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.
-- The Sacred Wood by T.S. Eliot
Does this mean, his significance and to understand him mean to understand where he stands among the dead poets and artists?
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.
While the passage (shown with its following sentence, above) does suggest a need to understand where the artist stands among earlier poets and artists, it says slightly more than that. It asserts that comparison to those gone before is a structural requirement for criticism; ie, that such comparisons are not merely helpful for understanding, but are a requirement for meaningful comment.
That aside, his appears to function possessively in its several instances.
