Tradition and the Individual Talent Revisited

At the turn of the 20th century, in what is called the "Modern Era" by those who dictate what periods of time are named, the geist of the artistic world was much the same as what I want to achieve. "Make It New!" They cried. (How unoriginal of me!)

Many aritists, writers, thinkers of the emerging era were dissatified with the results of the 19th Century in society. They reacted against the deterministic perspective that everyone in life is controlled and constrained to the environment in which they live. To find examples of this, check out Emile Zolla's work, or if you want a direct suggestion, read The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad. Their characters are trapped within the confines of their habitat, and act only according to what their surroundings plot out for them.
What many of the modernists strived for was a transcendence through aesthetic endeavor; an escape from environmental confines toward enlightnment through art. Ezra Pound, Roger Fry, and T.S. Eliot were at the forefront of this movement, among many others who pushed the envelope, and boldly challenged us to rethink the boundaries that we have adopted, urged us to foresake the reconstruction of the past and begin a whole new work.

All of these men were profoundly educated. They both knew the classic and were familiar with the current. Pound urged students to leave their universities and, "Come to me for your education," because he had assimilated all that was important from the masters and employed it in his works. Roger Fry, in his book Vision and Design, lifted the veil of objectivity in art criticism and helped bring to light the value of individual interpretation. And Eliot, in his tretise "Tradition and the Individual Talent," hooked on something that I find is essential for any type of real and current Renaissance to take place.

Eliot's idea was that there is a reason why "Classics" are Classics. And that reason is that they communicate something so deeply entrenched in the human experience that they transcend cultural barriers and speak to us now, and will to future generations. As though all of humanity has a core, and the classic authors knew how to reach through situational, temporal and historical obstuructions and touch that human core in each one of us. That human core, Eliot labels as the "Objective Correlative." It's that string that connects us all to each other through the expereince of being human. It's what allows Shakespeare to be studied and understood in Japan.

His prescription for the artist, then, is to read all the classics - *all of them - and learn *how the classic authors reached the Objective Correlative and communicated to readers across historical lines. But Eliot didn't say, "Copy them." In fact, far from it. What he was saying was, "If you understand how the Correlative can be reached, you can access it in your work assuredly." By beefing up on the classics, you can understand and then *employ communicating to that human core with something *new and *fresh and *alive.

This is absolutely brilliant. Gather from the past - analyze it, test it, understand it - and then create newness, something totally different. Brilliant.

In order for a real current Renaissance to happen, I believe this needs to be understood.