T. S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent" is unique in that Eliot, as an American, insists that literature can find its greater purpose in the traditions of a land to which he, at least at the time of its writing, does not belong. In seeking a tradition rooted in the "mind of Europe," he apparently rejects his own American roots, founded on the likes of Hawthorne, Emerson, and Whitman. However, a random survey of American thought both contemporary to and immediately preceding "Tradition and the Individual Talent" show that Eliot's essay is inevitably the result of the developing American tradition. Eliot's preoccupation with the "mind of Europe" is the direct consequence of both Eliot's conscious attempt to escape a confused American tradition and his unconscious subjection to America's "melting pot" of Western civilization. It is my intent to show, through 19^th century social commentaries and a selection of early 20^th century articles from The Dial, the historical context behind this statement.

One can hardly consider coincidental Eliot's failure to mention anything of an American tradition in "Tradition and the Individual Talent." Critic Lee Oser notes that "The American melting pot clearly threatened traditions that Eliot . . . prized above all others" (56). For Eliot, Americanism represented the demise of pure culture and the art that related it. In a 1928 preface to E. A. Mowrer's This American World, for example, he labeled Americanism as a "malady" that threatened to infect Europe (qtd. in Mowrer 55). Eliot is not, by far, the only critic to place Americanism in this context. Fear that America, in its lack of a solid tradition, could not support an art of lasting value, was quite common to the era. James Oppenheim, whose 1920 essay, "Poetry - Our First National Art" possesses much of the same concern for tradition as "Tradition and the Individual Talent," expresses concern that, "One might expect that an American art is an impossibility" (238). Maxwell Bodenheim, writing a year earlier, rebukes those consciously seeking an American art, claiming that "American art will only achieve a national shading with the slow march of centuries" (544). The flight of the expatriates to Europe during this period offers proof of the reality of these fears.

There were many who felt that the American tradition should remain the offspring of American colonialism. Eliot, certainly, found comfort in the Puritan tradition. Yet, the reality of American diversity prevented the predominance of a colonial tradition. Oppenheim says that it was the first task of the American poets "to throw overboard those traditions;" the second being "to find an expression more native to ourselves" (240). Even the legacy of American forefathers and pioneers was, in Bodenheim's opinion, suspect, offering only a "deceptive cohesion unsupported by any permanent, inner response in the individual" (544). If the very roots of the American nation could not support a tradition, then the question immediately became, what could. Nations such as France and Russia, contended Oppenheim, achieved their tradition through an "organic fusion" and "unconscious identity," yet Americans existed merely as a collection of immigrants (238). Without what Bodenheim calls "esthetic ties or emotional undercurrents" (544) it would be impossible to find an American mode of expression. Certainly, the chaos prevented Eliot from writing the same words about America as he did about Europe - that it had "a simultaneous existence and compose[d] a simultaneous order" ("Tradition" 1406)

Immigration, more than any other factor, was seen as the root of this problem. Wallace Rice complained in 1914 that, as a result of immigration, "our national types of beauty must suffer" (339). Esteeming America's past for its "power of assimilation" (337), Rice lamented the fact that modern immigration diluted the intellectual quality of America. "Europe [now] retains most of her brains," he said, adding, "there is little sign of an intellectual element among the Magyars, Russians, South Slavs, Italians, Greeks, or Portuguese" (338-39). It is, however, highly unlikely that Rice was concerned with any quantitative measure of intellect. Those nations, after all, represented a different, undesirable tradition. Hoping to retain some sense of stability in already established traditions, there was a general urgency, as Carl H. Grabo points out, to "Americanize the immigrant more effeciently" (539). Unfortunately, for Eliot and countless others who embarked on a quest to find permanence in tradition, no amount of Americanization could change the course of immigration. Just as Eliot saw the European past being altered by the present ("Tradition" 1406), the tide of immigration permanently altered the course of the once colonial American tradition.

It is easy to recognize a confused sense of tradition as a primary motive in Eliot's rejection of the American tradition. It is intriguing, however, to discover that Eliot's attempt to define himself within an all-encompassing European tradition was largely an American concern. First, however, it is important to note that immigration, despite its undesirable elements, created the framework for a largely unconscious, multicultural movement in America. This multiculturalism, of course, hardly qualifies as multiculturalism in its contemporary sense. It did, however, make possible for the first time the idea of a comprehensive and unified mind of Europe.

In his 1919 article, "Americanizing the Immigrant," Grabo presents the ideas of Reverend Enrico C. Sartorio. Recognizing that Americanizing young Italians by teaching them only English alienates them from their home life, Sartorio proposes that they be taught in Italian, with the intent of helping them "realize that they are connected in blood with a race of glorious tradition." Furthermore, Grabo offers the words of English immigrant Horace J. Bridges. Bridges advocates keeping alive Italian and German art, "not for the sake of the Old World, but as elements contributory to the American culture." It is Bridges' hope that America can produce "a new type of national character . . . by the cross-fertilization" of its European members (qtd. in Grabo 540).

In suggesting that America arrive at its art through a synthesis of all its cultures, Bridges captures the essence of an argument supported by many other critics. Winifred Kirkland asks "how so beautiful a thing as the spirit of America . . . is to be transmitted to the ignorant and down-trodden who seek our shore" (537). He then proceeds to introduce Whitman as a potential source of dialogue between the immigrant and America. Oppenheim also sees Whitman as a solution, claiming that in Whitman, Americans find their first national art. He explains that Whitman gave America "something universal . . . in the broadest sense . . . something equally the property of every race. We are this universal masked in Americanism . . . Walt was Dutch, yet Carl Sandburg, who is Swedish, can prance his soul out to the same tune and get a national expression with only a slightly different tinge" (240). The implication is that America makes possible the realization of commonalities inconceivable historically throughout Europe. America, essentially, creates the mind of Europe.

Oppenheim also argues that poetry becomes America's first national art because of how easily it reveals the "unconscious of the poet." This unconsciousness, in turn, reveals "something passed onto the poet through a long descent" (239). Oppenheim is essentially outlining a "common racial inheritance" deeper than any individual European nation. Indeed, by emphasizing that this type of poetry can "allow that mystic depth which is common to all men" (240), he illustrates the potential of American poetry, by virtue of it's multicultural influences, to penetrate to the roots of Western civilization. Eliot, himself, agrees that the American tradition is rooted in the whole of Europe, and has thus made possible the Americanized conception of the mind of Europe. In the aforementioned 1928 preface, Eliot explains:

[Mowrer] inquires into the origin, as well as the nature, of Americanism; traces it back to Europe; and finds that what are supposed to be specifically American qualities and vices, are merely the European qualities and vices given in a new growth in a different soil. . . . Americanization, in short, would probably happen anyway; America itself has merely accelerated the process. (55)

Ironically, the mind of Europe he seeks results from the same events that render America devoid of any obvious tradition.

Furthermore, this growing conception of the mind of Europe can be traced back to American social commentaries of the late 19^th century. Benjamin Kidd, who in 1894 authored the book Social Evolution, relies heavily on the notion that Western civilization exists as "a single organic growth" (186). Characteristic to this talk of Western civilization as an emerging organism is an overwhelming pride in its assumed superiority. In his preface, Kidd talks of the "immense part which the English-speaking peoples—if true to their own traditions - are not improbably destined to play in the immediate future of the world" (ix). One immediately notices the emphasis on the condition that the English-speaking people must keep their traditions. Obviously, the belief that a loss of tradition represents a loss of power precedes Eliot. Perhaps what is most unique about Kidd's analysis of Western civilization, however, is his identification of a "motive force" moving Western civilization by means of a general "altruistic feeling" common to Europe throughout the ages (185). Claiming each citizen of Western civilization is "unconsciously influenced by it . . . in every moment of [their] lives," Kidd appears to have defined the very same "mystic depth" that Oppenheim mentions.

It must be remembered, of course, that Kidd and his book are decidedly American in origin. So, also, it is important to note that the next author I will mention, Charles Morris, is decidedly American. His novel, The Aryan Race, predating Kidd's by about six years, may, in its name, stir up haunting images of the Nazi fanaticism for the mind of the contemporary reader. Reading it in connection with Eliot also leads naturally to questions of anti-Semitism. Yet, the attitudes that Morris gives voice to, in their historical context, are rooted in the same concept of an unconscious European race that transcends nationality.

The notion of an Aryan race, according to Morris, relies less on historical fact than an "unconscious history" (2). Of this unconscious history, Morris says:

We are ignorant of the numbers of its people, the location and extent of its territory, the period of its early development. But we know much of its basal history, - that history which has wrought itself deeply into the language, customs, beliefs, and institutions of its modern descendants, and which crops out everywhere through the soil of modern European civilization. (3)

The very theory of an Aryan race appears to emerge out of nowhere. "Until within a recent period, the existence of such a race was not clearly recognized," Morris confesses (iii). It would be presumptuous to remark that its conception parallels the conception of America. Yet, Morris notes, "in America alone can the ancient Aryan principle be said to have fully declared itself" (324). The importance of the Aryan tradition is manifest throughout the book, with the author's stated purpose being that of "clearly showing the general superiority of the [Aryan race]" (v). Morris shows as much intrigue with this Aryan tradition as Eliot does with "the whole of the literature of Europe" (Eliot 1406). "There is no more interesting study," Morris insists, "than to follow this giant from the days of its childhood to those of its present imposing stature" (iv). Of particular significance to Eliot is his bold proclamation of the importance of the Aryan literary tradition, which is undoubtedly the mind of Europe that Eliot seeks: "So far as the intellectual value of the literary work is concerned, the Aryans have gone almost infinitely beyond the remainder of mankind" (243).

These examples should be enough to at least hint at a historical context for the American origin of Eliot's "mind of Europe." When Eliot speaks, then, of a mind of Europe as "a mind that changes . . . which abandons nothing in route" (1406), it must be remembered that this mind exists because of the greatest change of all, that being the emergence of a multicultural America, which, because it cannot find its roots in one tradition, must therefore search for a common mode of expression in the unconscious whole of Europe. Eliot, ironically, in trying to escape from the void of the American tradition, embraces what may indeed be the only understanding of tradition possible in a land of immigrants.

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Works Cited

Bodenheim, Maxwell. "American Art?" The Dial 31 May, 1919: 544.

Eliot, T. S. "Tradition and the Individual Talent." The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 2. 3^rd ed. Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998. 1405-1410.

Grabo, Carl H. "Americanizing the Immigrants." The Dial 31 May, 1919: 539-541.

Kidd, Benjamin. Social Evolution. New York: MacMillian and Co, 1894.

Kirkland, Winifred. "Americanization and Walt Whitman." The Dial 31 May, 1919: 537-39.

Morris, Charles. The Aryan Race. Chicago: S.C. Griggs and Company, 1888.

Oppenheim, James. "Poetry -- Our First National Art." The Dial Feb 1920: 238-242.

Oser, Lee. T.S. Eliot and American Poetry. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998.

Rice, Wallace. "Immigrants, Past and Present." The Dial 1 Nov, 1914: 337-39.