T.S. Eliot’s account in, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” explores a critical element of literary criticism, tradition, and its importance for imminent writers. Eliot fosters the idea that tradition is commonly disregarded and that as readers we try to find individuality and uniqueness in poetry or any work of art for that matter. However, he combats that approach with the indication that, “no poet, no artist of any art, has his own complete meaning alone.” A new work of literature has to be evaluated with its predecessors and its value depends on how well it adjusted into the framework of past works. This is where the notion of tradition steps in to provide an ever-changing timeline of literary works before the present that will in essence shape and guide contemporary writers.

Eliot defines tradition as, “a sense of the timeless as well as the temporal and of the timeless and temporal together.” In other words, the past and the present works should coincide in a way where the awareness of the existence of the past allows it to coexist side by side with the present. In this sense, a simultaneous order is established where the existence of the past understandingly affects the present but where the present also affects the past. This is where the temporal and timeless merge into a historical sense to create tradition and inevitably a simultaneous order. A writer gains access to tradition by writing, “not merely with his own generation in his bones.” Eliot furthers this by writing about how a writer must indulge in writings back to Homer and all others before the present to create a contemporaneous piece of literature. This involves cognizance of the past to balance the present. A writer must focus less on individuality to create a work that is a sort of literary allusion to those before it.

Eliot furthers this line of reasoning with a scientific analogy of two inert gases, oxygen and sulphur dioxide, that are combined in the presence of platinum to create sulphurous acid. The purpose of this analogy, I believe, is to prove his claim that to create a valuable literary work there should be no trace of the writer in the final product. Similarly, in the analogy of the gases the filament of platinum is left unaltered. He explains how, “The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum.” Both the platinum and poet’s mind are necessary catalysts because without them the consequent products cannot be made. I imagine that Eliot means that the poet’s mind is needed to make poetry but his individuality and personality should be absent from his work. This fabricates the idea that a writer must depersonalize his own work.

Eliot’s phrase that, “the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates…” suggests that an artist may rely on experiences to aid him/her in writing but they really should not hold any place because then his/her work will suffer.  He also implies later on that emotion doesn’t have to be the writers own either. However, what I really found striking in my analysis of Eliot’s essay is his last line where he states, “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. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.” This particular quote, in my opinion, seems like a jab at contemporary writers who write sentimental pieces with profound emotions because in actuality they may not really know what true emotion and personality really are.

I believe that Eliot would defend his claim, if questioned about how subjecting oneself to tradition ruins one’s individuality and creativity, by mentioning that there is a bigger picture at play here and that, “The progress of an artist is continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.” The bigger picture is the simultaneous order of literary works. And when an artist has knowledge of the literary works before him/her and depersonalizes his/her work, an original piece of literature is created. And this relates to the critics job according to Eliot because it is the critics job to compare and contrast an artist’s works with past writers; not in an effort to downgrade or judge the artist’s work but to improve both simultaneously. It was difficult for me to comprehend exactly what Eliot left out but I believe he didn’t delve into the area of the “self” and a writer’s identity too well. He did mention personality but I believe in genres such as fiction, it takes the exploration of the self to create something riveting.