Contains the Essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent"

This is a dense book, and difficult precisely because Eliot addresses his peers rather than providing an introduction to either poetry or to criticism. I admire the earnest approach, and readily admit in many respects his concerns are beyond my capacity for critical assessment. Still, I benefited from being immersed. In these pages Eliot shows what is possible with words, and thinking about words, especially but not exclusively verse.

One point Eliot makes is that criticism is chiefly useful for improving the writer's own creative work, whether verse or prose: its "constructive function". [xiv] This isn't to say the criticism is always inferior to that critic's creative work however. Eliot's concern appears to be that though criticism's destructive function be "necessary and invaluable", nevertheless it is of a "second order".

The first two essays here make this point, as well as that criticism should do more than share the critic's impressions of a piece, since readers should have their own impressions. For readers that don't, reading someone else's impressions doesn't lead to critical insight; and similarly for readers with their own, since only reading someone else's impressions simply shifts the focus to a comparison (mine versus yours) rather than a better understanding of the work itself.

Another general point Eliot makes is that the achievements of a particular poet or even specific poem are tied to the tradition within which it is written. Or more relevant for today: the lack of tradition. Interestingly, Eliot holds Blake to be a less powerful creator than Dante almost precisely because of Blake's perceived need to invent a mythology, in order to write his verse, rather than wield the symbols and meanings of an existing tradition, as did Dante.

Remembering these two broad points clarifies the motivation of Eliot's own criticism here, and I suspect readers more familiar with Eliot's own work will see points of connection between these essays and specific aspects of Eliot's verse.

Eliot never comments on the choice of title. I speculate it hints at concerns he addresses explicitly in later essays (for one: poetry's link to spiritual and social life, as noted in Eliot's preface), and wonder if the title was given well after writing the essays collected here. ( )

And probably more people have thought Hamlet a work of art because they found it interesting, than have found it interesting because it is a work of art. It is the “Mona Lisa “ of literature.

I harbor a tone of mixed response about this tome, much as I do towards the literary theory of Ezra Pound. There is much in these essays about the state of criticism, fuelled perhaps by optimism or hubris, the utility of the enterprise is something Eliot appears skeptical towards.

I really enjoyed the attention given to Shakespeare and his contemporaries Marlowe and Jonson. Eliot makes the curious remark that Marlowe's Jew of Malta need be understood as a farce otherwise the conclusion is incomprehensible. I felt like I did when I encountered Richard Rorty saying that Derrida has to be regarded as a comic author. Exhaling slowly I attempted to imagine what Eliot would've thought of Derrida himself.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

I appreciate the innocence in these terms but I imagine they are equipped with a resilience

I am on holiday this week and it will be spent in part on criticism, following Nathan's lead as it is time for such. ( )

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) está considerado hoy dí no sólo como el poeta de mayor influencia de todo el siglo XX, sino además como el gran precursor de la crítica literaria actual. Partiendo de postulados de claro tinte simbolista, Eliot forjó toda una serie de conceptos en el campo de la teoría de la literatura, dando lugar a las principales corrientes que dominaron la crítica literaria durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX. El bosque sagrado (1920) representa su primer compendio crítico de gran alcance y asimismo el inicio de una verdadera revolución en el modo de abordar los textos literarios. ( )

These well-known essays are almost a hundred years old, and in spite of all the changes in taste and critical stance in that time, they remain stimulating. Again and again, one is astonished by Eliot's finding of exactly the right phrase, exactly the right insight to illuminate a poet or a passage. His penchant for the acerbic aperçu entertains and enlightens. His stately, measured, rather formal prose is a joy. As with any of Eliot's criticism there is the pontificating, the breathtakingly sweeping generalizations, the easy dismissal of opposition that feels like unseemly arrogance, and which some will l find hard to swallow. Nevertheless, these essays repay close attention and re-reading. ( )