Precedent can be unkind to the young. Art, history, generations—these can be unseemly hanger-ons. And they are, to the extent that we buy into their more depraved aspects.
Most authors can name their influences. John Steinbeck’s favorite works were “Don Quixote,” “Moby-Dick” and stories of King Arthur. Martin Amis is quick to crow his idols: Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov. Such conventions are normal. No art springs fully fleshed and Athenian without rumbling around Zeus’s head a while. But how much do you need to understand Zeus to appreciate Athena?
It is the trope of a parochial mindset to try and diminish Athena as the mere product of Zeus. Arguments harkening back to a golden age ring with the same arrogance. Children will chafe against admonishments by their elders, whether or not those admonishments are substantial. So follows with the pernicious side of charting influence.
Obsessing over influences, with the intent to categorize them, is an attempt to find currency in legacy. The attempt to establish a literary tradition. And the obsession with tradition implies that whatever came before, the influencer, is better than what came after, the influenced.
Take Steinbeck. The dogma of influence would hold that, rather than simply read “East of Eden” or “The Winter of our Discontent,” we should go back to “Don Quixote” and “Moby-Dick” in order to understand those works. This dogma would place preference on the older works, maybe dismiss Steinbeck entirely as a shoddy derivative.
I enjoyed reading “Moby-Dick” in high school and would do so again. And I remember the week spent reading “Don Quixote” as pleasant if oddly hazy. Nonetheless, I would rank Steinbeck as a better author than either Melville or Cervantes, based on those presentations.
The above examples show when art, history, generations fail us—when precedent is not just an enemy, but necrotic: a banshee wailing through the annals of time.
Influence and precedence are unavoidable. Things cannot emerge from the void, snatched and coagulated out of nothing—that’s only happened once, and perhaps the immensity of that achievement eludes us mere mortals. We work with what we have. Finite as it is, humanity essentially has the universe at its disposal.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in “Nature,” “Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?” Why indeed? Life is not a string of debts to be made back to creditors, nor is art, nor is history. Tradition would have us try and live meekly in monthly installments. A child is not born into obeisance—they owe their parents birth, which is fleet and accidental, compared to the span of their life. Literature of the present should not be the wan afterglow of another time’s fierce fire.
What a landscape, if we are nothing but the influenced, held in check by the increasingly immobile influences of the past? Another phrase snatched from “Nature:” “Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past?” Why should we condemn ourselves to such gray dullness? To ash and sepulcher?
There is an inevitability to the dry bones—they dwell in our marrow, in the buildings daily besieged by the elements, in the aging bindings and ink of our books. A book may only last so long as we accommodate its datedness, the increasing gap between itself and the present, as much as we will accommodate human history and prior generations.
Now, prior generations can be mitigated, embraced, scorned, what have you. History can be our inheritance, not our burden. Literature may be read, not as a testament to the inherent dignity or superiority of a time, but as an artifact, a link, an inspiration.
The dry bones of the past are not foreboding. Melville’s whale, long beached, alabaster at high noon, with the scud and sea moving in turbulence in the background can still inspire us. The bones carry an inkling of the flesh which clothed it and the blood which moved it.
Don Quixote’s windmill, as well, dilapidated after five centuries of Spanish storms and standing still, may hearken back to when it filled a doddering, muddled Spaniard with sublime awe and purpose. Even if it no longer works as a windmill, it is steeped in its past.
So it is with the Parthenon: the space erected against time, occupied by shades of another time, the air intermixed with their memory. So it is when you look at your parents and realize they too were young, as bound by influence and precedent as you are.
Charting influence in literature and attempting to move out from under the shadow of precedent can be heady. It’s the same case with growing up, or learning history. But, no matter what, the inspiration derived from influences is not weaker than the influence itself. And influence is better drawn or stolen than foisted. Art, history, generations are not a testament to themselves; they are a testament to what will come after.
What came first, the chicken or the egg? Or at least, which is more important? Send your thoughts to Sean at sreichard@wisc.edu.
