Death of Art

 Past informs the present or rather vice versa. The preservation of tradition, transcending the individual needs, facilitates the shared experiences. 

T.S. Eliot, a writer who spent all his life crafting literature and experimenting with form and structure, invalidated his owntumultuous struggle by writing the essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”. 

The past is always open to various interpretations and understandings. The dynamic property of the past indicates that nothing is really absolute, even something that is already known. But the dynamism does not exist in isolation. Edward Said, in his travelling theory depicts that ideas require a temporal dimension, rooted in the past in order to achieve a meaningful trajectory in the present. 

Eliot contradicts himself in the later part of the essay where he presents his model for ‘canon poetry’. He asserts that an exceptional piece of poetry is the by- product of the emotions and feelings of the author and right after that he puts forward the theory of impersonality. Although, his theory paved post -structuralist concepts like “Death of the Author”, which further led to the debates on contextual vacuum and textual relativism.He does hint at the universal rather than personal facet of emotions, owing to the popularity of Shakespeare (a lot of tradition). 

Having influenced the modernist movements, Eliot’s essay emphasizes that the individual talent must be cultivated within the context of the tradition. He seeks timeless themes in art by the dint of an objective and enduring standard.