present Eliot writes The historical sense involves a perception not only of the pastness of the past but of its presence This means that when a poet writes he should feel that all the poets of the past Homer Dante Shakespeare Milton are living with him His new poem should not destroy the past but should fit into that old order and add something new to it Relationship Between Past and Present According to Eliot the past and the present are not separate They have a living relationship The past helps to shape the present and the present also changes the way we see the past He says The past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past When a new work of art appears it does not stand alone It takes its place in the order of all other works that came before it At the same time it slightly changes that order because now the past is seen in a new light In this way tradition is not fixed or dead It is alive and keeps growing with every new poem Eliot s historical sense teaches that literature is a living whole a continuous flow where old and new always exist together The Poet s Responsibility to Tradition Eliot believed that a poet must have knowledge and discipline to understand the tradition This is not easy The poet must spend his life studying and feeling the works of the past He must know the main current of literature not just one period or one poet However Eliot also warns that the poet must not imitate the past Blind imitation makes poetry lifeless The historical sense helps him to balance both to respect the old and to create the new Historical Sense Makes the Poet Modern Eliot also says that having a historical sense does not make a poet old-fashioned In fact it makes him truly modern The poet who knows the past deeply becomes more aware of his own time He can see what is new and special about his own age only when he understands what came before it Eliot says that a poet with a historical sense lives in the present moment of the past In other words he keeps the past alive in the present through his poetry In this way tradition and modernity exist together through the poet s historical sense In conclusion Eliot s idea of the historical sense shows his classical mind and his love for order and continuity He believed that a great poet is not born in isolation but grows out of the long history of literature The poet must live both in the past and in the present The past gives meaning to his art and his art keeps the past alive In this way Eliot s historical sense joins all poets of all ages in one great living tradition of art