Eliot: Tradition and the Individual Talent
By T.S. Eliot Eliot once wrote "Immature poets borrow. Mature poets steal." The great modern poet, who died in 1965, wrote the following essay in which he outlines the relationship of a poem to other poems, that is, of how artists to assimilate themselves to a literary tradition that has come before them. Coming from a poet considered one of the most revolutionary and emblematic of modern literature, it is extraordinary, and is reproduced here in its entirely. In English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence. We cannot refer to "the tradition" or to "a tradition"; at most, we employ the adjective in saying that the poetry of So-and-so is "traditional" or even "too traditional." Seldom, perhaps, does the word appear except in a phrase of censure. If otherwise, it is vaguely approbative, with the implication, as to the work approved, of some pleasing archæologi...