In T.S. Eliot’s essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” the writer attempts to dictate what constitutes literary tradition and how writers should be appreciated in that context. He makes reference to a “whole of literature of Europe from Homer,” his conception of a monolith of works deemed “historical.” These works are said to share a dichotomous nature, an ability to be appreciated both alone and in a context with other works. The meanings of poems, therefore, are inexorably tied to the poems of the past. According to Eliot, this makes a poet a continual incorporation of history and an expulsion of self. The poet is not a personality, he contends, but a “transforming catalyst” which synthesizes work from the distinct parts of emotion and feeling.

I didn’t fully grasp Eliot’s arguments for emotion and feelings as disparate things, but it seems like a loophole he built into his theory in order to discredit specific poets. Eliot envisions poetry as “an escape from emotion [and] personality,” stating that more “personal” poets have neither. I find fault in the argument that an individual is no more than a conduit for poetry, more an avatar than an artist.

This is the most interesting point of his argument to me, if only for how strongly I disagree with him. It immediately summons Eliot’s infamous history of racism and anti-Semitism, from which the essay’s Eurocentric views were surely born. He states that all poets must have this grounding in tradition, but that would very pointedly seem to omit women and most world writers. Eagleton’s comparisons of literary and religious ideology also came to mind when he prescribes “a consciousness, not of what is dead, but of what is already living;” Eliot’s reverence for the literary pantheon is hard not to take as idolatry. 

The religion-to-literature parallels then become far more fitting when you realize whom Eliot has purposefully excluded from his model: iconoclasts. They are written off as merely the “supervention of novelty,” to be homogenized and made historical. Countless iconic artists made their reputation by pulling Martin Luthers and rallying the like-minded and disenfranchised without evaporating into a fad. Remembering my favorite iconoclast, DJ Kool Herc (essentially the inventor of hip-hop), I realized that Eliot’s myopic viewpoints and self-righteousness have a perfect mirror in today’s day and age: Macklemore, the inescapably popular rapper. These two white men attempt to dictate what constitutes a universal tradition (Eliot by creating his whitewashed literary lineage, Macklemore by joining the ranks of “conscious” rappers and worshipping the styles of the ’90s), in the process ignoring the contributions of numerous peers and forebears. For every writer that Eliot places in his unified theory of rhyme, he narrows “tradition” to mean “my favorites.” Similarly, a rapper like Macklemore laments an imaginary decline in hip-hop and portrays himself as an alternative, a more traditional rapper. An artist who tries to dictate what constitutes “art” will always fail, because it’s a futile thing to attempt. There will always be something unprecedented.