The Shadow of the Romantics: Why the Romantics’ Concept of Originality and Authorship Is a Con Job
When we consider artistic expression, what is it that shapes our concept of originality? And when we talk of “unique expression,” what do we really mean? The assumption is that a “unique” expression is one that is “original,” and the underlying assumption of originality is that it rests solely upon individual innovation and wholly individualized creativity. Further to this, there is a hardcore notion that originality is free of borrowing and imitation. Scholar Jessica Millen has noted that the “scorning of imitation remains deeply ingrained into today’s literary culture.”[1] It should be noted, however, that the scorning of imitation, and the obsession with the idea that originality is the product of individual innovation alone, is not limited to literature; this attitude and assumption applies to all art forms. So in this vein, Millen has also observed, as Thomas Mallon did before her, that we tend to concentrate on originality as being something tethered to “individual ‘sincerity’,” and that this concentration on originality as a hyper-individualized phenomenon is the product of the “fearful legacy of the Romantics.”[2] Finally, Millen and others have maintained that our present day’s “strong possessiveness over ideas” stems from “our obsession with individual innovation,”[3] and that this obsession, this “ideal of originality as a value,”[4] was inherited by the Romantic poets of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The Romantics notwithstanding, we must understand that this obsession is unhealthy and terribly at odds with the reality of creativity, because it denies what we already know intuitively: That nothing comes from nothing. No art arrives from nowhere. Instead, everything emerges from something. And this something has always been — will always be — the combination of reactions to and borrowings from the cultural past and present, along with added individual innovations. This is the real face of originality and the foundation of creativity.
The basic principle of the transformative element of the first factor of the fair use analysis — or, perhaps better stated, the transformative use sub-test derived from the Supreme Court — is that borrowing is indispensable to literature, science, and the arts as a whole. Thus, works that borrow from copyrighted works and make transformative uses of them — the result being the production of new “useful” works that benefit society — is a practice that dates back hundreds of years. And it is this practice (and fundamental understanding of originality) that are at the heart of the purpose of copyright law itself. Justice Story noted in 1845 that:
[i]n truth, in literature, in science and in art, there are, and can be, few, if any, things, Which, in an abstract sense, are strictly new and original throughout. Every book in literature, science and art, borrows, and must necessarily borrow, and use much which was well known and used before. No man creates a new language for himself, at least if he be a wise man, in writing a book. He contents himself with the use of language already known and used and understood by others. No man writes exclusively from his own thoughts, unaided and uninstructed by the thoughts of others. The thoughts of every man are, more or less, a combination of what other men have thought and expressed, although they may be modified, exalted, or improved by his own genius or reflection. If no book could be the subject of copy-right which was not new and original in the elements of which it is composed, there could be no ground for any copy-right in modern times, and we should be obliged to ascend very high, even in antiquity, to find a work entitled to such eminence. Virgil borrowed much from Homer; Bacon drew from earlier as well as contemporary minds; Coke exhausted all the known learning of his profession; and even Shakespeare and Milton, so justly and proudly our boast as the brightest originals would be found to have gathered much from the abundant stores of current knowledge and classical studies in their days. What is La Place’s great work, but the combination of the processes and discoveries of the great mathematicians before his day, with his own extraordinary genius? What are all modern law books, but new combinations and arrangements of old materials, in which the skill and judgment of the author in the selection and exposition and accurate use of those materials, constitute the basis of his reputation, as well as of his copy-right? Blackstone’s Commentaries and Kent’s Commentaries are but splendid examples of the merit and value of such achievements. [emphasis mine][5]
Originary vs. Reactionary: The Community, the Individual, and the Truth of Originality
“Every book in literature, science and art, borrows, and must necessarily borrow.”[6] Let’s stick with this for a moment, because, here, Justice Story is absolutely correct. There is no individuality without the community; there is no originality or creativity without borrowing. This is the simple truth of originality just as much as it is the simple truth of creativity.
As Thomas McFarland has noted, “[n]either individuality nor communality can be felt without the other.”[7] It follows then that originality cannot exist without the input of the individual and the community. Creativity, which in higher degrees presumably indicates more originality, is always determined by the equation of the individual borrowing from and building upon the community. No artist creates in a void, thus no artist is ever truly isolated. The artist is always surrounded by the community of ideas and works he has observed. In this way, originality is not originary but reactionary. The Romantics saw it differently however. The Romantics were obsessed with the “isolated ego,” and they considered originality to be originary. As such, they invented a new concept of originality that was based on the idea that something truly original emanates naturally and wholly from the individual. This, of course, is in direct opposition with the reality of how creativity and originality actually work.
Again, we all know that nothing comes from nothing, that no art arrives from nowhere. Everything emerges from something; everything arrives from somewhere. French rap, for instance, is original. But it came from American rap; it arrived from America, it was combined with French slang and French styles and aesthetics and transformed and made into its own original expression in France. Thus something, from which all originality springs, has always been — and will always be — the combination of individual imagination reacting to the community, both its cultural past and present. This is the foundation of creativity. In contrast, the Romantics believed that originality and creativity (and even ideas) stemmed from individual innovation alone. And, again, we inherited this obsession with individual innovation and a “strong progressiveness” over ideas from them.[8]
So here we are. Weighed down by the Romantics’ idea that “true” literature — “real” art — is “pure invention”[9], pure meaning wholly individualized, free from imitation or borrowing. Despite the glaring reality of the nature of originality, creativity, authorship, and the necessity of borrowing, the shadow of the Romantics still casts itself over us today.
The Truth of Originality vs. “The Originality Paradox”
The “originality paradox”[11], as first described by Thomas McFarland and further simplified by Gerhard Joseph, basically states that originality and imitation are “two terms of a ratio, two sides of a ‘paradox’”[12]. But this “paradox” overlooks a more consequential point, something I call “the truth of originality.” Thing is, originality
always involves a certain amount of imitation, just as creativity always involves a certain amount of borrowing. This is the truth of originality, and it’s something that I view less as a “paradox” and more just as a fundamental necessity of creativity. (In life, there are many different fundamental necessities that we do not consider as paradoxes. Consider, for example, the fundamental necessity of survival. Humans need food, rest, and shelter to survive; this is not a “paradox”.) Rather than being a paradox, the truth of originality underscores the requirement of originality. Which is to say, originality requires imitation and borrowing. There’s no escaping this reality.
Further, to my reading, a “paradox” implies that the concept of originality is complex. But it’s not. Complexity implies unknowns. The Romantic poets conjured up a new concept of originality to cope with their “anxiety of influence” and their fear of competition from the growing number of writers around them. But this has no bearing on the truth of originality. The concept of originality may be, at worst, complicated, but once you recognize the underlying facts — that nothing new can be created from nothing; that we are all indebted to the past; that all innovation relies on borrowing from the past and existing works — originality is not hard to understand. Thus, seeing it through the prism of a paradox misses the point.
Further, inasmuch as imitation is “never merely slavish but always inclines toward its opposite, originality or invention,”[13] I do not see this as a paradox, but rather the aim of creativity. Authors and artists (all creatives) do not imitate for imitation’s sake. Rather, artists imitate and borrow to create something of their own. The underlying principle here is that artists add their ideas, talent, skills, ingenuity, and perspective to whatever has been imitated or borrowed. For example, Wilson Pickett borrowed from and, in some cases, imitated James Brown. Nonetheless, Wilson Pickett had his own style and sound that was original and recognizable.
The Romantic Poets’ Lazy-Man’s Concept of Originality
Or, the Concept of Originality In Which You Do No Work, Nobody Copies, and Everything Is Just Individual Vibes When You’re Born With It.
Creatio vs. Inventio: Divine Arrival vs. Work: Two Opposing Cultural Theories of Originality
If we pay careful attention to the hustle that the Romantic poets ran on the world, we see that what lies at the heart of the Romantic poets’ conception of originality and creativity is the notion that art is not achieved through work and a cultivation of talent, but rather something that descends upon the chosen individual in divine fashion. And also because of the Romantics, we are further led to believe that the mastery of art is something that has little to do with actual work, the idea being that you either have it (were born with it) or you don’t. In other words, if you don’t already have it, you can’t work to achieve or improve it.
Here, it’s worth looking at the two opposing cultural theories of originality: Creatio and Inventio. The Romantic poets’ idea of originality and creativity rested in stark contrast to what originality is and how creativity actually works. To understand this contrast and how (why) it was created, we must first recognize that there are two conceptions of originality, creatio and inventio, and that these two conceptions of originality — along with other biases associated with art — have shaped our understanding of originality and creativity and, subsequently, added to our warped understanding of authorship. Creatio is the Latin word for “creating,” “producing,” or “creation,” and inventio is the Latin word for “invention” or “discovery.” Creatio implies the creation of something from nothing. It’s the idea that a creator (author) produces their work solely from within themselves or from a divine-like, supernatural, intangible force[14] that overtakes and works through them. Creatio “reflects this idea of originality as having no source but the poet himself. In this way, creatio is associated with neither hard work nor skill, but with an unconscious force that results in a work free of any borrowed elements. It is a process by which all ideas spring from the ‘individual soul’ and ‘the imagination creates its ideas…from nothing!’”[15]
To the Romantic poets, the ability to achieve (the state of ) creatio was something a poet either had or didn’t have from birth; it was the belief that originality is a natural, unlearned gift. Moreover, the Romantic poets believed that this natural gift of originality, specifically poetic genius, was a gift “that only a select number of individuals possess.” Further, as argued by the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, this theory of originality specified that creative genius may be cultivated, even improved, but it could never be learned, and that “true” creative imagination, i.e. originality, is only a gift.[16] Lastly, the Romantic poets defined original genius as “the talent for producing works that are independent of the ideas and expressions of others.”[17]
Of course, this is a con job. It’s creative protectionism plain and simple. It’s also the sort of thing that fuels the genius trope of our day— even if the genius trope is, more often than not, misplaced. Are there exceptionally talented authors (creators)? Yes. Are there talented authors (creators) more talented than others? Absolutely. But the idea that originality is merely a gift bestowed at birth to a certain few defies reality. The idea that genius, or rather that exceptional talent is brought into existence without borrowing, without any skill or hard work is ridiculous. Even among validated geniuses like Mozart, we find the presence of learning, hard work, talent, and borrowing. Mozart was not “unlearned,” nor was his music the product of someone who worked very little at his art form and trade. Even though Mozart was undeniably a genius, music was still something that he worked hard at. He himself made this quite clear:
“It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied.” [emphasis mine][18]
You don’t “frequently and diligently study” the works of master musicians (or any other artists and writers) and not learn and borrow from them in the process. And after “frequently and diligently studying” the master artists and learning and borrowing from them, you don’t come away from all of that without imitating them to some degree. Mozart understood and embraced this fact. Mozart recognized that the musician (the author) is never wholly individualized; that the musician’s — the author’s — discourse can never be attributed to him alone; that one comes up with ideas all on his own, but rather through combining what we learn and borrow from others with our own specific ideas, talent, and ingenuity.
The German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic Johann Gottfried Herder spoke of this when he completely dismantled the Romantic poets’ concept of originality and observed that “if the imagination is without consciousness and understanding, the poet is only a raging dreamer.” And Millen added to this, noting that “order and unity must be used to contain the poet’s original creative energy;” that it is the “combination of ‘talent and much reading’ that makes ‘creative power and intellectual energy wrestle as in a war embrace.’”[19] “Talent and much reading” is a recognition that imagination and talent alone are not sufficient; one must also have skill, and to acquire skill one must learn and study — reading is work! Of course, this undermines the myth that originality is a natural, completely individualized occurrence that is free of work and essentially a special power given only to a chosen few. In this paradigm, the “gift” of originality ignores the role that work plays in originality and creation. And while talent is indeed a gift[20] — one that comes with the responsibility of cultivating it — originality is not. Originality requires work.
Michelangelo, the famed Italian sculpture and poet who lived and created art 200 years before the Romantic poets invented their sham conception of originality and creativity, was adamant about the work that is required by an artist. A careful reading of Michelangelo’s writing on the subject of his art reveals that what was at the heart of his creative process was a rigid notion of work:
If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all. [emphasis mine][21]
Here, Michelangelo is declaring that he had to “work” to “gain” his “mastery.” It was not a “gift” given to him.
There’s also this:
The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material. I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.[emphasis mine][22]
Here, Michelangelo literally describes his artmaking as “work.” Something completely at odds with the Romantic poets’ notion of the divine arrival of their gift. Michelangelo further described the process of bringing his imagination to fruition as a simple matter of “chiseling,” working his way through to what he saw (imagined) in the marble. For Michelangelo, work is what brings forth the image in his head. In other words, work is a large part of the process of creativity. What Michelango did not say was that his artwork was a gift that arrived from nowhere.
And there’s also this:
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection. [emphasis mine][23]
In other words, for Michelangelo, the truth about art is that it is work that is imperfect as compared to the perfection of divine creation. “Yet,” Michelangelo once exclaimed, “I am always learning.”
And this:
The greatest artist does not have any concept Which a single piece of marble does not itself contain Within its excess, though only A hand that obeys the intellect can discover it. [emphasis mine][24]
Said differently, an artist must have talent and skill, both the “intellect” and “the hand,” in order to create and “discover” something original.
Finally:
It is necessary to keep one’s compass in one’s eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judges.” [emphasis mine][25]
Here, Michelangelo reveals something that every creative knows: Learned experience teaches you about the duality of the execution of art, that art requires talent, skill, and work.
***
Both Michelangelo and Mozart are recognized today as geniuses, just as they were recognized as geniuses in their own the time. One parallel among these two geniuses is how self-aware they were about the “work” that went into the “mastery” of their art. Another parallel is that both men deflected the recognition of genius. Michelangelo and Mozart resented the idea that their work was given to them, or that it came “easy” to them. Inside the world of sample-based hip hop/rap music, we recognize that beatmaking giants like Marley Marl, DJ Premier, RZA, Dr. Dre, Pete Rock, Q-Tip, J Dilla, and Alchemist mastered their art only after lots of work and “frequent and diligent study” of the masters in hip hop/rap music production. Many of those looking at the art of sampling from the outside often hold the misconception that sampling is “easy.” But it’s not “easy” to create feeling within art. It’s not easy to sculpt life-changing songs from small pieces of other songs, pieces that are, in many cases, not even 2 seconds long. It’s not easy to create soundtracks to people’s lives much in the way countless sample-based hip hop/rap songs have done. Classic art — and here I’m referring to all art that stands the test of time, i.e. continues to move and enlighten people — is not the work of happenstance and simple parlor tricks, it’s the culmination of the processes of learning and mastering what the artist has learned.
The Romantic poets copped out of this responsibility because they found themselves stuck between two master classes of poets: Those who came before them and the new writers who were quickly emerging around them. So the Romantic poets used originality — their warped idea of originality — as a defense mechanism. They twisted the concept of originality to preserve their status in society and to cope with their own creative anxiety and fear of emerging competition.
There is a similar parallel at play with traditional musicians and sample-based hip hop/rap musicians. For years now, many within the hip hop/rap music beatmaking community have referred to non-sampled based beats as “original.” Ergo, sample-based beats lack “originality.” Ergo, sample-based beats lack creativity. Ergo, sample-based musicians are not “real” musicians. But these value judgments are terribly misplaced. And as Michelangelo once said, “Why do You Send Fools To judge My Work?”
Notes:
1. Jessica Millen, “Romantic Creativity and the Ideal of Originality: A Contextual Analysis, in Cross-sections,” The Bruce Hall Academic Journal – Volume VI, 2010, 91.
2. Millen quoting Thomas Mallon from Stolen Words: Forays into the Origins and Ravages of Plagiarism (Harcourt, 1989) 24; Jessica Millen, “Romantic Creativity and the Ideal of Originality: A Contextual Analysis, in Cross-sections,” The Bruce Hall Academic Journal – Volume VI, 2010, 101-02 (emphasis mine).
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid, 92.
5. Emerson v. Davies, 8 F. Cas. 615, 619 (CCD Mass. 1845) (No. 4,436); See also: Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569,575 (1994).
6. Id. (emphasis mine).
7. Thomas McFarland, “The Originality Paradox,” New Literary History, Spring, 1974, Vol. 5, No. 3, History and Criticism: I (Spring, 1974) (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 447 (emphasis mine). McFarland calls this “the originality paradox; and he cautions that “[a]ny attempt to resolve the paradox is unsuccessful,” that the “Romanticism’s very emphasis on the isolated ego is an attitude that leads to nothingness.” (emphasis mine).
8. Millen, 101-102.
9. Millen, 91: Millen quoting William Hazlitt in Thomas Mallon’s Stolen Words:Forays into the Origins and Ravages of Plagiarism (Harcourt, 1989) 24. (emphasis mine).
11. Gerhard Joseph, “Charles Dickens, International Copyright, and The Discretionary Silence of Marin Chuzzlewit” in The Construction of Authorship (Durham and London 1994), 267. Joseph conferring with what Thomas McFarland has stated.
12. Ibid, 531 (emphasis mine).
13. Ibid.
14. Creatio is also hailed as a supernatural force that is channelled through the poet, where the poet is not the source but the ‘prophet’ of a higher creative power.” SeeMillen, 97-98 (emphasis mine).
15. Ibid, 96.
16. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (J. M. Dent & Co, 1906) 166. See Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817), Project Gutenberg’s Biographia Literaria, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2014) www.gutenberg.org Title: Biographia Literaria Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6081]https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6081/6081-h/6081-h.htm; see also Millen, 96.
17. Millen, 92; see also: (note 8) Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement (J H Bernard trans, Hafter Press, 1951) 150 [trans of Kritik der Urteilsckraft (first published 1790)], and (note 10) Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Oxford University Press, 1973) (emphasis mine).
18. “Spoken in Prague, 1787, to conductor Kucharz, who led the rehearsals for Don Giovanni, from Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words by Friedrich Kerst, trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel (1906).” QuotePark.com (see wikiquotes) https://quotepark.com/quotes/1747009-wolfgang-amadeus-mozart-it-is-a-mistake-to-think-thatthe-practice-of-my-a/; see also: Maria Popova, “Mozart on Creativity and the Ideation Process,” Brain Pickings (February 24, 2015) https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/02/24/mozart-on-creativity/ (emphasis mine).
19. Millen, Jessica Millen quoting and building upon Frederick Burwick from Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 27 (emphasis mine).
20. Where art is concerned, the “gift” of talent is basically the capacity to create — and we can all create. But this capacity must be worked at and nurtured. In other words, the gift is not art that arrives from nowhere, but rather the capacity to shape the imagination that comes from somewhere.
21. Michelangelo.
22. Michelangelo.
23. Michelangelo.
24. Michelangelo Buonarroti, I Sonetti Di Michelangelo: The 78 Sonnets of Michelangelo with Verse Translation (emphasis mine).
25. Michelangelo (emphasis mine).
