Post by anthony on Dec 19, 2020 4:27:02 GMT -5
Here's his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent:" www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html
It really does not seem either Ni or Fi upper slot, or even Ni and/or Fi as valued functions.
Essentially, he makes the point that poets must necessarily deal with the burden of (literary) history, engaging past literature 'in the canon' from Homer onward. He goes even further, suggesting that all aspiring poets past their twenty-fifth year should have this history "in their bones" in order to continue(Eliot was an intimidating, elitist creature). There's an emphasis on the fact that the poet should possess a medium(as opposed to BEING a medium) through which "impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways." Implicitly, there's a devaluation of the poet's individuality -- he does not stand alone and shouldn't be valued alone, he should be set for comparison and contrast among the dead. "An individual is a product of not only their own past, but THE past."
He also argues that poetry shouldn't be a "turning loose" of emotion, rather an escape from it. The emotions of the poet themselves may be "simple, crude, or flat."
"The poet’s mind is in fact 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." Which, he says, must be deliberately concentrated, with careful attention to detail.
In many ways, it seems like Eliot saw his poetry, largely, as a practice in conscientious systematization and editing. Ti-Si.
It really does not seem either Ni or Fi upper slot, or even Ni and/or Fi as valued functions.
Essentially, he makes the point that poets must necessarily deal with the burden of (literary) history, engaging past literature 'in the canon' from Homer onward. He goes even further, suggesting that all aspiring poets past their twenty-fifth year should have this history "in their bones" in order to continue(Eliot was an intimidating, elitist creature). There's an emphasis on the fact that the poet should possess a medium(as opposed to BEING a medium) through which "impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways." Implicitly, there's a devaluation of the poet's individuality -- he does not stand alone and shouldn't be valued alone, he should be set for comparison and contrast among the dead. "An individual is a product of not only their own past, but THE past."
He also argues that poetry shouldn't be a "turning loose" of emotion, rather an escape from it. The emotions of the poet themselves may be "simple, crude, or flat."
"The poet’s mind is in fact 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." Which, he says, must be deliberately concentrated, with careful attention to detail.
In many ways, it seems like Eliot saw his poetry, largely, as a practice in conscientious systematization and editing. Ti-Si.