. Eliot further says that 'Hamlet (the man) is dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear'.21 The theory of objective–correlative fully ratifies Eliot's adherence on the inevitability of impersonality of the emotion of art. Wimsatt and Brooks rightly observes that 'the doctrine of the objective correlative' places thoroughly anti–romantic stress on craftsmanship.'22
It is also observed that the concept of impersonality continually grows and acquires new shades. Later by the time of the pulication of After Strange Gods the idea of impersonality was apparalled in new form. Later Eliot propounded the view that the great work of art conforms to the idea of Christian orthodoxy. What Eliot exalted most in his earlier writings, the development of a point of view, and his concept of impersonality, later merged with the confinement of the work to the principles and dogmas propounded by Christian orthodoxy. In After Strange Gods he categorizes writer according to the faith and beliefs expressed in their works.
It is thus clear that "Tradition and Individual Talent" is one of the most important essay of Eliot. It puts forth two very important aspects of his critical mindset – tradition and impersonality of art and poetry that determine the nature and scope of his criticism.

References

1T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood (London : Metheun, 1965) 47.
2Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 49.
3Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 49.
4Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 49.
5Richard Shusterman, The Eliot and the Philosophy of Criticism (London : Duckworths, 1988) 181.
6Raman Seldon, The Theory of Criticism (New York : Longman, 1990) 405.
7Jean Michael Rabate, "Tradition and T.S. Eliot", The Cambridge Comparison to T. S. Eliot, ed., A. David Moody (London : Cambridge University Press, 1994) 214.
8Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 50.
9Shusterman 187.
10Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 56.
11Aristotle, The Poetics, Trans. S. H. Butcher. Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Arts (New Delhi : Kalyani, reprint 1987) 27.
12Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 54.
13Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 54.
14T. S. Eliot, "The Metaphysical Poets", Selected Essays (London : Faber and Faber, 1976) 248.
15William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism : A Short History (New Delhi : Oxford and I.B.H. Publishing, 1957) 665.
16Edward Lobb, T. S. Eliot and the Romantic Critical Tradition (London : Rowledge and Kegan Paul, 1981) 129.
17Eliot, "Yeats", Selected Essays, 149.
18Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", Selected Essays, 58.
19William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads (New Delhi : Macmillan, 1981) 23.
20Eliot, "Hamlet and His Problems", The Sacred Wood, 100–101.
21Eliot, "Hamlet and His Problems", The Sacred Wood, 101.
22Wimsatt and Brooks 668.

Critical Analysis of "Tradition and Individual Talent" by Eliot (Part-1)

"Tradition and Individual Talent" is the essay of lasting significance in the history of modern criticism. The essay brought into being two principal aspects of Eliot's critical domain – tradition and impersonality in art and poetry, that rated over the realm of criticism. The essay also brings forth Eliot's views on the inter–relation between traditional and individual talent. The essay brought into being the new approach with poets of everlasting significance and it also provided the parameters for the assessment of the genius and the shortcomings of the masters but contributed to the history of English Literature. The idea of tradition with all its magnificence, has a meaning beyond the conventional sense of term. It begins with a historical sense and goes on acquiring new dimensions along political and cultural dimension, and this creates a system of axes for the assessment of the worth and genius of a poet.

The idea of Eliot's theory of tradition is based on the inevitable phenomenon of the continuity of the values during the process called civilization. Eliot beings with a description that makes tradition a term of abuse and develops to a metaphor of unquestionable authenticity. 'Seldom perhaps', he says, 'does the word appear except in a phrase of censure'. He further says :

You can hardly make the word aggreable to English ears without this comfortable reference to the reassuring science of archaeology.

The above quoted lines from one of the most celebrated critical endeavours make it clear that Eliot aims at developing a new concept and structuring a new approach to the very phenomenon called poetry. Eliot, after beginning with the seemingly derogatory implications of the term imparts a new meaning and magnificence to the term when he identifies tradition with historical sense. The identification discussed above makes it clear that the tradition according to Eliot is something more than mere conglomeration of dead works. The identification of tradition with historical sense serves to ratify the stature of tradition in assessing the works and function of pets and poetry. He elaborates the idea of historical sense and says :

and the historical sense invokes a perception not only of the partners of the past but also 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 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.

Eliot in the above quoted line puts forth a dynamic manifestation of tradition which shapes the minds of different poets of different generation. Eliot also inkles that the poet's conformity into tradition is an act of rigorous intellectual efforts that constitute a poet in him. Eliot further defines the idea of historical sense and says :

The historical sense which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal, and of timeless and temporal together, is what makes a writer tradition. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acute by conscious of his place in time of his contemporaneity .

The excerpt from the essay makes it clear that Eliot pus the whole term in a much wider context than it is otherwise used before. Eliot takes tradition to be an embodiment of values and beliefs shared by a race which leads to the idea that there is a process of natural selection and rejection. The values and the belief that die with the passage of time are subject to rejection. The values and beliefs that constitute the tradition are living one with capacity of mutual interaction. The old and the new interpenetrate and this interpenetration results into a new order defined in terms of the simultaneous existence of the values of the past and the present. The survival of past ratifies the presentness of it. The simultaneous existence of the past and the present, of the old and the new. It is, thus, evident that the poet is guided chiefly by the dynamics of the tradition. Eliot further elaborates:

No poet, no artist has a complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation in the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone, you must set him from contrast and comparison among the dead.

Eliot reaffirms that the poet, in order to survive as a poet must invite close contrast and comparison with the dead poets. Unless, a poet is capable of doing that he ceases to matter in the history of poetry. Richard Shusterman rightly observes that the 'enduring demands preserved in a tradition make it capable of functioning as a synchronize structural system'.⁵ Raman Selden observes that 'the standard theories of literature often combine these apparently disparate modes of thinking'.⁶ It is remarkable that these apparently disparate modes of thinking are disciplined by values.

The relation between the new work of art and the tradition is another very complex idea enshrined in the essay. It is, however, true that the complete meaning of the poet is realized through his relationship with the tradition but the importance of individual talent cannot be set aside in a discussion on the Eliot's poetics. It is again noteworthy that the tradition and individual talent are not at a sharp contrast with each other but they are mutually complimentary. Eliot conceives tradition and individual talent as unifiable and show that the two have an equally important role to play in poetic creation. The views of Jean Michael Rabate capture our attention. He commenting on the function of historical sense in the caste of an individual talent says :

This requires that the "bones" belong to the individual who recomposes simultaneity at every moment without losing a combination of the timeless and the merely temporal.⁷

Individual talent is needed to acquire the sense of tradition. Eliot lays good emphasis on the idea of interactivity between the tradition and individual talent. If the individual talent needs to acquire tradition, then the individual talent in turn modifies tradition. Eliot ratifies the dynamic nature of tradition.

The existing monument 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 towards the whole are readjusted; and this in conformity between the old and the new.⁸

The above quoted lines make clear the cyclic interdependence between tradition and individual talent. Shusterman's view again oblige inclusion, 'Old and new elements', he points out, 'derive their meaning from their reciprocal relations of contrast and coherence, in a larger whole of tradition which they themselves constitute as parts'.⁹ It is evident from the views of Shusterman that tradition is not anything fixed or static but it is something dynamic and everchanging. Every new participation in the tradition results into restructuring of the same tradition with different emphasis. It is constantly growing and changing and becoming different from what it has been earlier. The past directs the present and is modified by the present. This is an apt revelation of the traditional capabilities of a poet. The past helps us understand the present and the present throws light on the past. The new work of art is judged by the standards set by the past. It is in the light of the past alone that an individual talent can be. This is the way Eliot subtly reconciles the tradition and the individual talent.

Eliot's views on tradition paves way for the theorization of the impersonality in art and poetry. Divergent views about Eliot's theory of objectivity have been discussed but it is observed that critics tend to generalize the theory to a common experience. It is noticeable that the impersonality that Eliot discusses in his criticism does not imply a mechanical objectivity of a hoarding painter, but, it owes its genesis to the personality that emerges out of the creative personality of the poet. It is understandable that Eliot denies an outright and blind adherence to some peculiar faiths and belief but an emancipation from what is very personal on peculiar. He says :

...... 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 experience combine in a peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.¹⁰

It is clear from the above quotation that Eliot lays heavy stress on the two different aspect of a creator what he is as an individual and at the same time what he is as a creator; It is an easy inference from the above equation that Eliot's to his critical theories discards the emotion of strictly personal significance and centers his ideals on the transformation of what is personal but something of universal significance.

The above quoted excerpts from "Tradition and Individual Talent" put forth a belligerently anti romantic view of poetry which lays emphasis on poetry and discards the very idea of the personality of the poet. It is obligatory to remember Aristotle as this point of time who, against all odds takes 'plot' to be the 'soul of the tragedy' and claims that 'there can be tragedy than a character but not without a plot'.¹¹ Eliot in these lines discovers a new possibility of a universal meaning, which free from the whims and eccentricities of the poet and has a wider significance. The comparison made out by Eliot between the mind of the poet and the catalyst in a chemical reaction further confirms the point of view. He says :

When the two gases, previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum they form sulphurous 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.¹²

The analogy that Eliot puts forth makes it clear that the poetry is something entirely different from what is the personal identity of the poet. This is principally the reason that Eliot, all along the length and breadth of his critical writings, makes frequent use of terms like 'transmate', 'transform', 'digest', etc. He further suggests :

... 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.¹³