T.S. Eliot's landmark essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919) broke the norms of the relationship between poets, their work and literary tradition. Ideas in Eliot's minds challenged prevailing perceptions of originality and artistic creation, giving thus more critical appreciation for how poems conceive and interact with the concepts of their literary heritage.
Compared to the traditional sense of the term, Eliot's conception of tradition is much more dynamic. He argues that tradition is not simply the handing down of fossilized thought or forms but a living, organic thing that evolves with every new work added to the canon. That "historical sense" to which he draws attention is a view of both the "pastness of the past" and its simultaneous presence. It requires poets to write with an awareness of all the literature that has preceded them, from earliest times to the most contemporary. The dynamics between past and present in Eliot's theory are extraordinarily deep.
He claims that when actually a really new work of art comes into the world it transforms the whole existing order of literature completely. This means that while history no doubt affects the present, the present in turn recursively alters our view of and understanding of history. For example, using the analogy of a monument, Eliot argues that each time a new piece is added, the whole configuration is altered: "Each new work alters the previous whole." In this way, there is always something of a dialogue between contemporary works and their past peers: it is a living tradition that is always being remodeled and reshaped. To be a "traditional" poet in Eliot's scheme is not simply to imitate or mirror the forms and themes of the past.
It rather involves an acute feeling of the pastness of the present and of its thorough contingency upon the past-to have a historical sense. It is only by such a possession that the poet, according to Eliot, becomes acutely conscious of the antecedent and simultaneous energies and flux. This is an awareness that allows the poet to produce work that is at the same time original and deeply connected with the literary tradition, contributing thus to this evolving tradition. This is the theory of depersonalization that forms the core of Eliot's essay.
He argues that poetry is not a "turning loose of emotion," but an escape from emotion and personality. Eliot recommends that the poet's mind should be a catalyst. His mind should make possible the transformation of emotions and experience into art without the personalities of the poet's feelings entering into the work. According to Eliot, this technique of depersonalization enables the poet to fulfill his task of being a better son of tradition, creating art which moves beyond the personal confines to touch upon the universal themes and emotions. Speaking to creative vision, Eliot rejects the emotional or even personal notion of inspiration.
On his part, he succeeds to focus on the intellectual or even the craft responsibilities associated with the genesis of poetic art. For Eliot, the mighty poet is someone who is capable of relinquishing themselves to something larger, namely the poetic tradition, rather than just pouring out his emotions or even experiences. This does not in any way strip away the significance of the poet's personal talent but rather places him in a complex dance with tradition, where influence and innovation conversely play off one another. Consequences of Eliot's essay are felt not only in poetry but, rather, in all arts and arts creativity in general. Ideas that he presents make us regard as suspect things which we hitherto considered original and inventive. For the most traditionally imbued works should, according to Eliot, prove to be the most original, since they maintain a meaningful dialogue with what has been.
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