The Anxiety of Influence

[Reconstructo]

Do we not want to see ourselves as original? Are not most of our best thoughts taken from others? How has this affected philosophy? How does this effect the positions we take on this forum? I got this phrase from Harold Bloom, but I've experienced the anxiety of influence for a long long time. I think it pushes us toward innovation.

Bloom's central thesis is that poets are hindered in their creative process by the ambiguous relationship they necessarily maintained with precursor poets. While admitting the influence of extraliterary experience on every poet, he argues that "the poet in a poet" is inspired to write by reading another poet's poetry and will tend to produce work that is derivative of existing poetry, and, therefore, weak. Because a poet must forge an original poetic vision in order to guarantee his survival into posterity (i.e., to guarantee that future readers will not allow him to be forgotten), the influence of precursor poets inspires a sense of anxiety in living poets.
Thus Bloom attempts to work out the process by which the small minority of 'strong' poets manage to create original work in spite of the pressure of influence.

[sometime sun]

Quick reply,
Art imitates life, just as Life imitates art, it is an imitation, it is a wholely original and insitive of the reader as much as what is read, see as what is subject, sung as song.
Nothing insists anything, everything (including but not exclusive to truth) everything is wholely self insistence, self insisted.
All is plagiarised nothing is original, can this be? Nothing is plagiarised all is original, how about that? (There are other configurations)
Different take for each, different expression from both once actualised.
It can happen and does happen, all is original even if just the conceptualisation process of how one understands and then expresses first to the self and then to the other, each play different by its players and its audience.
It is original because your brain and mind and soul is a snow flake, similar but no one is the same.
Why be anxious when it is still only ever going to be your anxiety and what you refer to your own cheatings.
Can one cheat the self?

[Reconstructo]

Originally Posted by sometime sun

It is original because your brain and mind and soul is a snow flake, similar but no one is the same.

I like this. I agree that no entire human is unoriginal. I suppose the anxiety is whether our work in a particular area is superfluous. Does Jim the Writer think his books are just a second-rate imitation? Maybe Jim doesn't care. And maybe it's silly to care too much. But a lot of writers hope for a certain false immortality. They want their books to survive forever, cherished by the human race as something original and important.

Thanks for replying! I was afraid this thread was going to be ignored...

[Jebediah]

It doesn't matter whether it's original or an imitation, just if it is good.

[Reconstructo]

Originally Posted by Jebediah

It doesn't matter whether it's original or an imitation, just if it is good.

I agree from a consumer point of view. I suppose it comes down the ambition of the writer. If he/she is happy just being a conduit, all is well.

I suppose that all the philosophers who are considered great are also considered to some degree original. Greatness and originality are closely linked. Of course originality isn't enough in itself....

[Arjuna]

Originally Posted by sometime sun

Art imitates life, just as Life imitates art, it is an imitation, it is a wholely original and insitive of the reader as much as what is read, see as what is subject, sung as song.

So the person with this kind of anxiety should write a poem about a guy who keeps trying to be original, but his works are condemned because it's just War and Peace over and over. In despair, he joins the Foreign Legion, falls in love with a spy, and becomes a hermit, trading pipes he carves from soapstone with the native camel people.

25 years after his death, his works are discovered and he's eventually a fixture in high school english classes. The students carefully read the Cliff notes, high-lighting the main points on their digital book thingys. By the way does anybody have one of those?

[Jebediah]

Originally Posted by Reconstructo

I agree from a consumer point of view. I suppose it comes down the ambition of the writer. If he/she is happy just being a conduit, all is well.

I suppose that all the philosophers who are considered great are also considered to some degree original. Greatness and originality are closely linked. Of course originality isn't enough in itself....

Well, with art at least they say there are basically a few main stories. Man vs self, man vs nature, man vs man etc, unrequited love etc, coming of age etc. So a lot of art is going to be examining those, and maybe telling them in terms of modern culture. This is how it should be, and people are too quick to criticize sometimes. Although there is definitely room for originality, human nature hasn't changed that much, just our understanding of it.

I think philosophy, like science, would have the goal of building on past work rather than rephrasing it.

[Quinn]

Originally Posted by Jebediah

Well, with art at least they say there are basically a few main stories. Man vs self, man vs nature, man vs man etc, unrequited love etc, coming of age etc. So a lot of art is going to be examining those, and maybe telling them in terms of modern culture. This is how it should be, and people are too quick to criticize sometimes. Although there is definitely room for originality, human nature hasn't changed that much, just our understanding of it.

I think philosophy, like science, would have the goal of building on past work rather than rephrasing it.

Being original is what drives some people to do certain things. I've lost that drive, because every time I try to think of something "new", or "original", I find that it's been presented in some sort of book. I go and read it, and I'm amazed, yet, I'm disappointed that I hadn't thought it up first. I think our lack of determination to create new ideas is due to the fact that their are already so many out there; Whatever we think up, there's bound to be some sort of book or article about it.

Answer to your first question Reconstructo: Yes, I'd love to see myself as original. Not an outcast, but an original. It's why I joined this forum. it's why I debate. I want to be the original creator of some idea, in some topic, in one of the branches of philosophy, on this philosophy site. Even that, if not already blogged or written about, would be good enough for me to be satisfied for my lifetime.

[Jebediah]

Originally Posted by Quinn

Being original is what drives some people to do certain things. I've lost that drive, because every time I try to think of something "new", or "original", I find that it's been presented in some sort of book. I go and read it, and I'm amazed, yet, I'm disappointed that I hadn't thought it up first. I think our lack of determination to create new ideas is due to the fact that their are already so many out there; Whatever we think up, there's bound to be some sort of book or article about it.

Answer to your first question Reconstructo: Yes, I'd love to see myself as original. Not an outcast, but an original. It's why I joined this forum. it's why I debate. I want to be the original creator of some idea, in some topic, in one of the branches of philosophy, on this philosophy site. Even that, if not already blogged or written about, would be good enough for me to be satisfied for my lifetime.

I get a lot of satisfaction out of thinking of a certain idea on my own and then finding it already said by someone 400 years ago, not sure why. I guess I haven't really been looking for originality though.

At least in philosophy there are bunches of questions that are still disputed so it's not a simple matter of learning the "correct" view. I see the appeal of being the creator of something, but there is enough value in going over the old ideas that it isn't pressing.

[Quinn]

Yeah, I can relate to that. But more-so, I'd like to think of something on my own, without someone else thinking that I took it from a book, or that the idea's out-dated.