Tradition and the Individual Talent

Paradox is a statement that, at first, appears to contradict itself but upon further study begins to make sense. Eliot’s prose thrives on these contradictions. A cadre of opposites—past and present, knowledge and creativity—find themselves drawn together in this essay, and even the title unites a seemingly opposite pair— tradition and the individual talent. He creates paradoxes not only by joining illogical pairs but also by taking pairs that seem similar and highlighting their differences. These paradoxes create tension for the reader and result in a new or unconventional way of understanding a relationship or idea. Paradox invites the reader to rethink old conventions and establish a new logic. Eliot and other Modernists lived in a paradoxical time with innovations and new ideas creating confusion and suffering. Paradox allows understanding and contradiction to coexist in the essay.

An analogy shows a relationship between two objects or concepts that might not normally be compared with one another. They can be especially useful for making arguments about philosophical or metaphysical concepts. Eliot uses analogy to explain a poet’s relationship to their poem. The analogy that Eliot employs is scientific: “I therefore invite you to consider as a suggestive analogy, the action which take place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide” (39). In its original form, this line ended the first part of the published essay; since the essay was published over two issues of a journal, the analogy created a cliffhanger at the end of what had so far been an abstract, theoretical piece. Eliot’s analogy creates an image for the reader to hold on to.

An allusion is a reference to a person, place, thing, event, or other literary work with which the reader may be familiar. This technique adds emotional, historical, and philosophical layers to a text, and it underpins Eliot’s emphasis on poetry as a combination of many sources. Eliot uses allusion to call to mind key words or phrases—“sublimity” and “greatness”—from Wordsworth’s “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” (1802) to refute its conclusions:

If you compare several representative passages of the greatest poetry you see how great is the variety of types of combination, and also how completely any semi-ethical criterion of ‘sublimity’ misses the mark. For it is not the ‘greatness,’ the intensity of emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process (40).

This invocation of Wordsworth’s definition adds another layer of meaning and transmutes emotion from the original scene to those familiar with his reference.