Eliot’s The Waste Land and Tradition seem to display the poet’s personal thoughts as opposed to the adhering to the existing literary tradition. Through this work, one is able to establish the position or the perception of Eliot with respect to traditional literal culture. Eliot seems to promote individual view as opposed to the traditional approaches of producing poetic work. Rainey notes that Eliot was against traditional approach, which in most cases forced the many poets to shun the individual for the literal tradition (134). To demonstrate his position concerning conflict between literal tradition and personal talent, Elliot opted to promote personal talent over literal tradition.
Elliot seems to be changing his literal predecessors because he was promoting individual talent as opposed to the traditional literal norms. He held the view that artists had their personal talents, which the society might be unable to establish if the artist does not show through producing a new artwork. In fact, not until then, the rest is traditional. Notably, final art product seems to illustrate the experience and tradition of performing art as opposed to expression of individual talent. In Elliot’s view, a good art piece tends to express the tradition as opposed to individual talent (Rainey 142). In essence, Elliot seems to be of the view that any perfect work would be promoting the existence of art as opposed to hallowing personal talent. Since art entails criticizing the society, doing so in a perfect way is instrumental in promoting art. It is critical, however, to note that criticism in this sense refers to both negative and positive criticism – both of which help in shaping the society. Briefly, Elliot seems to champion the course for artists to promote their personal talents by perfecting their art works.
Work Cited
_ ‘The Waste Land; A Norton Critical Edition’. New York: W. W. Norton.
Rainey, S. Lawrence, The Annotated Waste Land with Elliot’s Contemporary Prose. New York: Yale University Press, 2006.
