Strickland on "Tradition and the Individual Talent":

"The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own
generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe. . .has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. . . No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone."
                             (T.S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent")

"'I don't think of the past.  The only thing that matters is the everlasting
present.'"               (W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence 79)
 

        In this contrast between Eliot's early criticism and the defiant assertions made by the character Strickland in The Moon and Sixpence,  two different philosophical approaches to the aesthetic sense are revealed, each one offering its path as the correct one to find the essential truth and purpose in art.  For Eliot, the individual artist is compelled to reconcile his personal talent and emotions with the works of those who have come before him; the artist must inevitably function within the sphere of tradition, among the achievements and standards of his predecessors.  Serving as the basis for his doctrine of impersonality in "Tradition and the Individual Talent," Eliot argues that the poet exchanges satisfying his desire for self-expression in order to voice something far greater--the universal truth that connects all works of art together--and to help shape the "present moment" of past tradition.  While every poet starts from his own emotions and thoughts, he soon discovers the virtue of "a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality" in the face of a higher authority as he willfully conveys his work from its subjective origins to an objective existence.  Yet, this type of surrender of the self in the artistic process varies drastically from that which Charles Strickland contemplates in his paintings in Maugham's novel The Moon and Sixpence.  In both instances, a continual self-sacrifice is undertaken as the means to produce genuine art or literature; however, the opposing forces to which they submit suggest the two different views on the nature and purpose of art held by Eliot (and many of the New Critics) and Strickland in his expressionism. From the narrator's portrait of Strickland in his austerity and apathy towards others, one discovers that Strickland's acts of sacrifice stem from purely internal motives--"some deep-rooted instinct of creation [in his soul]" (52)--rather than a yielding to some external force or authority proclaiming itself as tradition.  In this sense, the narrator is left to delineate between two conceptions of self-sacrifice--one which adheres to the  voice of tradition and the production of art for art's sake, and the other which listens to the inner voice of the artist's soul and produces art for the sake of personal expression and liberation.  In this tension between external and internal forces, the artist must choose to which purpose of art he will ultimately submit his individual talent--Eliot's classicist version of "tradition" or the more romanticized notion of personal expression.  Having chosen the latter path, Strickland endeavors to sustain a sense of subjectivity in his artistic endeavors rather than succumbing to an objective reality.  Yet in a world in which works of art are immediately objectified and separated from their original emotions upon completion, Strickland's desire for artistic freedom leads him beyond the limitations of society--its "simultaneous existence and order"--to seek fulfillment of the "aesthetic instinct" in isolation and a shrugging off of the burden of tradition placed upon his shoulders.

        The dualism between the subjective and objective functions of art is determined by that force to which the artist ultimately chooses to surrender the self--the "inner voice" or the "outside authority" (Eliot draws upon Middleton Murry's work for this distinction in his later essay "The Function of Criticism").  Often categorized and simplified into the romanticist and the classicist attitudes toward the individual's relation to works of art, the artist must decide whether those creative impulses which lead him toward producing genuine art emanate from the inner depths of himself or something external from him "to which he owes allegiance, a devotion to which he must surrender and sacrifice himself in order to earn and obtain his unique position" ("The Function of Criticism" 68).  Is art always dictated more by idiosyncratic factors and inclinations which closely resemble Strickland's own statement of artistic activity:  "I only want to paint what I see" (The Moon and Sixpence 78); or is the artist subjected to being "very conscious of the main current" and that "the mind of Europe--the mind of his own country--[is] a mind which he learns in time to be much more important than his own private mind" ("Tradition" 39)?  In light of the entire context of literature, Eliot suggests the insignificance and temporality of efforts pursued in the former mode which can effectively be observed in the work of many Romantic poets, their indulgences in self-expression and neglect for sustaining "the living whole of all poetry that has ever been written" ("Tradition" 40).  Rather, the latter option of functioning within the tradition offers the poet more positive rewards and freedom by dismantling all illusions:  "to be judged by the standards of the past, not amputated by them" ("Tradition" 39) means that the application of the individual talent for the ends of tradition should not be taken negatively as a form of imprison- ment; instead it actually brings a more genuine sense of liberation and achievement than can ever be found in the delusional promises of romantic expressionism.

        While the origin of all art is to be found in personal emotion and the individual's desire to communicate some sentiment or idea through one of its mediums, the question necessarily arises as to what becomes of these subjective entities--the emotion and intentions of the artist--once the artistic process has been completed and the work of art is objectified, set forth for public consumption and interpretation.  In particular, Eliot's brand of objective criticism addresses this dilemma by proposing two central principles--the "objective correlative" and the doctrine of impersonality--which both emphasize that the work of art itself is the sole source for meaning and critical analysis.  Eliot first advances the "objective correlative" in his infamous essay "Hamlet" in which he denounces the inability of the protagonist to understand his faults--that he is "dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts"; unable to find a suitable outlet of action for his emotions, Hamlet fails to objectify his emotion.  Likewise responses to art are often distorted when one becomes "unable to distinguish the poetry from an emotional state aroused in himself by the poetry, a state which may be merely an indulgence of his own emotions" ("The Perfect Critic").  With such an influx of various emotions aroused by a work of art, it becomes almost impossible to delineate between those actually related to the work and those "which have nothing to do with the work of art whatsoever but are accidents of personal association" (Casey 89).  Against this sentimental approach, Eliot puts forth his "objective cor- relative" as the "the only way of expressing emotion in the form of art; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion" ("Hamlet" 48).  In this way emotions become strongly identified in their associations with objects, in spite of the fact that there is "no intrinsic connection between emotion and object, between the inward state and its outward expression" (Casey 93).  Yet, as Frank Kermode notes in his introduction to Eliot's selected prose, difficulty arises from realizing that what the object is correlative with is [always] the very emotion of the poet; "and this correlation was, in Eliot's opinion, the least interesting thing about it to anybody except the poet himself" (17)

        The second issue which comes forth from Eliot's criticism is one of the most troubling, and often misinterpreted, propositions--his doctrine of impersonality, the "continual extinction of personality" which each artist should strive for in his or her work.  Especially in contrast to Wordsworthian notions of the individual poet's mind and "emotion recollected in tranquility" (which he describes as a faulty, inexact formula), Eliot's call for "the process of depersonalization" in works of art embodies the transition from a subjective to an objective reality; all the original emotions which cause art to flourish are rendered impersonal for the sake of universal standards.  This movement toward the impersonal relies heavily upon the separation of the individual who first experiences the emotions and the artist who then translates these emotions into artistic products:  "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" ("Tradition" 41).  Hence, impersonality does not signal an obliteration of all the emotion in art (since it is a fundamental part of the process) as much as it suggests the value of objectifying such emotions in order to allow them to function properly on a universal level.  Since no other individual can ever be able to understand completely which particular sentiments the artist was feeling or attempting to express at that precise moment of artistic production (often referred to as the "intentional fallacy"), the audience and critics can only base their interpretations on the work itself as an object and disregard the various biographical and idiosyncratic components which may accompany art.  Taking this barrier as a given as well as the multitude of possible interpretations which arise from this deficiency, the inability of the communicative medium to produce a pure translation of the artist's meaning implies that certain knowledge is located only in the work of art itself; all other elements external to the work are rendered unreliable and unable to serve as sources for objective standards.  Therefore, as a result, subjective emotions are not extinguished from the artwork, rather they are "transformed into public objects [in order] to reveal their essential structure" (Casey 98).

        Relying upon objectified emotions and the separation between the individual and the mind of the artist, Eliot advocates the impersonal poet--one who achieves a higher order of being by transcending the personal nature of his vocation.  In this way Eliot dismisses any appeal or influence which the artist's personality may have on the reader and specifically goes against the direction which the narrator of The Moon and Sixpence takes in his portrait of the artist-in-exile:  "To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am willing to excuse a thousand faults"(5).  The narrator of the novel suggests that these glimpses of personality are fundamental to the success of his art since even "the most insignificant of Strickland's works suggest a personality which is strange, tormented, and complex;. . .it is this which has excited so curious an interest in his life and character" (5-6).  With the narrator's proposal "to deal with Charles Strickland's work [only] in so far as it touches upon his character" (6), it becomes evident that the story which follows will focus primarily on the individual rather than his art which remains of secondary importance (both to the audience as well as Strickland himself).  Hence, all links to Strickland's art in the novel's scenes are very much emotionally charged and dependent upon the image of the artist as an individual; never once does the figure of Strickland escape from the reader's mind or his work.  In this sense, Strickland opposes and challenges Eliot's aesthetics by rejecting the notion that the work of art upon acquiring its objectified status remains the sole source of meaning and truth.  Instead of having the artist and his or her emotions drop out of all consideration in order to let the art object stand alone, Strickland's approach to art provides an interesting alternative to Eliot and his call of art for art's sake by, in effect, announcing his own doctrine of personality and a "subjective" correlative.

        Rather than incorporate himself into the "organic whole" of tradition, Strickland represents the artist whose art is a direct manifestation of personal emotion (6).  For him, all art arises out of individual feeling and thought while the purpose of producing art becomes an effort to free one's system of any tensions in these sentiments, almost like an act of catharsis.  In this manner, art is undertaken neither for its own sake nor for other people to appreciate and identify with; instead his vision of the aesthetic is based completely on self-discovery and those individual truths which surface in the process.  In this way, the figure of Strickland resists the same notion of the "affective fallacy" which the New Critics and Eliot reject in their perceptions of literature.
 
        Proposed as a misunderstanding of the purpose of literature or art, the affective fallacy signifies the faults of those forms of criticism which base the value of a work on the emotive responses which occur in the artist's audience.  Both Eliot and Strickland denounce the judgment of art on the basis of its emotional reception by other individuals, or society at large; nor should a work of art originate in the artist's desire to appeal to or arouse particular emotions in one's intended audience since "the poet should not aim [merely] to excite" (Casey 89). Yet, this agreement is fostered through very different means.  For Eliot, the ommunication of emotion in art must emanate from and be firmly grounded in some universal objective rather than be subject to the whims of the individual artist's personality.  In contrast, Strickland's view of art is one of a completely personal experience in which the emotions involved in its expression cannot be objectified and rendered as standards for aesthetic judgment; hence, he is overtly indifferent to how others may interpret his art (and even to the finished artwork itself). Thus again, Eliot and Strickland drastically part ways here because, in the end, Eliot determines the significance of art by its objective position within tradition, while Strickland resists even the idea of such an evaluation by opposing the translation of art from its roots in personal emotion into a more universal, impersonal sphere; works of art first conceived in subjectivity should never stray far from these origins in Strickland's concept of aesthetics.

        In this sense, the aesthetic positions of Eliot and Strickland coincide with their mutual rejection of the affective fallacy; yet their opinions diverge significantly on the matter of an "intentional fallacy" since Strickland strongly opposes such a separation of the individual and his or her emotions from the work of art.  In The Moon and Sixpence, Maugham adds another level to this relationship in the character of Dirk Stroeve whose artistic endeavors stand as the reversal of Strickland's:  his art is contrived with a specific purpose and audience in mind, but maintains the same element of impersonality advanced by Eliot.  Hence, Stroeve's art is conceived not for its own sake or even that of the individual's freedom of expression, but rather for the sake of the audience.  In this instance, art becomes a product for mass consumption:  "I sell.  I bring romance into the homes of all sorts of people. . . They like to think that Italy is like my pictures.  That's what they expect. . . It was an ideal that he painted--a poor one, common, and shop-soiled, but still it was an ideal" (65).  Stroeve's art in its objectifed state precisely exemplifies the affective fallacy which Eliot and Strickland so vehemently oppose in the conception of art.  Yet, Stroeve parallels Eliot with the absence of both personality and subjective emotion which marks the commonplace characteristics of his works of art.  In his sincere enthusiasm and love for art, he adheres to its tradition and authority:  "He had a true appreciation of the old masters, . . And he was better educated than most painters.  He was not, like most of them, ignorant of kindred arts, and his taste for music and literature gave depth and variety to his comprehension of painting" (66-67).  Yet, for all his knowledge of tradition and genuine love for art, the narrator finds that Stroeve paints "the same stale, obviously picturesque things that he had painted for years in Rome.  It was all false, insincere, shoddy" (70).  Despite surrounding himself with "the proper environ- ment for an artist, one deliberately artistic" (133) and the supposed inspiration provided by all the imitations of masterpieces which hang upon the walls of his apartment, "he could not see the truth" (65)--that beauty which is "something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul" (72).

        Lacking the individual talent of Strickland or even Eliot for that matter, Dirk Stroeve in his art hands himself over to the guiding hands of tradition to find some sense of gratification of the aesthetic instinct, which could not be fulfilled by the internal surrender of the self undergone by Strickland.  Completely objectified and without the remnants of personality, Stroeve’s art could have easily been painted by anyone; as an artist he fails to achieve meaning in his art because his creative energies are devoted more towards instilling a particular effect in the observer than fostering his own talent.

        In this comparison between the artistic purpose of Stroeve and that of Strickland in relation to Eliot’s objective criticism, three views of the aesthetic truth prevail among the pursuits of Eliot, Stroeve, and Strickland:  art as an object in itself, as a product for the observer, and as a process for personal expression.  Rejecting both the fame of a potential audience and the value of standing among the achievements of his predecessors, Strickland seeks above all else the independence and liberation he believes can be found in the artistic medium of painting.  He strives against Eliot’s assertion that “no poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone” (“Tradition” 38) by stepping outside the bounds of history and society and the whole sum of their conventions to exist in “the everlasting present.” Believing his individual talent as a complete means to such ends, he starts from scratch and formulates his own approaches to art while rendering all external influences or knowledge as artificial and detrimental to those sensations derived from his “inner voice”:  “he painted with great difficulty, and in his unwillingness to accept help from anyone lost much time in finding out for himself the solution of technical problems which preceding generations had already worked out one by one” (77).  Yet, the impossibilty of such “a [complete] break away from the herd” (55) is expressed by the narrator who ponders whether one could even write on a deserted island with the knowledge that no one else would ever set their eyes on that work; what then is the point of using the mediums of communication without the desire to communicate some specific sentiment or idea?  In Strickland’s case, his indifference to forthcoming interpretation and the finished artwork implies that the passion which held him--the freedom of possessing his own soul--led him to satisfy the aesthetic instinct in ways which differed very drastically from Eliot or Stroeve in their works.  Both Eliot and Stroeve use art for communicative purposes, regardless of whether their messages are constructed for a universal, objective existence or merely a subjective one; in addition, they conceive of art in terms of connecting the present with the past, or rather keeping the virtues achieved in the past within the present moment.  It is this aesthetic truth to which both men surrender themselves and their individual talent.  On the other hand, Strickland neglects to perceive art strictly in its communicative role as his refusal of artistic tradition and history expands and redefines the medium itself.  Whether Strickland ever completely negated all influences and burdens upon him to produce essential and subjective works of art remains a central question.  Yet, just as it is the personality of Strickland which comes forth in his art that most inspires the narrator in his portrait, it is the passion of his struggle--the “pursuit of the ineffable” (146)--that captivates the reader of The Moon and Sixpence.  With the figure of Strickland, Maugham suggests an interesting reversal of the ideal artist proposed by Eliot in his criticism; instead of fostering individual talent for the sake of art and tradition, Strickland proposes using individual talent for its own sake.
 

  Works Cited  
 

Casey, John. "Art and Feeling--T. S. Eliot"  The Language of Criticism. London:  Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1966.

Eliot, T. S.  Selected Prose.  London:  Faber and Faber Ltd, 1975.

Maugham, W. Somerset.  The Moon and Sixpence.  New York:  Penguin Books, 1944.