tradition and art...

Meditation for a sunny Sunday Art afternoon:

In a particular sense [the poet] will be aware also that he must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past. I say judged, not amputated, by them; not judged to be as good as, or worse or better than, the dead; and certainly not judged by the canons of dead critics. It is a judgement, a comparison, in which two things are measured by each other. To conrom merely would be for the new work not really to conform at all; it would not be new, and would therefore not be a work of art.
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What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career.
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The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.

[t. s. eliot - 'tradition and the individual talent']