Tradition and the Individual Talent

Essay | T. S. Eliot
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Brief Questions Tradition and Individual Talent

Brief Questions: Tradition and Individual Talent

  • What do critics usually do regarding tradition when judging a poet’s work?
Ans: They simply call poetry “traditional” without truly understanding what tradition means.
  • What does every nation and race have?
Ans: Each has its own creative and critical spirit.
  • What is tradition broader than?
Ans: Tradition is broader than merely copying one’s immediate predecessors.
  • What does the historical sense compel a writer to do?
Ans: It makes him write with awareness of both his own time and all past literature.
  • What is the historical sense?
Ans: It is the sense of the timeless and the temporal existing together.
  • Where does the importance of a poet lie?
Ans: It lies in his relationship with past poets and artists.
  • What happens when a new work of art is created?
Ans: It subtly changes the meaning of all previous works of art.
  • How should value judgments be made?
Ans: They should be applied carefully and slowly.
  • What do we usually say about a new work?
Ans: We say it either fits with the past or appears too different from it.
  • What must the poet be conscious of?
Ans: He must be aware of the true current of artistic tradition, not just famous names.
  • What must the poet be aware of about art?
Ans: That art does not improve, but its material and human mind evolve constantly.
  • What is honest criticism directed toward?
Ans: Toward the poem itself, not the poet.
  • What conception of poetry does Eliot suggest?
Ans: Poetry as a living whole that includes all past and present works.
  • What does Eliot call this theory?
Ans: He calls it the “impersonal theory of poetry.”
  • What is the impersonal theory of poetry?
Ans: Poetry should be judged apart from the poet’s personality or emotions.
  • How does a mature poet differ from an immature one?
Ans: A mature poet can act as a medium for expression, not as a self-centered creator.
  • What example of a catalyst does Eliot give?
Ans: Platinum in a chemical reaction that causes change but remains unaffected.
  • What is the poet’s mind like?
Ans: It is a receptacle storing countless feelings and images until they combine to form poetry.
  • How does Eliot compare Agamemnon and Othello?
Ans: In Agamemnon, emotion belongs to the spectator; in Othello, to the hero himself.
  • What does Eliot say about Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”?
Ans: It unites many feelings unrelated to the bird but linked through its fame.
  • What kind of emotions can a poet have?
Ans: They may be simple, crude, or flat.
  • Whose poetic theory is “emotions recollected in tranquillity”?
Ans: It is Wordsworth’s theory from the Romantic Age.
  • What does Eliot say about a bad poet?
Ans: He is conscious where he should not be, and unconscious where he should be.
  • What do these errors make a bad poet?
Ans: They make him personal instead of impersonal.
  • How does Eliot define poetry creation?
Ans: Poetry is not emotion released, but an escape from emotion and personality.
  • What is a laudable aim?
Ans: To shift attention from the poet to the poem.
  • What does progress of an artist mean?
Ans: A continual self-sacrifice and extinction of personal ego.
  • How is the emotion of art according to Eliot?
Ans: It is impersonal and universal.
  • What is the impersonal theory of poetry?
Ans: The poet’s personal feelings must not appear in his poems.
  • What is a catalyst?
Ans: A substance that speeds a reaction but remains unchanged afterward.
  • What does “a continual extinction of personality” mean?
Ans: It means depersonalization of the poet in the creative process.
  • What does the historical sense involve?
Ans: Awareness of both the presence of the past and the pastness of the present.
  • When should tradition be discouraged?
Ans: When it means blind imitation of immediate predecessors.
  • How is the poet’s mind like a catalyst?
Ans: It collects emotions and ideas and transforms them into new poetic compounds.
  • How can tradition be obtained?
Ans: Only by hard labour and deep study, not by inheritance.
  • What does Eliot mean by “tradition”?
Ans: It is a historical sense linking past and present literature in one living continuum.
  • What is the business of the poet?
Ans: Not to find new emotions, but to use ordinary ones creatively in his poetry. 

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