poetry class, sophmore year.

well, i dug this up. its some more shit about the collective unconsciousness. i haven't read it in a while but i got an A on it. hear ya go...


The Concept of Tradition in the Work of Auden and Eliot

As poets of the early twentieth century began to examine their work and ideals involved in its conception, some began to see themselves in light of their predecessors as the next step in a literary tradition. Two poets who have regarded their place in modern poetry as a direct result of their poetic lineage are W.H. Auden and T.S. Eliot. In prosaic writing, Auden and Eliot explore the extent of their dependence upon past writing and literary traditions as well as contemplate their own role in the formation of poetry. The poets do not proclaim identical ideas about how their individual poetry is conjured; however, they do express a similar interest in allowing the influence of their poetic ancestors to guide their work. As he expresses in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Eliot believed that poets should aspire to an ideal of aesthetic impersonality and not romantic self-expression. Similarly, Auden discusses the negative ramifications that arise when a poet is too obsessed with a desire to be loved for himself alone in his collected teachings, “Writings.”. The poets, in both their prose and poetry, engage in an evaluation of their sources and an interpretation of the influence each of them had to bear on their writing. In a truly modern fashion, against the backdrop of a collective European history, Auden and Eliot describe their poetry as the culmination of the unconscious amassing of ideas, emotions, and insights intermixed with the personal rationality of the poet who puts the work together.
For W.H. Auden, the art of writing a poem has much to do with the invocation of a muse and the subsequent forays into the cultural collective it brings with it. He states that “It is true that, when he is writing a poem, it seems to a poet as if there were two people involved, his conscious self and a Muse whom he has to woo or an Angel with whom he has to wrestle” (Auden, 1002). Through the conscious act of wrestling or wooing your inspiration, Auden feels that poets retain a conscious participation in their work while accepting the insight of generations of artists. As he expresses in “Writing,” Auden is very critical of the poet who claims that his work is induced purely by a trance state. He feels that by accepting such “inspired” truths wholeheartedly, one leaves themselves open to the possibility of recounting nonsensical ideas in the form of a poem. In a poem like “Musee des Beaux Arts,” the inspiration of old works of art is transformed by the poet. He draws his own conclusions on the “Old Masters” by placing their work in the context of a museum and its observers (“Musee des Beaux Arts” 2). Auden also introduces the idea of an internal “Censorate” composed of “a sensitive only child, a practical housewife, a logician, a monk, an irreverent buffoon and even, perhaps, hated by all others and returning their dislike, a brutal, foul-mouthed drill sergeant who considers all poetry rubbish” (Auden 1002-03). By describing the writing process as both a battle with external influence in the form of the muse and an internal battle with one’s own ideas about the rationality of man that takes place before the “Censorate,” Auden recognizes the balance of power at work in the creation of poetry. Similarly, Eliot respects the personal influence a poet wields in the creation of his work but chooses to emphasize the fact that the process is made possible by the “tradition” placed before the poet.
While Eliot’s perception of the writing process places more emphasis on the literary “tradition” and external influences necessary for the creation of a poem, he does not distance the self totally from the formation of valid work. In order to prove his statement in “Tradition and the Individual Talent” that “if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, ‘tradition’ should be positively discouraged,” Eliot introduces the modern concept of a “historical sense” that is be engaged when writing (Eliot 942). Eliot states that if a writer writes from the historical sense, he is embracing the experiences of the whole of European literature in order to make him more traditional and more conscious of his place in time. “The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order,” is Eliot’s summary of the usage of the historical sense (Eliot 942). In works like The Waste Land, Eliot touches on the majority of European literature to the date through allusion and symbolism. This poem showcases his ability to embrace the entire tradition leading up to his time. He expands upon this idea by addressing the fact that no artist has his complete meaning alone. Eliot writes that a poet’s significance “is the appreciation of his relation to dead poets and artists” (Eliot 942). In order to explain his definition of the poet’s work, he utilizes the analogy of the catalyst. During a chemical reaction between two gases, the presence of a filament of platinum will have an effect on the gases and force them to combine. He likens the platinum to the poet as he affects the change but he himself is not changed. Poets utilize their mind as a “receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together” (Eliot 945). Published in 1919 in a period when much of European scholarship was devoted to assessing how the continent had managed to sink to such a low point as the mass destruction in World War I, his “Tradition and the Individual Talent” represents a modern revelation and concept: “the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past” (Eliot 943). While tensions in European culture may have previously been isolated from the whole of European history, the fact that they resulted in an all-encompassing war at the time of this publication makes it necessary for scholars to look back on these tensions in a different light. Just as history is re-written after a landmark event such as the First World War, the existing monuments of poetic art must be re-evaluated after the introduction of a particularly important piece of poetry. By drawing such a conclusion, Eliot gives credence to the work of the individual poet without taking anything away from the strong tradition that he used to write the poem.
Both Auden and Eliot have a sense of the pressure many writers feel to maintain a creative voice in the modern age when it appears as if every human idea has already been over-used. Eliot discusses this dilemma in “Tradition and the Individual Talent” when he moves towards examining the individual’s place in his poetry on page 946. While he discredits the poetic search for new emotions, he maintains that “The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all” (Eliot 946). In his “Gerontion,” Eliot expresses commonly held emotions such as fear of urban decay and forgiveness. However, the overall feeling of the poem is far more elaborate that these simple emotions. By adding his own poetic touch through imagery and other poetic devices, he transforms the work into something original. Earlier in his essay, Eliot touches on a topic similar to that of new emotions when he describes the commonly used method of choosing to bestow praise upon an author for the sections of his work that least resemble anyone else’s poetry. Since praise is given based upon this sense of originality, many writers seek to distance themselves from past traditions at the risk of organizing an incoherent piece of literature. While “We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors,” Eliot claims that a different perspective on the work can be taken when it is looked at without searching for peculiarities in the author’s voice (942). He states that “if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously” (942). Poets need not be concerned with depicting a foreign or antiquated emotion if they are able to embrace the “tradition” of writing.
Similarly, Auden considers the pressures of writers to strive for originality, which he deems as completely unimportant. By comparing authenticity with originality, Auden sheds light on the subject of considering what is valuable about a good piece of poetry. Claiming that many writers confuse authenticity with originality, Auden uses the metaphor of avant-garde art to shed light on the subject. He says that “There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior; what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act” and then finishes the paragraph by comparing this notion to the majority of avant-garde art. It is apparent from this paragraph that Auden, like Eliot, values the integrity of the work as a whole and does not choose to isolate sections of it that are particularly “original.” One’s work can be highly reminiscent of Yeats but still remain authentic in that it is “intrinsically admirable” and draws together the poet’s internal thinking based upon an influence from the work of Yeats.
For Auden, the idea of combining the external traditions of literary work with his own personal reflections upon the subject matter is showcased in the poem “Spain.” In this poem, he connects the history of European civilization to the present day occurrences in revolution era Spain. The poem moves through three different phases dealing with “Yesterday,” “to-day,” and “to-morrow.” He begins each stanza in the first section with the repeated usage of “Yesterday…” followed by a practice of the past. In this section, he emphasizes the cultural events of the past such as the expansion of trade with Asia or the trials of heretics that he sees as responsible for Spain’s present day circumstance. Following the model put forth by Eliot in the previous generation, Auden aims at dealing with the state of present day emotions connected with Spanish revolution while emphasizing the traditions of the past. The final three stanzas of this section (lines 13-24) bridge the gap between the past and present by ending with a reference to “to-day.” The refrain of “but to-day the struggle” places Auden’s emotions in line with the current plight of the Spanish without distancing “the struggle” from the larger history of Europe. As the poem moves into the second section, the present tense takes over and Auden deals with particular vignettes of wartime Spanish life. However, it is important to note when dealing with the Auden’s usage of the past traditions ingratiating themselves into modern emotions that this section also clings to shards of the past. The philosophy of Plato, commonly seen as the father of Western thought, comes through in line 53. Also visible in the section is the Christian symbolism in lines 43 and after, the major theme of medieval literature. Finally, moving into the third section, Auden contrasts the possibilities of “to-morrow” with the realities of “to-day.” In his idea of tomorrow, Auden includes trends from the past such as “the rediscovery of romantic love” in line 81 but clarifies that these are only possibilities to be entertained until the war is over. He repeatedly brings up images of the harsh reality of war and contrasts them with the pleasantries available after a resolution. The poem eventually ends with the lines “We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and/History to the defeated/May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon” (“Spain” 103-05). This line emphasizes the interconnectivity of all past occurrences with the present day events by bringing to mind how the war will be looked upon by people of subsequent generations.
Eliot’s poetry as a whole highlights the concept of using past traditions combined with modern occurrences in order to make sense of the subject matter. Throughout all of his poems, we see that he is indebted to the monumental literature that paved the way for his work. As he sees modern poetry as being a direct result of all the styles before it, his verse is littered with allusions to everything from Greek and early Christian writing as in the Christ imagery in “Gerontion” and the Greek language from Agamemnon that appears as a prelude to “Sweeney among the Nightingales,” to the work of Dante and English romantics that is in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” In his signature complexity that he deems the hallmark of the modern age, Eliot utilizes allusions to multitudes of literary movements and cultural references while expressing his major themes of destruction and infertility in The Waste Land. Eliot deems these the major problems of Europe in the post World War I era and explores their origin throughout most of the poem. Each page of the poem is littered with footnotes citing references to the majority of literary movements before the twentieth century. As it states in the poem’s introduction, Eliot saw the balance between citing historical/literary references and modern occurrences as being “a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility which is contemporary history” (Ramazani 472). By placing prominent characters of the past into the contemporary Europe of his day, Eliot is able to explore the present dilemmas from an objective point of view. In “The Fire Sermon”, the narrator becomes the ancient combination of man and woman known as Tiresias. Through the eyes of this careful observer, Eliot deals with the infertility and sexual dysfunction of man that reflects the infertile landscape of war torn Europe. This objective narrator notes the sexual encounter between a man and a woman in lines 220-256 and sheds light on why the scenario is so dysfunctional. Tiresias highlights the “indifference” that the man and the woman feel towards their sexual moment by pointing out how little the participants actually care for each other. He notes the abrupt departure of the male afterwards and the sense of relaxation the female feels after completing her sexual duty. By using the ancient Tiresias as the objective sexual character to depart insight on current dilemmas, Eliot showcases his idea of past literature figuring prominently into his own poetry.
After T.S. Eliot published his works in the early part of the twentieth century, he became recognized as perhaps the most influential poet of his generation. His ideas have been disseminated throughout modern and contemporary poetry so much that it seems impossible to read a poem since Eliot that rejects his ideas entirely. W.H. Auden, himself an avid fan of Eliot, hints at his ideas throughout his poetry. Coming in the next generation of poets, Auden looks at the present dilemmas of his time including the Spanish Revolution and Second World War. He utilizes Eliot’s sense of tradition in much of his work and even traces the dilemma of World War II back throughout European history in his poem “September 1, 1939.” In this poem, he also includes references to Greek mythology and even utilizes the character Thucydides in much the same fashion as Eliot uses Tiresias. Already, the poetry after Eliot reflects his landmark ideas. Auden’s poetry utilizes the past traditions and even has the first generation of twentieth century poets to further his concept of a literary past. Auden draws his own conclusions from the writing of Eliot and one sees the influence of the great poet. But as Eliot advises, Auden does not limit his tradition to the previous generation alone.
By confronting the occurrences of the twentieth century with the amassed knowledge European history, Eliot and Auden find it easier to deal with current
problematic states. The work of the past is able to shed light on the present. While one must strive to comprehend the literary and historical traditions of the past, doing so opens up infinite windows of poetic opportunity. Looking at themselves as a result of the European “tradition,” Auden and Eliot present a modern view of literature that sees the present in light of the past. Their amassed knowledge undergoes a reaction when it connects with a present day idea that infiltrates the mind, resulting in their poetry which strengthens the past tradition while examining the present.


Works Cited

Auden, W.H. “Writing”. The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. New York: Norton,
2003. 1000-1010.
Eliot, T.S. “Tradition and the Individual Talent”. The Norton Anthology of Modern
Poetry. 941-947. New York: Norton, 2003. 941-947.