By Ollie Thomas
‘Flowing into’ or ‘flowing onto’? The former, in the earliest Latin uses – as rivers flow into the sea, blood into the heart, or words into our ears. But metaphorical ‘influence’ was figured long before then, by Muse inspiring poet, or god inspiring prophet. Such inspiration – making breath flow into – came from above, even if you were a Delphic priestess reaching your trance by sitting over a fuming crevice.
Influence is, from this beginning, a power-relationship, and the influenced, being less powerful, are like wrestlers pinned down and no longer in a position to exercise their volition ‘freely’. So we are ‘under’ the influence of alcohol even as it circulates within us. Most of us are first initiated into familial power-relations, and perhaps it is unsurprising that literary influences have often been figured as old men (of course, the authors were mostly men): the sort who ruled households in Proto-Indo-European society, and served as councils of elders in many of its daughter-societies; the sort who were constantly mentioned as exempla in Roman discourse, and whose wax busts were kept in noble houses and paraded at funerals (if wax can be moulded to be like them, so can we…). Although the past is ‘behind’ us in the normal English metaphor, and below us archaeologically, genealogically these old men are still figured as above us, though physically they are not on an Olympus.
One story, then, is that literary influence, flowing down a ‘genealogy’ of authors, threatens to flood us. The ‘anxiety of influence’, aside from a fear of drowning, could be the fear that we won’t live up to our fathers, and/or as Harold Bloom did one can give it a Freudian spin – the latent desire to get rid of them. But if we actually believe in the Freudian dimension of this, what ‘mother’ do our influences threaten to keep us from? Perhaps the Muse of originality. Already in the 5th century BC, Choerilus of Samos complained ‘O happy the servant of the Muses who was skilled in song in those days, when their meadow was still uncut: now it has all been made into allotments and genres have reached their boundaries, so that we are left last in the race without anywhere to take our newly-yoked wagon, however hard we look around.’ No doubt some authors are anxious about, say, treading in Shakespeare’s footsteps, as Brahms was initially nervous about taking on the Beethovenian symphony. Dryden’s translation of the Aeneid quotes from the original as its motto: ‘he follows his father, though his strides are not so great’ – the original refers to Ascanius running alongside Aeneas as they leave Troy.
Perhaps, however, Dryden’s reverence stems from the inherently epigonal nature of a translation. A useful comparison is Statius in the century after Vergil. He already ended his epic about Thebes with a similar allusion to the same scene as Dryden: ‘My Thebaid… live on, I pray, but do not assail the divine Aeneid – rather follow at a distance and constantly adore its footsteps’. This time, Statius sets his book up as Creusa, the wife of Aeneas who follows loyally behind him and Ascanius, but does (as Statius fears) go missing. This reverence is evidently playful posturing rather than genuine expression of anxiety; similarly, Choerilus followed his complaints with an epic poem about historical Greek relations with Persia – profoundly innovative content for the genre.
After all, to return to the Freudian aspect, most of us grow up to love our fathers. To turn the ‘anxiety of influence’ model on its head, some poets were eager to trace themselves back to figures of authority. A guild of singers from ancient Chios had the name ‘Homeridae’ (originally, probably ‘guild of the public gathering’, after their performance-context). To publicise their most impressive songs, they reinterpreted their name as ‘sons of Homer’ and by the late 6th century BC had invented a biography for the legendary maestro (e.g. his blindness, which makes him a prophet-like figure of mystique). Though these Homeridae, then, were closely aware of the power of an authorial name, they effaced their own names in favour of Homer’s. Of course, this required some very specific circumstances – the guild setup, and low circulation of books so that there was no standard edition and no interest in copyright. However, it still seems closer than anxiety as a description of the relationships of, say, Roman poets to their predecessors. When these authors mention their poetic forebears, they are more life-givers with whom we can play than stern fathers whom we must live up to or overcome; playing is, after all, at the root of poetic ‘al-lus-ion’.
We shouldn’t liberally assign neuroses to authors who figure an artistic influence as a father-figure. In any case, the concept of father, whether or not Freud was right, is too historically-determined to make any such assignment straightforward. But it may be worth asking whether this image of influence has itself had a beneficial influence on the history of art. Most obviously, has it made the canon patriarchal? A second point: in a recent interview on BBC Radio 3, the pianist Stephen Hough generated some surprise for listing several of his contemporaries as major influences on his playing, and I think it is true that current conceptions of influence place too much weight on a generation-gap. Influences are limited to one direction in time, of course: ‘Eliot influenced Shakespeare’ only works as a shorthand for the truism that ‘living in a world which has read Eliot makes a difference to how one interprets Shakespeare’. I was delighted to find the alternative image of a {cheeky younger brother}/{older brother} relationship in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (5th century BC): as the poem presents Hermes as a cheeky younger brother who steals things from Apollo, it cheekily borrows and overturns features of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, such as the question of which god was first to patronise lyre-playing. Fraternality is also the message of Pope in appendix 7 to the Dunciad: he assembles a mass of basically parallel abuse levelled by critics at him and at Dryden. So too Eliot in The Waste Land, a tissue of fragmented allusions, quotes Baudelaire’s ‘hypocrite lecteur – mon semblable, mon frère’, and thus shows himself to be a reader of Baudelaire’s, and thus his like and his brother.
Askesian ( February 7, 2008 at 10:55 am )
Very interesting. Forgive me, Mr Thomas, for always bringing in force-schemas when commenting on your work, but I’m alerted on reading this interesting piece to the following thought: to what extent is it possible, assuming one can detect the force/influence-structure that organizes one’s conception of one’s predecessors, to change that schema volitionally and relate to them more productively, or at least differently?
In sports psychology, lots of work goes into tinkering with players’ conceptions of their opponents: only superficially inane exercizes like imagining them being crushed under one’s feet, for instance. And we saw previously how different spatial conceptions of time can be quickly learned and have almost immediate impact on perception and prediction.
Brotherhood is certainly one re-framing of the relationship from that of being a son or great-grandson that generates greater feelings of adequacy and possible communication. Philosophers are also keen on talking of their friends (did Nietsche once say that his only friend was Plato?).
Other possibilities:
Guest (conceiving of past writers/thinkers being guests in the home of one’s mind- to be treated respectfully, but to behave themselves).
Children (a straight reversal: could this patern their influence on one differently)
Consultants (to be hired and fired- as a politically convenient way of having the work-force of one’s thoughts do what one wants, without the politics of persuasion that internal commands require)
Charity-cases (as the beneficiaries of your munificience in letting them live beyond their time).
And a ps: didn’t Bethoven refuse to watch Mozart Operas after the age of fifteen for fear of being contaminated?)
The Askesian Society » (Sexual) Influence and Analogy: Dylan and The Beatles ( March 18, 2008 at 10:54 pm )
[…] for your crutch; now don’t ask for mine”? Who really cares? This question of influence imposes too unidirectional a schema on the fertile ferment of the mid-sixties and is not important. Had Christopher Ricks paid any […]
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