Brief Questions Tradition and Individual Talent

Answer

Brief Questions: Tradition and Individual Talent

• What do critics usually do regarding tradition when judging a poet’s work?

Ans: They simply call poetry “traditional” without truly understanding what tradition means.

• What does every nation and race have?

Ans: Each has its own creative and critical spirit.

• What is tradition broader than?

Ans: Tradition is broader than merely copying one’s immediate predecessors.

• What does the historical sense compel a writer to do?

Ans: It makes him write with awareness of both his own time and all past literature.

• What is the historical sense?

Ans: It is the sense of the timeless and the temporal existing together.

• Where does the importance of a poet lie?

Ans: It lies in his relationship with past poets and artists.

• What happens when a new work of art is created?

Ans: It subtly changes the meaning of all previous works of art.

• How should value judgments be made?

Ans: They should be applied carefully and slowly.

• What do we usually say about a new work?

Ans: We say it either fits with the past or appears too different from it.

• What must the poet be conscious of?

Ans: He must be aware of the true current of artistic tradition, not just famous names.

• What must the poet be aware of about art?

Ans: That art does not improve, but its material and human mind evolve constantly.

• What is honest criticism directed toward?

Ans: Toward the poem itself, not the poet.

• What conception of poetry does Eliot suggest?

Ans: Poetry as a living whole that includes all past and present works.

• What does Eliot call this theory?

Ans: He calls it the “impersonal theory of poetry.”

• What is the impersonal theory of poetry?

Ans: Poetry should be judged apart from the poet’s personality or emotions.

• How does a mature poet differ from an immature one?

Ans: A mature poet can act as a medium for expression, not as a self-centered creator.

• What example of a catalyst does Eliot give?

Ans: Platinum in a chemical reaction that causes change but remains unaffected.

• What is the poet’s mind like?

Ans: It is a receptacle storing countless feelings and images until they combine to form poetry.

• How does Eliot compare Agamemnon and Othello?

Ans: In Agamemnon, emotion belongs to the spectator; in Othello, to the hero himself.

• What does Eliot say about Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”?

Ans: It unites many feelings unrelated to the bird but linked through its fame.

• What kind of emotions can a poet have?

Ans: They may be simple, crude, or flat.

• Whose poetic theory is “emotions recollected in tranquillity”?

Ans: It is Wordsworth’s theory from the Romantic Age.

• What does Eliot say about a bad poet?

Ans: He is conscious where he should not be, and unconscious where he should be.

• What do these errors make a bad poet?

Ans: They make him personal instead of impersonal.

• How does Eliot define poetry creation?

Ans: Poetry is not emotion released, but an escape from emotion and personality.

• What is a laudable aim?

Ans: To shift attention from the poet to the poem.

• What does progress of an artist mean?

Ans: A continual self-sacrifice and extinction of personal ego.

• How is the emotion of art according to Eliot?

Ans: It is impersonal and universal.

• What is the impersonal theory of poetry?

Ans: The poet’s personal feelings must not appear in his poems.

• What is a catalyst?

Ans: A substance that speeds a reaction but remains unchanged afterward.

• What does “a continual extinction of personality” mean?

Ans: It means depersonalization of the poet in the creative process.

• What does the historical sense involve?

Ans: Awareness of both the presence of the past and the pastness of the present.

• When should tradition be discouraged?

Ans: When it means blind imitation of immediate predecessors.

• How is the poet’s mind like a catalyst?

Ans: It collects emotions and ideas and transforms them into new poetic compounds.

• How can tradition be obtained?

Ans: Only by hard labour and deep study, not by inheritance.

• What does Eliot mean by “tradition”?

Ans: It is a historical sense linking past and present literature in one living continuum.

• What is the business of the poet?

Ans: Not to find new emotions, but to use ordinary ones creatively in his poetry.