T. S. Eliot's Tradition And Individual Talent

TS Eliot talks about historical consciousness in his essay “Tradition and Individual Talent” in which he writes that even the most original artist of the modern age, is, infact, under the greatest obligation to the old masters of art and poetry. T.S Eliot has been widely appreciated for mirroring the sensibilities of the new age through a new idiom. New age is the time when an almost final break down of a pre-industrial way of life, and economy and also of the human values of agricultural life, the scientific revolution grasping the age-old values, and finally, the devastations caused by the two world wars and the fear that the human civilization may at any time be devoured by modern science brought about the changes in sensibilities which

The epigraph of the poem ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a quotation from Dante’s Inferno (XXVII, 61- 66) which arouses in the mind of the readers the memory of some Dantesque scene and thus establishes a relation between the medieval inferno and modern life. The words are spoken by Count Guido de Montefeltrano whom Dante meets in the Eighth Chasm of Hell. Guido tells Dante, “If I thought that my reply would be to someone who would ever return to earth, this flame would remain without any further movement, but as no one has ever returned from this gulf, if what I hear is true, I can answer you with no fear of infamy.” Guido speaks to Dante only because he knows that Dante cannot go back to the world of the living beings. In this poem Prufrock too, takes his companion for a confidant, the first line of the poem “Let us go then, you and I” makes it clear that “you” is a real companion of the “I” and both of them start walking. The “I” continues speaking until the end suddenly the “you” and “I” merge into