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Unread 09-13-2017, 06:27 AM
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AZ Foreman AZ Foreman is offline
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It probably would have been a nice thing to do to mention by name the more unknown of the English poets he was palimpsesting into his French work. If I had been in his place I would have done so. (As indeed I do do when I am in such a position.) If I were Renwick, I would be annoyed at his not having done so. (If I were DesRuisseaux, I hope I'd have found something better to palimpsest than that.)

Maybe it's just because my head is so very much aswim in other times and places. But I do have a hard time with the idea that DesRuisseaux was under any ethical obligation to do so, anymore than Du Bellay was under ethical obligation to cite Janus Vitalis in his famous sonnet. And I suppose the only reason Ezra Pound escapes the same charge is that he had the good sense only to "plagiarize" deceased authors who weren't alive to care anymore.

I still am not sure harm was done there, so much as good left undone. But maybe that's just semantics, and I will cede the point that at least when palimpsesting relatively unknown writers, one really ought to give them the signal-boost of a citation.

In any case, I doubt that there was much fame he could have usurped from most of the poets he was swiping. Maya Angelou, Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNeice, Charles Bukowski, Ted Kooser, and Tupac Shakur are not exactly hurting for fame (or for that matter all alive), and would have had no need for DesRuisseaux citational publicity.

I think that there are serious problems with describing poetry as simple plagiarism once it has been adapted not only by alteration of its semantic content, but by translation into another language. There are a variety of reasons why I think the concept of transformativity is important there.

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Apparently, though, part of DesRuisseaux's aesthetic is that his readers should think Renwick's idea was his.
I am not in DesRuisseaux head nor would I have ever wanted to be before his skull went the way of Yorick's. I do not know if he expressly wanted readers to think Renwick's idea was his. It seems more likely, at that stage of his life, that he just didn't care one way or the other. His aesthetic seems to have been of wilful unconcern. But maybe you're right. Maybe he too was prey to the bizarre cult of the Original Genius that spawned this whole mess.

(And though it is largely irrelevant: you are right that I do not value fame as a personal matter. Quite the opposite, I'm rather afraid of it, and I try as hard as I can to avoid it. I quite like my low profile as a schmuck on the internet. Pseudonyms are my friend. I'd much rather cite others by name than myself by my real name.)

Last edited by AZ Foreman; 09-13-2017 at 06:31 AM.
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