Voltaire claimed that all originality was no more than judicious plagiarism. So 'originality' might be viewed as being a rather industrious Jackdaw.
Originality is tradition. It is the tinkering with tradition, this applies to Shakespeare, (our own Homer) as much as to any 'artist'. It is fairly consensual that Shakespeare was an original genius
however it is not consensual how inventive he was in culling past works Roman comedies, ie Petrach et al.
Was Milton another towering figure original? The argument goes
that those who claim to be original are relativists
Handel was notorious 'lifter' of other people's work that some view him as a kleptomaniac.
To understand tradition we might look at how Goethe in trying to understand music because he disliked Beethoven he called on his friend Mendelssohn who took him through the history of
music up to Mozart et al...and then Goethe exclaimed, 'ah now I understand music, because I understand its tradition.'
What we have today is an anxiety about originality and this can be traced back to the romantic poets and their we are better that railways protests about the advent of the industrial revolution, this claim
by Coleridge etc of having an 'inner empire' which was superior. So Coleridge poetry is a poetry of loss, There is in this a desire to distinguish yourself from other people and this might be regarded as a high form of conformism.
TS Eliot expands on this We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity.
Here is Eliots's point which might be viewed as a precursor to the 'author is dead'. ',,,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 from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.'
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 æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.
The poet must be very conscious of the main current, which does not at all flow invariably through the most distinguished reputations. He must be quite aware of the obvious fact that art never improves, but that the material of art is never quite the same. He 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.
But the difference between the present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past’s awareness of itself cannot show,
The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.
The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. And emotions which he has never experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to him. Consequently, we must believe that “emotion recollected in tranquillity” is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor, without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration, of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not “recollected,” and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is “tranquil” only in that it is a passive attending upon the event. Of course this is not quite the whole story. There is a great deal, in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him “personal.” 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. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
Out of self, the notion of genius comes about at this time as does the legalising of copyright, patent etc.
If we turn to science and arts' rivalry with science. See Keats battle with Newton, or Constable claiming that painting is science. Every scientific experiment to be validated has to be original, and so we find that in academia every PhD has to be 'original' which is a fairly ridiculous ( I know having done one myself).
Thank God I am a fugitive from academia/teaching and I am no longer one of those
who 'claim to know'.
On the subject of plagiarism most of the above is culled from a BBC programme on 'originality'.
Originality is tradition. It is the tinkering with tradition, this applies to Shakespeare, (our own Homer) as much as to any 'artist'. It is fairly consensual that Shakespeare was an original genius
however it is not consensual how inventive he was in culling past works Roman comedies, ie Petrach et al.
Was Milton another towering figure original? The argument goes
that those who claim to be original are relativists
Handel was notorious 'lifter' of other people's work that some view him as a kleptomaniac.
To understand tradition we might look at how Goethe in trying to understand music because he disliked Beethoven he called on his friend Mendelssohn who took him through the history of
music up to Mozart et al...and then Goethe exclaimed, 'ah now I understand music, because I understand its tradition.'
What we have today is an anxiety about originality and this can be traced back to the romantic poets and their we are better that railways protests about the advent of the industrial revolution, this claim
by Coleridge etc of having an 'inner empire' which was superior. So Coleridge poetry is a poetry of loss, There is in this a desire to distinguish yourself from other people and this might be regarded as a high form of conformism.
TS Eliot expands on this We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity.
Here is Eliots's point which might be viewed as a precursor to the 'author is dead'. ',,,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 from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.'
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 æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.
The poet must be very conscious of the main current, which does not at all flow invariably through the most distinguished reputations. He must be quite aware of the obvious fact that art never improves, but that the material of art is never quite the same. He 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.
But the difference between the present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past’s awareness of itself cannot show,
The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.
The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. And emotions which he has never experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to him. Consequently, we must believe that “emotion recollected in tranquillity” is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor, without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration, of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not “recollected,” and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is “tranquil” only in that it is a passive attending upon the event. Of course this is not quite the whole story. There is a great deal, in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him “personal.” 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. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
Out of self, the notion of genius comes about at this time as does the legalising of copyright, patent etc.
If we turn to science and arts' rivalry with science. See Keats battle with Newton, or Constable claiming that painting is science. Every scientific experiment to be validated has to be original, and so we find that in academia every PhD has to be 'original' which is a fairly ridiculous ( I know having done one myself).
Thank God I am a fugitive from academia/teaching and I am no longer one of those
who 'claim to know'.
On the subject of plagiarism most of the above is culled from a BBC programme on 'originality'.
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