XLII A DIALOGUE ON FAKE-POETRY |
Q When is a fake not a fake? | A. | When hard-working and ingenious conjurors are billed by common courtesy as ‘magicians.’ | | Q. | But when is a fake not a fake? | | A. | When it’s a Classic. | | Q. | And when else? | | A. | When it’s “organ-music” and all that. | | Q. | Elaborate your answer, dear sir! | | A. | A fake, then, is not a fake when lapse of time has tended to obscure the original source of the borrowing, and when the textural and structural competence that the borrower has used in synthesising the occasional good things of otherwise indifferent authors is so remarkable that even the incorruptible Porter of Parnassus winks and says “Pass Friend!” | | Q. | Then the Fake Poet is, as you have hinted before, a sort of Hermit Crab? | | A. | Yes, and here is another parable from Marine Life. Poetry is the protective pearl formed by an oyster around the irritations of a maggot. Now if, as we are told, it is becoming possible to put synthetic pearls on the market, which not even the expert with his X-ray can detect from the natural kind, is not our valuation of the latter perhaps only a sentimentality? |
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