T.S.Eliot:Tradition and Individual Talent

About T.S.Eliot

T.S. Eliot, in full Thomas Stearns Eliot, (born September 26, 1888, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.—died January 4, 1965, London, England), American-English poet, playwright, literary critic, and editor, a leader of the Modernist movement in poetry in such works as The Waste Land (1922) and Four Quartets (1943). Eliot exercised a strong influence on Anglo-American culture from the 1920s until late in the century. His experiments in diction, style, and versification revitalized English poetry, and in a series of critical essays he shattered old orthodoxies and erected new ones. The publication of Four Quartets led to his recognition as the greatest living English poet and man of letters, and in 1948 he was awarded both the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1)                  How would you like to explain Eliot's concept of tradition? Do you agree with it?

>Yes, I am agree with the concept of tradition given by Eliot in his essay in which he points out that tradition is matter of much wider significance it can not be inherited and you must obtain it by great labour. We can know what is good and useful or bad by labour.

2) What do you understand by historical sense?

> "The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence".

A historical sense is not just sense of history as a past but it is also an understanding of the present, the present is the unfolding of the past, As a writer one can must have the historical sense.

3) What is the relationship between "Tradition" and "Individual Talent" according to the poet T.S.Eliot?

2)     Individual talent is a part of tradition, They are like two sides of one coin. A writer while writing his work not only considers literature of his time but also the classical. Individual talent is a part of tradition as like a brick and building.

4) Explain. ''Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential  history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British museum".

> T.s.Eliot wants to say that this quote all writers have absorb knowledge through the wide reading of whole tradition of his own nation like Shakespeare that he was not highly educated person but he had knowledge about his surrounding and history.

5) "Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry"

> T.s.eliot. try to explain that the honest criticism and the appreciation by any critic is of the work art and not of the writer. If we like any work of art it is the quality of that work we like not the poet's personality. E.g now a days people Criticise Tajmahal as a  creation of cruel ruler in other words, we can not judge it in terms of history or personality of maker, but we must see its art of creation.

6) How would you like to explain Eliot's theory of depersonalization? You can explain with the help of chemical reaction in presence of catalyst agent, platinum.

> T.S.Eliot gives an example of chemical process to explain his theory of depersonalization to create Sulphur dioxide, platinum is used as a catalyst, but when it is prepared we do not see platinum any more in the solution. Similarly, to create poetry, poet's mind works as a catalyst but we do not see his mind in his poetry.

7) Explain. "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality"

> In this quote Eliot does not deny personality or emotion to the poet only, he must depersonalize his emotions there should be an extinction of his personality. This impersonality can be achieved  only when poet surrenders himself completely to the work that is to be done.

8) Write two points on which one can write critique on T.S.Eliot as a critic; 
 "Tradition is a matter of much wider significance, it can't be inherited and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour".
"Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry".