PLAGIARISM

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 417, 27 July 1928, Page 14

PLAGIARISM

(Written for THE SUN) who has tried to write verse will agree with me when I say it is painfully easy to be an unconscious plagiarist. Words and phrases spring to the lips sometimes with a spontaneity which makes one highly suspicious as to their origin; and even after vigorously rummaging in the mind one is still doubtful very often whether such and such a combination of words may not be merely somebody else’s property, which has been absorbed, without a label, into some dark recess of the memory. Even with the exercise of deliberate care and restraint it is difficult to avoid echoing some voice from the past now and then. Realising this, I find it very easy to be charitable when I encounter a line or a phrase which smells of plagiarism. The accessible literature of the world covers a period of roughly five thousand years. During that time the range of human experience has been covered so fully by writers that it is nearly impossible for the modern novelist or poet or philosopher to produce anything absolutely new. Originality in art in these days would seem to be possible only in the expression of ihe artist's personality, and in method and treatment. Byron, echoing a thought that must have occurred dozens of times before, wrote: “She walks in beauty like the night.” The modern lyricist, pregnant with a like conceit, says: “Ain’t she sweet, see her coming down the street.” Shelley’s “Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of Delight” is expressed in the

idiom of the twentieth century as "I’ve got the blues thru and thru.” One feels that the fault of the modern versions, if fault exists, is one of treatment and manner, rather than of theme.

The playwright, in the matter of his plot at all events, need not be as particular as the poet. He has good precedents for filching readymade themes, and in any case he soon realises the difficulty of inventing new plots. The most he can do is to execute variations on one or other of the few basic experiences of human life—the tragedies of jealousy and ambition, the eternal trangle (polygon more often than not in these sad times), and the other scant halfdozen or so of Grand Old Themes. Shakespeare, with a laudable contempt for strikingly original plots, borrowed other people’s, and there is nothing to show that his work suffered in consequence. “Macbeth” is a considerably better play than “Seven Keys to Baldpate,” as Mr. George M. Cohan, caught in a generous moment, would probably admit.

The practice of sneaking other people's plots been followed so often by those in hight places that it has become almost drably conventional. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made Poe his good fairy long before he took up the serious study of fairies in general. Stevenson picked Poe’s pocket in broad daylight. And Poe is said to have stolen the idea of “The Raven” from somebody else. Noel Coward’s play, “The Vortex,” seems to me to bear a striking resemblance in its essentials to “Mrs. Warren’s Profession.” And now D’Annunzio has been at it, if we are to believe the cabled news. All of which reminds one of the “Bulletin’s” reply to a would-be contributor, “Your genius seems to be an infinite capacity for taking Barry Pain’s.” You will remember that haunting thing" of A. E. Housman’s, which begins— It is the season noxo to go About the country high and low . , . —and that other poem of his which captures so beautifully the atmosphere of rural England— The brooding boy, the sighing maid, 'Wholly fain and half afraid. Now meet along the hazeled brook To pass and linger, pause and look. . . . I forget the rest, but you will remember it. Typical Housman, isn’t it? Unfortunately enough the two pieces I have quoted were written by Stevenson, some little time before the publication of “The Shropshire Lad.” . . . As I have indicated above, in dealing with Conan Doyle, Poe and Stevenson, there appears to be a sort of episcopal succession in plagiarism, when it occurs. Housman’s borrowings from R.L.S. (I am afraid we must find him guilty—the above are not his only offences, nor even his most flagrant), have been suitably avenged, with a sort of poetic justice, by a young Englishman who published a book the other day called “Pithead Poems.” This gentleman, whose name escapes me for the moment, is a coal-miner of Merrie England—hence the title. I am ignorant as to his prowess in his chosen profession of coalmining, but in the field of poesy his talents appear to lie rather in the direction of gold-digging. His verses are terribly, terribly reminiscent of “A Shropshire Lad,” so much so. in fact, that in spite of the really good things in his book, his stocks have slumped badly. Some

critic, -who is probably biting his . tongue now, dug the young man up! out of his coal-mine and hailed him j as a “discovery.” Unfortunately, in! addition to being discovered, he has been found out. Perhaps I have ended by being un- 1 charitable after all. As I remarked above, one must not judge too harshly in this matter. Similar thoughts sometimes occur naturally enough in different writers without there being any suspicion of foul play. Flecker’s line, “We felt once more the sorrow of the Wise,” is paralleled by Rupert Brooke’s “There’s little comfort in the wise.” In this case there was, almost for certain, no plagiarism. And even if there was, it is too much to expect of a poet that he should refrain from expressing a thought merely because another poet has already uttered it. Especially when it is one which has been on the lips of every philosopher and thinker (with the possible exception of Mr. H. G. Wells) since men first began to be curious about their destiny. Other sentiments, less cosmic but equally likely to arise in the mind of the poet, are frequently found paralleled in two different writers. For instance, Flecker’s—Had 1 that haze of streaming blue, That sea below, the summer faced, I’d work and weave a dress for you And kneel to clasp it round your wai3t. . .i . and Yeats’s — Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light , I would spread the cloths under your feet. ... I feel rather mean, snooping round among the poets in this fashion, like a sleuth in an Edgar Wallace play. But I have at least not resorted to the tactics of Francis Sylvester Mahony (known to fame as “Father Prout,” the author of that very regrettable poem, “The Shandon Bells.”) The old gentleman, out of sheer exuberance of spirits rather than from malice aforethought, used to translate Tom Moore’s verses into Greek, and then publicly brand Moore as a plagiarist, producing the “original” with the name of some obscure Hellenic poet attached to it. These exposures were widely believed in, despite Moore’s protestations, and the irresponsible old boy was hailed as a Greek scholar of singular erudition. A. R. D. FAIRBURN. New Lynn.