Other Men's Flowers
"It could be said of me" wrote the French moralist and essayist Montaigne, "that in this book I have only made up a bunch of other men's flowers, providing of my own only the string that ties them together."
Montaigne was writing at the end of the 16th century, but views on the balance between originality and plagiarism can be heard through the centuries. In the first century ad, the Roman statesman and scholar Pliny the Elder recorded with regret that "In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgement."
Much nearer to Montaigne's own time, the 17th-century writer Robert Burton commented tartly "They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works."
The 19th-century French poet and dramatist Alfred de Musset had particularly strong views on the subject: "I hate like death the situation of the plagiarist; the glass I drink from is not large, but at least it is my own."
On the other hand, the economist and essayist Walter Bagehot pointed out that "The truth is that the propensity of man to imitate what is before him is one of the strongest parts of his nature."
The 20th century unsurprisingly offers some more cynical views. The American dramatist Wilson Mizner suggested that "If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research."
And Raymond Chandler offers robust comfort to any victim of plagiarism: "One must bear in mind that they can't steal your style, if you have one. They can only as a rule steal your faults."
Perhaps in the end it comes down to the element of originality found in the derived text. As T. S. Eliot once said, "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal."
Elizabeth Knowles
01/05/2007
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