The Paradox of Originality
T.S. Eliot on Traditionalism
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T.S. Eliot argues in “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” that the more original and singular a poet is, the more “traditional” she will be. Not traditional in the sense of boringly repeating what has come before, but traditional in the sense of manifesting a “historical sense” of lineage:
We shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual, parts of a poet’s work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously.
Eliot is clear that being traditional is not something one can aspire to. Rather, strangely, the ability to be oneself, to free oneself from tradition, is the best way to reveal its continuity.
In his argument, Eliot throws shade at everyone. At “traditionalists” he offers the critique that “there is no going back.” At “progressives,” he offers the critique that “there’s no escape from the past,” at least when it comes to things which are great. Shallow and mediocre art can lack a historical sense, for Eliot.
Eliot’s paradoxical relationship to tradition resonates with an idea advanced by Paul Ricœur. He says that in the philosophical literature on time and temporality, there is a debate between those who think the present is primary and those who think the future and past are primary. The one side thinks the present is an origin; the other thinks it is a transit (his words).
I take Eliot to be arguing against the primacy of the present, against the notion of the present as origin and in favor of the present as transit or passage.
Traditionalists and progressives are mirror images of one another. The first take the past as normative, while the latter take the future as normative. Eliot took neither past nor future as normative, but believed innovation was the conduit for the eternal. Great works are trans-historical precisely when and they are “of their time.”
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