T.S. Eliot’s ‘Tradition and Individual Talent’ is one of the critical essay in which Eliot has described with concept of tradition, individual talent, emotion and poetry as well as his concept of depersonalized art. In the opening of the essay, Eliot’s defines tradition, which is the literary history. He says that each and every nation has it’s individual genius who create literature. So many such individual writers produce a big bulk of writing which is tradition.

    Eliot even says that the new writer writing at present becomes the part of tradition so he has to learn the tradition but not imitate it. No writers and writings have value in isolation, the writer and his writing would not be evaluated with the writers of the past, he should be compared and contrasted with the tradition, it is possible to examine his individual talent. If the new writer has imitated the tradition, blindly such slavish imitation should be discouraged because it has not individual talent. Individual talent is the novelty or newness. If the present writer has brought something novelty in his writing, it is called individual talent such novelty should be encourage because it suggests the genius of the writer.

    Eliot has also given his personal idea about the depersonalization of art, which is also called impersonal poetry. He says that emotions and feelings are related to poetry but they should be expressed indirectly and objectively. In other words, Eliot says that emotions of the poet are expressed in poetry but the poet should in personify them. His concept is against the concept of words being involved in poetry. Instead, the poet should not be identified as the direct speaker in poetry but he should indirectly speak through the characters or other objects, which is called objective correlative. So Eliot says Poetry is not the turning loose of emotion but escape from emotion. It is not the expression of personality but escape from it.

    In order to support his concept of depersonalized art, Eliot uses and analogy related to gas chamber. In a gas chamber during the process of forming sulpheric acid, sulpherdioxide and oxygen are needed but they do not react until a plate of platinum is kept. When the platinum is kept there, it causes reaction between them so that sulpheric acid is formed. In the acid platinum does not become present. This analogy is applied in the process of poetic creation.

    The poet or his mind is a catalyst like the platinum to change others, medium but as if the platinum is not present in the acid, the poet also should not be present in poetry. His role is very crucial because with out the poet, poetry is not possible to create. But, in the creation he should be totally dead or absent like the platinum absent in acid. It is his concept of impersonal art and he criticizes many English poets including Words Worth who have not become impersonal. He appreciates metaphysical poets such as John Donne to be impersonal in poetry.