I’m Sanjay Rathod, an English Literature student at MKBU.
I write simple, clear, and student-friendly blogs on literature — from classics to modern works — connecting them with real life.
🛡️ The Definitive Guide to Reporting Cyber Crime in India (2025 Edition)
How to navigate the "Golden Hour," use the National Portal, and leverage new laws for Digital Justice. A comprehensive guide by Cyber Club MKBU for protecting yourself in the digital age.
As India's digital economy accelerates, cyber-enabled offences have seen a sophisticated surge. In 2024 alone, financial losses to cyber fraud increased by a staggering amount to over ₹22,845 crore, and projections for 2025 suggest this could exceed ₹1.2 lakh crore.
Navigating the aftermath of a digital attack—whether it is a "Digital Arrest" scam or a sophisticated UPI hack—can be distressing. However, the Government of India has established a multi-layered institutional framework to help victims recover funds and seek justice. This guide provides an exhaustive walkthrough of the legal, technical, and procedural steps required to report cybercrime in India as of 2025.
⚠️ CYBER CRIME STATISTICS 2024-2025
💸
2024 Losses
₹22,845 Cr
📈
2025 Projected
₹1.2 Lakh Cr
⏱️
Golden Hour
1-3 Hours
✅
Recovery Rate
85-100%
1. Act During the "Golden Hour" ⏱️
The most critical factor in recovering stolen money is speed. The first one to three hours after a fraud occurs are known as the "Golden Hour." During this brief window, stolen funds typically reside in "parking accounts" (mule accounts) held by accomplices before being moved in small denominations to harder-to-trace accounts or converted into cryptocurrency. Reporting within this period can result in a recovery success rate as high as 85% to 100%.
📊 Key Stat: In late 2025, swift intervention through the national helpline helped recover nearly 50% of all reported fraud funds in states like Gujarat within just a few days of reporting.
For Immediate Financial Fraud • Available 24/7 • All India
A. The National Helpline (1930)
For immediate financial fraud (UPI scams, credit card cloning, or unauthorized bank transactions), dial 1930 immediately.
How it works: This connects you to a specialized emergency response system. Operators record your transaction details (UTR numbers) and can coordinate with banks to place a "lien" or digital hold on the stolen funds.
The "Kill Switch": This system is linked to all major banks and payment gateways (like Razorpay, Paytm, and PhonePe), allowing the system to "freeze" money while it is still within the banking network.
B. The National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal
Visit cybercrime.gov.in to lodge a formal complaint for any type of cyber offence, including hacking, identity theft, and cyberbullying.
National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal Interface
3. Step-by-Step Portal Reporting 📝
The national portal offers two distinct ways to file a report based on the nature of the crime:
📋 REPORTING OPTIONS
🔒 Report Anonymously
For sensitive content related to women and children, such as online child pornography (CSAM) or sexually explicit content. No personal details required. Content removal within 24 hours.
📊 Report and Track
Mandatory for "Other Cyber Crimes" like financial fraud, ransomware, and hacking. Get a 15-digit acknowledgement number to track your case status.
📱 STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS
Step 1:Login — Register with an Indian mobile number and verify via OTP
Step 2:Categorize — Choose between "Online Financial Fraud," "Social Media Crimes," or "Other"
Step 3:Details — Provide URL of the platform and description (min. 200 characters)
Step 4:Acknowledgment — Receive a 15-digit acknowledgement number to track your case
Video Tutorial: How to Report Cyber Crime Online
4. Modern Procedural Rights: Zero FIR and e-FIR ⚖️
With the full implementation of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023, reporting has become victim-centric:
⚖️ YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS
📋 Zero FIR
Report a crime at ANY police station, regardless of where the crime took place. The station must register the complaint with a "0" serial number and transfer it within 24 hours.
💻 e-FIR
Section 173 of BNSS allows crimes to be reported via electronic communication. Sign the record (physically or digitally) within 3 days for formal registration.
5. Essential Evidence Checklist 📸
In the digital world, "Screenshots are the new Fingerprints." Do not delete any original messages. Gather the following:
📋 EVIDENCE CHECKLIST
Category
Essential Evidence
💳 Financial Fraud
12-digit UTR (Transaction ID), bank statements, screenshots of fraudulent SMS/WhatsApp
📧 Email Crimes
Copy of email and full email headers (to trace sender's IP)
📱 Social Media
Specific Profile URL, screenshots of offensive content, login history
🎭 Digital Arrest
Call logs, video call recordings (if possible), suspect's mobile number
6. Proactive Tools for Prevention 🛡️
The government has introduced "pre-fraud" tools to stop scams before you lose money:
🔧 PREVENTION TOOLS
👁️
Chakshu
Visit sancharsaathi.gov.in to report suspected fraud communications like fake KYC updates
📱
CEIR
Block lost/stolen phone's IMEI across all networks via Central Equipment Identity Register
🤖
MuleHunter.ai
2025 RBI & I4C initiative to identify and flag potential "mule accounts"
7. Emerging Scams to Watch Out For (2025) ⚠️
🚨 BEWARE OF THESE SCAMS
🎭 Digital Arrest Scams
Scammers pose as CBI or Police via video calls, claiming you are under "digital arrest." Reality: No Indian agency conducts arrests via Skype or WhatsApp!
🎙️ AI Deepfake Scams
Using AI-cloned voices of family members to request urgent funds. Always verify by calling back on a known number.
💰 Investment/Task Scams
Promising high returns for "liking videos" or "rating hotels" on Telegram. If it sounds too good to be true, it is!
Presentation: Understanding Cyber Scams
8. Legal Rights & Financial Recovery 💰
According to the RBI's limited liability framework (updated in 2025):
💳 RBI LIABILITY FRAMEWORK
✅
Within 3 Days
ZERO Liability
⚠️
4-7 Days
Limited (₹25K)
❌
Beyond 7 Days
Bank's Policy
Conclusion: Act Now! 🚀
Reporting a cybercrime is much like fighting a digital fire; the faster you alert the "firefighters," the less damage occurs. By utilizing the 1930 helpline during the Golden Hour and asserting your right to a Zero FIR, you significantly increase your chances of recovery and help build a safer digital India.
"Speed is your greatest ally in cyber crime recovery. Every minute counts in the Golden Hour. Report immediately, preserve evidence, and know your rights!"
W.B. Yeats & Modernism: A 2025 Analysis of The Second Coming And On Being Asked for a War Poem
This blog is written as a task assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir (Department of English, MKBU). A Critical Analysis of W.B. Yeats's Modernist Vision and Its Contemporary Relevance.
Here are the links to the reference materials for this task:
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) — The Voice of Irish Modernism
As a postgraduate student of English Literature, one often finds that the boundaries between the library and the living world begin to blur. This semester, under the guidance of Dr. Dilip Barad Sir's online modules, I have found myself increasingly haunted by the echoes of the early twentieth century. We are currently navigating the turbulent waters of Modernism through the lens of William Butler Yeats.
Specifically, we are examining his seminal works, "The Second Coming" and "On Being Asked for a War Poem." While the user prompt initially mentioned Auden, the academic focus of our current curriculum and Dr. Dilip Barad Sir's lectures centers on Yeats's apocalyptic visions and his controversial stance on poetic duty.
This blog post is a "learning out loud" exercise. It is an attempt to synthesize high-level literary theory with the grit of contemporary reality, including the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the rise of Artificial Intelligence. By moving through Dr. Dilip Barad Sir's analysis, exploring cross-cultural reflections from Hindi podcasts, and engaging with ResearchGate materials, I hope to uncover why these poems feel less like history and more like a morning news bulletin.
Introduction: Modernism and the Poet in the Emergency Room
World War I Trenches — The Crucible of Modernist Consciousness
Modernism was not merely a literary movement. It was a psychological and ontological collapse. Following the carnage of World War I, the "Old World" died. The Victorian certainties of progress, religious stability, and imperial righteousness were replaced by a fragmented, alienated reality. In this era of crisis, the role of the poet shifted dramatically.
The poet became a diagnostician in a culture that was bleeding out. However, there was a great debate about the nature of this diagnosis. Should the poet be a witness in the trenches, or should they be a philosopher watching the cosmic clock? Yeats chose the latter. His work is defined by Modernist Detachment, a belief that the poet must remain above the "mere noise" of transient political squabbles to observe the deeper, cyclical patterns of human existence.
For a student in 2025, this detachment is both fascinating and frustrating. As we watch live-streamed footage of the Russia-Ukraine war or contemplate the existential threat of AI, we ask the same question: What is the poet's responsibility? Do we write "War Poems" to stir the heart, or do we analyze the "Gyres" of history to understand why the world is breaking?
📊 THE MODERNIST CRISIS (1914-1945)
💀
World War I
17 Million Deaths The "Old World" Collapses
📉
Great Depression
1929-1939 Economic Certainty Shattered
✍️
Modernist Response
Fragmentation & Alienation New Literary Forms Emerge
Section 1: Detailed Analysis Of Poems
In Task 1, we dive into the core of our syllabus. Dr. Dilip Barad Sir's online classes provide a rigorous framework for understanding Yeats's complex cosmology. Yeats was not just a poet; he was an occultist, and his poetry is built on a private system of symbols that he believed explained the rise and fall of civilizations.
Dr. Dilip Barad Sir - Introduction to W.B. Yeats and His Vision
I. The Architecture of "The Second Coming"
Yeats's Gyre — The Interlocking Cones of Historical Cycles
"The Second Coming," written in 1919, is perhaps the most famous articulation of Modernist anxiety. Dr. Dilip Barad Sir's lectures help us decode the two primary concepts that drive the poem: the Gyre and Spiritus Mundi.
The Gyre is Yeats's symbol for historical cycles. He imagined history as two interlocked cones or spirals. As one expands, the other contracts. According to Yeats, a civilization lasts approximately 2000 years. The Christian era, which began with the birth of Christ, was reaching its widest point of expansion and was therefore destined to collapse into chaos, making way for a new, "antithetical" era.
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world..." — W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"
When Yeats writes these lines, he is using a metaphor from falconry to describe a world that has lost its governing principle. The "falconer" represents reason, tradition, or God, while the "falcon" is humanity, spiraling out of control.
Comprehensive Analysis of 'The Second Coming' by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir
The poem then moves into the terrifying vision of Spiritus Mundi, or the "Spirit of the World." This is a collective reservoir of images and memories shared by all of humanity. From this psychic wasteland, Yeats sees a "rough beast" emerging. This is not the Christ child of Bethlehem, but a sphinx-like creature with a "gaze blank and pitiless as the sun." It is the harbinger of a new age of irrationality and power.
🔮 KEY SYMBOLS IN "THE SECOND COMING"
🌀
The Gyre
Historical cycles — 2000-year civilizations rising and falling
🦅
Falcon & Falconer
Humanity losing connection with divine/rational order
The second poem in our module, "On Being Asked for a War Poem," presents a very different side of Yeats. During World War I, the novelist Henry James asked Yeats to contribute a poem to a war charity book. Yeats's response was a short, six-line poem that serves as a masterclass in Satire and aesthetic withdrawal.
"I think it better that in times like these
A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter's night." — W.B. Yeats, "On Being Asked for a War Poem"
At first glance, this seems like humility. However, as Dr. Dilip Barad Sir notes, it is actually a profound assertion of the poet's superiority. Yeats is suggesting that the "noise" of war and the decisions of "statesmen" are beneath the dignity of high art. By remaining silent, the poet protects the "ceremony of innocence" from being corrupted by propaganda. This is the pinnacle of Modernist Detachment: the refusal to let art be used as a tool for the state.
Exploring the Concept of the Gyres in Yeats's Vision
Dr. Dilip Barad Sir on the Ethics of 'On Being Asked for a War Poem'
Section 2: Hindi Podcast Reflection - Modernist Despair in an Indian Context
The Partition of India (1947) — When "The Centre Cannot Hold" Became Lived Reality
For Task 2, I spent time listening to a Hindi podcast that discusses Yeats's poems within the context of Indian history and politics. This was a revelatory experience. We often think of "English" Modernism as a localized European reaction to the Somme or the Irish Easter Rising. However, hearing these themes discussed in Hindi translates that "English" despair into a global vernacular.
The podcast highlighted how the phrase "the centre cannot hold" resonates deeply in the Indian psyche. For a nation that has survived the trauma of Partition and continues to navigate complex communal and political tensions, the "blood-dimmed tide" is not a metaphor from a distant land. It is a lived historical memory.
One of the most insightful points made in the podcast was the translation of Spiritus Mundi. In an Indian context, this can be linked to the concept of the collective unconscious or even the cyclical nature of time in Hindu philosophy (Kali-yuga). The "rough beast" slouching towards Bethlehem becomes a symbol for any period of radical, frightening transition where the old moral orders fail.
🌍 CROSS-CULTURAL CONNECTIONS: Yeats in Indian Context
Yeats's Concept
Indian Parallel
🔮 Spiritus Mundi
Collective Unconscious / Akashic Records
🌀 The Gyre (2000-year cycles)
Yugas (Kali-yuga, Satya-yuga)
💔 "The centre cannot hold"
Partition of India (1947)
🌊 "Blood-dimmed tide"
Communal Violence / Partition Massacres
The podcast also critiqued Yeats's detachment. In the Indian tradition, the poet often serves as the "conscience of the nation" (like Rabindranath Tagore or Sarojini Naidu). Yeats's refusal to write a war poem was viewed through the lens of political privilege. Can an Indian poet afford to be silent when the "blood-dimmed tide" is at their own doorstep? This tension between the Western Modernist ideal of "art for art's sake" and the post-colonial necessity of political engagement is a central theme of my postgraduate reflections.
Hindi Podcast on Yeats and the Context of History
Section 3: The Yeats Study
Using the ResearchGate materials provided for Task 3, I have conducted a deeper analytical exercise into the imagery and legacy of these poems.
(i) Imagery of Disintegration in "The Second Coming"
The ResearchGate paper emphasizes that Yeats's power lies in his ability to make abstract historical collapse feel sensory and visceral. The imagery of disintegration follows a specific trajectory:
The Loss of Control: The poem begins with the "widening gyre." This is a geometric image of expansion until the structure can no longer support itself. The falcon and falconer represent the severance of the umbilical cord between human instinct and divine or social order.
The Liquidation of Order:"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed." Water imagery usually suggests life, but here, the water is contaminated. The use of the word "loosed" suggests that a dam has broken. Civilized society is portrayed as a fragile structure overwhelmed by an unstoppable force of violence.
The Death of Ritual:"The ceremony of innocence is drowned." For Yeats, "ceremony" and "custom" were the only things that kept the beast at bay. The fact that innocence is not just killed but "drowned" reinforces the sense of a world being submerged by chaos.
The Paralysis of the Good:"The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." This is the ultimate image of social disintegration. It describes a vacuum of leadership where morality becomes a source of weakness and fanaticism becomes the only source of energy.
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity." — W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"
(ii) Creative Activity: A Modern-Day Reimagining of the "Rough Beast"
The "Rough Beast" of 2025 — Generative Artificial Intelligence
If Yeats were alive today, looking at the "Spiritus Mundi" of 2025, what would he see slouching toward us?
THE SECOND COMING 2.0
A Digital Age Reimagining
The server farms are humming, the data gyre widens; The user cannot hear the programmer. Truth dissolves in a deepfake haze; The mere anarchy is loosed upon the feed, The blood-dimmed comments section is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of shared reality is drowned; The moderates doomscroll, lacking all conviction, while the trolls Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Great Reset is at hand. The Great Reset! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of the dark web Troubles my sight: somewhere in a Silicon desert A shape with a body of silicon and the head of a meme, A gaze blank and pitiless as an optimized ad, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of indignant polarized birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of messy human thought Were vexed to nightmare by a chilling line of code, And what rough chatbot, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards the cloud to be born?
— A 2025 Reimagining of Yeats's Vision
As a student living through the digital revolution, I believe the "Rough Beast" of our era is Generative Artificial Intelligence.
In my reimagining, the "Spiritus Mundi" is no longer a desert of sand, but a desert of data. The "Rough Beast" is an entity made of code, fed on the entirety of human knowledge, yet possessing "a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun" because it lacks human consciousness.
🤖 THE DIGITAL "ROUGH BEAST" — A 2025 Reimagining
⏳ Yeats's Vision (1919)
Spiritus Mundi = Desert of Sand
Rough Beast = Sphinx-like creature
Widening Gyre = Historical cycles
Blood-dimmed tide = WWI violence
🔮 Digital Reimagining (2025)
Spiritus Mundi = Desert of Data
Rough Beast = Generative AI
Widening Gyre = Algorithmic echo chambers
Blood-dimmed tide = Misinformation flood
The "widening gyre" is the algorithmic feedback loop that pushes us into polarized echo chambers until "the centre cannot hold."
The "blood-dimmed tide" is the flood of misinformation and deepfakes that drowns the "ceremony of truth."
We are currently in that terrifying moment of transition where the old ways of thinking, working, and creating are collapsing, and we do not yet know the face of the beast that will replace them.
(iii) Analytical Exercise: Comparing Yeats's "Silence" with Wilfred Owen's "Pity of War"
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) — The Voice from the Trenches
This is perhaps the most famous divide in Modernist poetry. On one side, we have Yeats's "On Being Asked for a War Poem," and on the other, the trench poetry of Wilfred Owen, specifically his concept of the Pity of War.
Yeats's Stance (The Distant Observer): Yeats argues for silence. He believes that the poet's duty is to the eternal, not the temporal. By refusing to write a war poem, he maintains a position of Modernist Detachment. He views war as a symptom of a historical cycle, not a subject for emotional outburst.
Owen's Stance (The Witness):Wilfred Owen, who died in the trenches, famously stated that "The Poetry is in the pity." His work, like "Dulce et Decorum Est," is designed to provoke a visceral reaction. He wants the reader to feel the "Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!" and to see the "blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs."
⚔️ THE GREAT DIVIDE: Yeats vs. Owen
🏛️
W.B. YEATS
The Distant Observer
Silence as artistic integrity
Focus on eternal cycles
Art above politics
Modernist Detachment
"A poet's mouth be silent..."
⚔️
WILFRED OWEN
The Trench Witness
Poetry as testimony
Focus on immediate suffering
Art as moral weapon
Visceral engagement
"The Poetry is in the pity."
The Comparison: The ResearchGate material suggests that these two poets represent the two poles of Modernist response to crisis. Owen uses the "War Poem" as a weapon of truth, stripping away the romantic illusions of "statesmen." Yeats uses the "Silence" as a shield for art, refusing to let the poet's voice be reduced to a political slogan.
As students, we must ask: Is Yeats's detachment a form of cowardice, or is it a radical act of artistic independence? In the context of the Russia-Ukraine war, do we need poets who describe the physical agony of the soldiers (like Owen), or do we need poets who can explain the historical "gyres" that led to the conflict (like Yeats)?
Conclusion: The Enduring Power of Modernist Voices
Thoor Ballylee — Yeats's Tower in Ireland, Symbol of His Poetic Vision
To conclude this deep-dive, it is clear that Yeats's Modernist voice remains essential because he refused to offer easy answers. His work is "perfect" in its ability to capture the exact moment of a world in transition.
Whether we are discussing the geopolitical shifts in Eastern Europe or the existential dread of a world governed by AI, Yeats's terminology provides the framework we need. We are all living in the "widening gyre." We are all witnessing the "blood-dimmed tide."
The enduring power of these poems lies in their refusal to be "useful" in a traditional sense. Yeats did not write a war poem to help win a war; he wrote an apocalyptic poem to help us survive the aftermath. As I close my laptop and step away from Dr. Dilip Barad Sir's lecture, I am reminded that the "rough beast" is always slouching somewhere. Our job, as students and thinkers, is to keep our eyes open, even when the gaze we meet is "blank and pitiless."
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" — W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"
📚 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS STUDY
📖
Yeats's Vision
Cyclical history through Gyres; civilizations rise and fall in 2000-year patterns
🤫
Modernist Detachment
The poet stands above temporal politics to observe eternal truths
🌍
Global Relevance
Yeats's imagery resonates from Partition to AI — the "rough beast" is always slouching
The Architect of Modernism: A Comprehensive Guide to T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
I am writing this blog as part of an academic task assigned by Dr. Dilip P. Barad, for which he provided a worksheet (Department Of English, MKBU). The purpose of this blog is to understand and respond to the key ideas from T.S. Eliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent."
Introduction: The "Disinterested" Giant of 20th-Century Criticism
When we speak of the 20th-century literary landscape, few figures loom as large as T.S. Eliot. While primarily celebrated for his revolutionary poetry, such as The Waste Land, Eliot was equally formidable as a critic. He functioned as a "disinterested" analyst, a term borrowed from Matthew Arnold, meaning he sought to evaluate art without the interference of personal, political, or social bias.
Eliot's approach was radical for its time. He moved criticism away from the "biographical" obsession of the 19th century and toward a "scientific" rigor. For Eliot, the focus should not be on the poet's life, but on the poetry itself. This blog post explores his seminal 1919 essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," which serves as the manifesto for New Criticism and modern literary thought.
To understand Eliot, one must understand the chaos of the post-WWI era. The world was fragmented, and the Victorian certainties of progress and individual heroism were shattered. Eliot sought a "classical" order to navigate this modern wreckage. He didn't just want to write poems; he wanted to create a system where poetry could be judged as an objective reality.
T.S. Eliot - Introduction | Contemporaries and Eliot's Persona
In this introductory video, Dr. Sanjay Mukherjee discusses Eliot's role among his contemporaries like I.A. Richards and his three-fold persona as a Classicist, Royalist, and Anglo-Catholic. This multifaceted identity informed his belief that art should transcend the temporal whims of the author.
1. Eliot's Concept of 'Tradition' and 'Historical Sense'
In common parlance, "tradition" often carries a negative, dusty connotation, implying a stagnant adherence to the past. However, Eliot redefines Tradition as an "organic theory" or a living invention. For Eliot, tradition is not a static museum; it is a breathing, evolving organism.
Tradition as an Invention, Not a Legacy
Eliot argues that tradition cannot be inherited through mere birthright. You don't "have" tradition simply by being British or American; you must acquire it with great labor. It is not a "blind or timid adherence" to the successes of the previous generation, which Eliot identifies as a form of stagnation. Instead, it is a dynamic continuity.
"If the only form of tradition consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, 'tradition' should positively be discouraged. We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour."
The Perception of the "Presentness of the Past"
Central to this theory is the Historical Sense. Eliot writes:
"The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past but of its presence."
This means that a writer should not look at Homer or Dante as "dead" figures. Instead, the entire literature of Europe from Homer to the present day has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. When a poet writes, they are not writing into a vacuum; they are writing into a room already filled with the greats.
Eliot further explains:
"This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional."
A traditional writer is one who is acutely aware of their place in the timeline. They write with "history in their bones." This awareness forces the poet to realize that their own work will eventually be judged by the same standards as the classics. It is a humbling and terrifying realization that demands total commitment to the craft.
The Organic Wholeness of Literature
Eliot's view of tradition is essentially holistic. He views the literature of Europe as a single, unified body. This "pan-European" vision was particularly striking in 1919, just as the continent was recovering from a war that had pitted nation against nation. Eliot's literary theory was, in a sense, a plea for cultural unity through the shared history of the written word.
"No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation, is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of aesthetic, not merely historical, criticism."
Thought Provoker: Do We Agree?
Eliot rejects "blind adherence," but he demands that the individual surrender themselves to the past. Personally, as a critic, I find this view both empowering and restrictive. While it provides a roadmap for "greatness," it risks silencing voices that do not fit into the established Western canon. However, Eliot's insistence that tradition is dynamic—that it changes every time a new work is added—is his most brilliant contribution. He views the literary world as an "existing monument" that is slightly altered by every truly new work of art.
If we accept Eliot's view, then the "canon" is never closed. Every time a genius arises, the past itself is rewritten. This is a radical thought: the present doesn't just learn from the past; the present modifies the past.
T.S. Eliot: Tradition & Association with Individual Talent
This video delves into the positive connotation Eliot gives to 'Tradition' and how it stands in opposition to the Romantic focus on the individual 'self'. It highlights how the individual is merely a temporary vessel for a timeless tradition.
2. The Interplay of Tradition and Individual Talent
One might ask: if the past is so dominant, where is the room for the Individual Talent? Eliot's answer lies in the relationship between the new and the old. The "talent" of the individual is precisely their ability to engage with the "tradition" and move it forward.
The Existing Monument and the New Work
Eliot posits that the "existing monuments" of literature form an ideal order. When a new work of art is created, if it is truly new, it must "fit" into this order. But for it to fit, the entire order must be slightly readjusted. Thus, the past is altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.
Think of it like a perfectly balanced mobile. If you add a new weight to one side, every other piece must shift its position to maintain the equilibrium. The "individual talent" is the weight; "tradition" is the mobile. The relationship is reciprocal and inevitable.
The Poet as a Medium, Not an Origin
In Eliot's view, the poet is not a "genius" in the Romantic sense—someone who creates something out of nothing. Instead, the poet is a "medium." They are a lightning rod that catches the various currents of history and tradition and grounds them in a specific poem. The individual's personality is not the source of the poem; the tradition is the source. The talent is the ability to channel that source.
This leads to a paradox: to be truly original, a poet must be deeply steeped in the past. If you don't know what has been done, you will likely only repeat it poorly. Only by knowing the tradition can you find the "gap" where something new can be added.
Effort vs. Absorption: The Shakespeare-Plutarch Paradigm
Eliot acknowledges that the labor of acquiring tradition varies among geniuses. Some must study for years; others seem to inhale the past through the very air they breathe. He famously notes:
"Some can absorb knowledge; the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum."
This quote highlights that "Historical Sense" isn't about passing a history exam. It's about the quality of the mind to absorb the essence of the past. While some (like Milton) may have studied extensively, others (like Shakespeare) had a "unified sensibility" that allowed them to absorb the "ethos" of an era through a single source like Plutarch's Lives.
This suggests that the "Individual Talent" is not just about writing style, but about the receptivity of the mind. Some minds are like sponges; they can take a small fragment of the past and reconstruct an entire world from it.
The Burden of Knowledge
Eliot is aware that his demands on the poet are extreme. He essentially asks the modern writer to carry the entire weight of Western civilization on their shoulders. He admits that many will find this burden too heavy. But for Eliot, there is no other way. If a poet wants to be "significant," they must accept this responsibility.
"The poet must be aware that the mind of Europe—the mind of his own country—a mind which he learns in time to be much more important than his own private mind—is a mind which changes, and that this change is a development which abandons nothing en route, which does not superannuate either Shakespeare, or Homer, or the rock drawing of the Magdalenian draughtsmen."
T.S. Eliot—Some Can Absorb Knowledge
Dr. Sanjay Mukherjee explains the nuance of this quote, illustrating how Shakespeare serves as a unique example of someone who 'absorbed' his age without conventional university learning. This reinforces the idea that tradition is about intellectual empathy, not just rote memorization.
3. The Theory of Depersonalization and Impersonality
This is perhaps the most famous and controversial part of Eliot's essay. He advocates for the Theory of Impersonality, which was a direct strike against the Romantic notion that poetry is an expression of the poet's personality. If the Victorian era was about the "Self," the Modernist era (according to Eliot) was about the "Self-Extinction."
Poetry vs. The Poet
Eliot asserts:
"Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry."
He argues that the poet's mind is merely a receptacle or a medium. The poet does not have a "personality" to express, but a particular medium in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways.
This was a radical departure from the "confessional" mode of poetry. Eliot wanted to move away from the idea that a poem is a window into the poet's soul. Instead, he wanted the poem to be a mirror reflecting the tradition. The "I" in a poem, for Eliot, is never the biographical "I" of the author; it is a dramatic persona.
The Chemical Catalyst Analogy (The Shred of Platinum)
To explain this "scientific" process of creation, Eliot uses a brilliant chemical analogy. Imagine a chamber containing two gases: Oxygen and Sulfur Dioxide. When a shred of platinum (the catalyst) is introduced, the two gases combine to form Sulfurous Acid.
The Gases: The emotions and feelings of the poet (the raw materials).
The Platinum: The mind of the poet (the medium).
The Result (Acid): The finished poem (the objective reality).
Crucially, the platinum itself remains unchanged and neutral. It does not enter into the acid; it only enables the reaction. Similarly, the poet's mind should remain "disinterested." The "man who suffers," the human experience, must be separate from the "mind which creates," the artistic process.
This is the core of Depersonalization:
"The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material."
Emotion vs. Feeling
Eliot makes a fine distinction between "emotions" and "feelings." Emotions are those we recognize in life (love, hate, grief); feelings are the specific aesthetic experiences that only occur within the structure of a poem. A great poem doesn't just describe an emotion; it creates a new "feeling" that has never existed before.
This is why Eliot believes that the poet's personal life is irrelevant. A poet might have a very boring life but produce poetry with intense "feelings." Conversely, someone with a tragic life might produce mediocre poetry because they are too "attached" to their own emotions to transmute them into art.
Poetry as an Escape from Emotion
Eliot famously concludes this section by redefining poetry:
"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality."
He clarifies that only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from them. This is a total rejection of Wordsworth's"spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." For Eliot, the Romantic approach is messy, subjective, and ultimately fleeting. The Modernist approach is disciplined, objective, and enduring.
This "escape" is not a cowardly flight from reality; it is a courageous attempt to transform the chaotic "noise" of personal experience into the structured "music" of art.
The Objective Correlative
While not explicitly named in this essay (it appears later in his essay on Hamlet), the concept of the Objective Correlative is deeply tied to the Theory of Impersonality. It is the idea that the only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion.
This reinforces the idea that the poet must work with external "materials" to evoke a response, rather than simply telling the reader how they feel. The "shred of platinum" (the mind) finds the right objects to trigger the chemical reaction in the reader.
T.S. Eliot: Analogy of Chemical Reaction & Theory of Impersonalization
This video provides a technical breakdown of the 'Platinum' analogy and how Eliot brought scientific rigor to the study of the creative process. It emphasizes the "extinction of personality" as the hallmark of a mature artist.
4. The Lasting Impact: The Birth of New Criticism
Eliot's essay didn't just exist in a vacuum; it sparked a revolution in how literature was taught in universities. This movement became known as New Criticism.
The Autonomy of the Text
Before Eliot, literature was often studied through history, biography, or moral philosophy. If you wanted to understand a poem, you looked at what the poet ate for breakfast or what political party they belonged to. New Criticism, following Eliot's lead, insisted on the autonomy of the text.
The poem was treated as an "artifact" or a "verbal icon" that could be analyzed without any reference to the outside world. This led to the practice of Close Reading, where every word, image, and punctuation mark was scrutinized for its contribution to the overall unity of the work.
The Intentional Fallacy: The mistake of believing that the author's intended meaning is the "correct" meaning. (Eliot's escape from personality).
The Affective Fallacy: The mistake of judging a poem based on the emotional effect it has on the reader. (Eliot's "disinterested" approach).
These concepts dominated English departments from the 1930s to the 1960s, creating a generation of readers who approached poetry with the precision of a surgeon.
5. Critical Critique: A Scholarly Perspective
No theory is without its flaws. As an expert in the field, I believe it is essential to look at Eliot's work through a modern lens. While his contributions are monumental, they are also products of their time and social standing.
1. The Eurocentric Bias and Neglect of Oral Traditions
Critics often point out that Eliot's "Tradition" is strictly Western and Eurocentric. In his essay, "Tradition" starts with Homer and the "monuments of Europe." By defining tradition so narrowly, Eliot effectively ignored the social and oral traditions of non-European cultures, as well as folk traditions within Europe itself.
This "elitist" view of literature assumes that the only "tradition" worth preserving is the written, classical canon. In the post-colonial era, this has been heavily criticized. We now recognize that tradition is not a single line stretching back to Greece, but a web of interconnected global influences. By ignoring the "margins," Eliot's theory reinforces a cultural hierarchy that many modern critics find problematic.
2. Harold Bloom's "Anxiety of Influence"
While Eliot sees the relationship with the past as a harmonious "fitting in," the scholar Harold Bloom proposed a much more "agonistic" or competitive relationship. In his theory of the Anxiety of Influence, Bloom argues that poets don't "surrender" to tradition; they struggle against it.
Bloom argues that every great poet is haunted by their "precursors." They feel a deep anxiety that their predecessors have already said everything worth saying. Therefore, a new poet doesn't "fit in"; they must "misread" or "subvert" their predecessors to create space for their own voice.
Where Eliot sees the poet as a humble servant of the past, Bloom sees the poet as an Oedipal rebel trying to "kill" their literary father. Bloom would argue that Eliot's "surrender to tradition" is a psychological defense mechanism—a way of pretending the struggle doesn't exist.
3. The Gendered Perspective
Feminist critics have also noted that Eliot's "Tradition" is almost entirely male. The "dead poets" he refers to are the "Great Men" of history. By focusing on a tradition that systematically excluded women for centuries, Eliot's theory makes it difficult for a female poet to "fit in" without adopting a masculine mask.
The "escape from personality" could be seen as a way of erasing the specific lived experiences of marginalized groups who need their "personality" to fight for recognition.
4. The Problem of "The Mind of Europe"
Eliot's concept of a collective "Mind of Europe" is a beautiful abstraction, but it ignores the material realities of history. Literature is not just a collection of monuments; it is a product of power, economics, and social struggle. By treating poems as "disinterested" objects, Eliot ignores the ways in which literature has been used to justify empire, class oppression, and social control.
T.S. Eliot: Tradition and Individual Talent: Summing Up
In this final video, Dr. Dilip Barad and Dr. Mukherjee summarize the 'Death of the Author' (biographical) and the birth of New Criticism through Eliot's lens. They reflect on how Eliot's "brief" essay managed to rewrite the rules of the entire discipline.
Conclusion: The Legacy of a Disinterested Critic
T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent" remains a foundational text because it demands that we take art seriously as an independent entity. By removing the "poet" from the "poem," he paved the way for the New Criticism movement, which dominated literary departments for decades.
He taught us that a poem is not just a diary entry; it is a construction. He taught us that the past is not a weight to be dragged, but a fuel to be burned. Whether you agree with his "platinum" analogy or find his view of tradition too rigid, you cannot deny that Eliot forced us to look at the "existing monument" of literature with new eyes.
He taught us that to be truly "individual," one must first understand what it means to be "traditional." In an age of instant gratification and "personal branding," Eliot's call for self-extinction and rigorous study is perhaps more relevant now than ever. It is a reminder that great art is not found in the "Self," but in the "Self-Transcendence."
"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality."
— T.S. Eliot
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. 1973. [Wikipedia Overview]
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