Picture Poetry

From BoingBoing: A recent episode of Public Radio International’s To the Best of Our Knowledge dealt with remix, reuse, and plagiarism:

Author Jonathan Lethem talks to Jim Fleming about his “Harper’s” Magazine essay, “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism.” As the subtitle indicates, Jonathan Lethem appropriated the words of many authors to cover the subject of plagiarism, although he provides full attribution of his sources at the end of the essay. Also, Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid) talks to Anne Strainchamps about his book, Rhythm Science, and how the art of music sampling relates to plagiarism. We also hear a DJ Spooky/TTBOOK interview mashup.

MP3 link: here

The Lethem essay is online: here. I remember hearing about it but never read it all the way through till now; it’s astonishingly good — a fantastic summary of today’s cultural moment.

As I quoted in my senior undergraduate thesis:

Am Ende ist alle Poësie Übersetzung.
In the end all literature is translation.
–Novalis, a.k.a. Friedrich von Hardenberg

As I wrote in the conclusion chapter, my own translations were intended to “illustrate (and hopefully validate) my twofold assertion: that emulation is not bad literary practice but a respectable and indeed essential part of creation, and conversely that the insertion of one’s own personality and culture is not a sign of bad or unfaithful translation. On the contrary, both processes are unavoidable, and so we might as well do them openly.”

Sleeveface!

Eddie Campbell is pondering Lichtenstein, particularly the recent mini-furor over Lichtenstein’s use of comic book art without crediting or consulting the original creators, which is the entire source of his fame. Johnny Walker in the comments links to this piece, on general trends of plagiarism in fine art and how the situation is treated differently than in, say, pop music.

I respond:

This Lawrence Alloway comment from Johnny’s link is revealing: “Future research will no doubt come up with the names of the people who drew some of Lichtenstein’s originals, but so what? He was not engaged in mutual collaboration but acts of annexation.”

There was a time when a respected entity was considered perfectly within its rights to commandeer a foreign, “primitive” entity and either seize its assets or remake that entity in its own image, in the name of “ennobling” the “savage.” The White Man’s Burden and all that. Nowadays such imperialism is condemned, and we emphasize indigenous sovereignty. I’m not surprised that people are seeing elitism and exploitation in Lichtenstein’s work; I’m sort of surprised that it took this long.

Another metaphor: Lichtenstein as P.T. Barnum, putting the freaks and primitives on display for the amusement of the good white folks? Hmmm.

I’m writing a thesis this year on the translation of Greek poetry, so I’m quite interested in this topic of art, appropriation, and imperialism. In many respects I think a concern for faithfulness and authenticity has crippled classical translation for the last fifty years, and it’s time for the pendulum to swing back…

Obviously I’m still kind of ambivalent about all this.