January 10, 2006
The writer-hero
Posted by sniffles at 11:52 PM | Comments (5)The Romantic genius was supposed to be one of a kind, a great original. "Originality" in this sense (often carried to extremes, where it merged with the grotesque and the bizarre) became a touchstone, both for the public's evaluation of a writer and for the writer's evaluation of himself. Chaucer and Shakespeare thought nothing of using other people's plots — in fact, to say that a story was not made up but came from an older authority, and/or had really happened, meant that it was not a frivolous lie and lent it validity. But the early Romantics held that what a man wrote was not just what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed, and not just the well-wrought embodiment of an older myth or tale or historical event. No, it was self-expression — the expression of the self, of a man's whole being — and if a man wrote works of genius, then he had to be a genius himself, all the time. A genius while shaving, a genius while eating his lunch, a genius in poverty and in affluence, in sickness and in health — this is heavy luggage to cart around. No man is a hero to his own body, nor no woman neither.
— "Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing", Margaret Atwood.
