A new sensibility: the emphasis on the individual
T. S. Eliot’s 1919 essay Tradition and the Individual Talent challenges the Romantic emphasis on personal feeling. Eliot argues that tradition is not imitation: a poet must develop a Historical Sense, an awareness of literature as a living whole. The past remains present, and a significant new work can alter how earlier works relate to one another. A poet’s value should therefore be considered in relation to the literary tradition, not in isolation.
Impersonality and the catalyst
Eliot also rejects the idea that poetry simply expresses the poet’s private emotions. In his Impersonal Theory, the poet’s mind acts as a catalyst: it enables impressions and feelings to combine into a work of art, while remaining separate from that work. The poem’s emotion is thus an artistic creation, not a direct disclosure of the poet’s personality.
- Historical Sense: awareness of the simultaneous presence of past and present literature.
- Tradition: an actively engaged relationship with earlier writers, not copying.
- Impersonality: poetry transforms experience into an artistic emotion independent of the author’s biography.
Eliot’s account contrasts with Wordsworth’s description of poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquillity”: it presents composition as transformation rather than personal expression.