Classical Roots of the Modern Authorial Concept
Marijan Dovic
Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Studies SRC SASA, Ljubljana mariian.dovic@zrc-sazu.si
Contemporary theoretical debate on the "death' and eventual "resurrection' of the
ies) mostly refers to the model of the "romantic' author as an original genius, creat-ingfrom the inner-self (E. Young), the unacknowledged "legislator of the world' (P. Shelley). It is evident that this model profoundly determined modern European literatures until the 20h century, when (literary) theory began to scrutinize it thoroughly and question it in different ways. The roots of such understanding are heterogeneous and partly extend to classical philosophy and literature. This paper will try to revise philosophical discussions on authorship (from Plato to Longinus) and certain aspects of Greek and Roman poetry (from Hesiod to Ovid) to explore how much and in what ways later views on authorship are indebted to antiquity. It will also try to ascertain whether it is adequate to explain the development of the modern authorial concept by means of a linear scheme stretchingfrom semi-anonymous rhapsodist to self-confident Romantic genius. Especially in Ovid's love poetry one can find a surprisingly high degree of authorial awareness and playful presence in the text, which can challenge any simplified linear understanding of the authorial concept in the history of Western literatures.
Keywords: literary theory / ancient aesthetics / Greek literature / Latin Literature / author / authorship
UDK 82.0:808.1
One could not but agree with Charles Taylor's observation that in the Western cultural tradition authors are more highly appreciated than in most other civilizations (Bennett, The Author 4). Generally it is assumed that the concept of an author as a creator of a (certain kind) of text, its inventor or originator that holds some kind of proprietary rights and a certain authority over its interpretation, was not consolidated before the 18*^ century. Such an author would therefore be an individual, solely responsible for the unique creation, someone who produces something new or even unexpected, and at the same time controls his work in its entirety, knows exactly what it means and is capable of fixing its interpretations.
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Indeed, such an understanding of authorship is exactly that which is institutionalized today; it is carried out in prc^ctice while its validity is watchfully guarded by legislation and authorial rights. Very much in opposition to this is that the notion of a "great" Author seems to be deeply questioned in theory. Philosophy and other disciplines have shaken such understanding by softening the specific concept of the subject on which it relies, and at the same time by relaxing the concepts of unity and accessibility of texts. During the lively discussion which was substantially intensified by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault at the end of 1960s, special attention was paid to the question of the emergence of the modern authorial concept. Some researchers have emphasized the relevance of earlier periods, such as the Renaissance, when the pattern of an "absolute artist" was formed.1 Yet most analyses of the origin of the modern author have focused heavily on the 18th century - not only on (pre)romantic ideologies that articulated the changes in the perception of authorship, but also on the expansion of the literary market and the differentiation of literature as a social (sub)system that actually generated such changes.2
At the same time that authorship was gradually becoming legally and financially regulated, in the accompanying discourse of philosophical aesthetics discussion on the autonomy of literature was taking place, and this was crucial for shaping of the modern authorial concept. 3 The distinction between innovation and imitation was made more pronounced, with innovation becoming what was truly appreciated. In his notable essay Conjectures on Originell Composition (1759), the English poet Edward Young decisively revalued once-equivalent procedures of textual production.4 Young maintains that the real author is an original, autonomous and independent genius that creates from the inner self, while imitation is a method unworthy of such an author - nothing more than theft. The concept of originality was taken even further in Romanticism, evolving into the cliche of a poet who is "ahead of his time". The true poet was supposed to be so original that his environment would inevitably neglect him, and only future generations would reveal his real (trans-historic) value.
The search for the origins of the modern author in the (pre)romantic ideologies - as long as it remains fully bound with the context of contemporary economic, medial and legal innovations — remains reasonable and productive. But it would be overly hasty to infer from this that the historical evolution of Western authorship can be described adequately by some kind of lineer scheme, stretching from the half-anonymous rhapsodist in the oral culture to the narcissistic romantic genius that creates ex nihilo. 5 Such a presumption, though efficient and therefore tempting, is highly problematic. By careful reading of influential theoretical fragments on literary
authorship (from Plato to Longinus) and of certain Greek and Roman poetic texts (from Homer and Hesiod to Ovid), I will explore how much and in what ways later views on authorship are indebted to Greek and Roman literature and philosophy.
Theories of Authorship in Classical Philosophy and Poetics
The pre-Socratic philosopher Democritus (460—370 BC) is believed to have first formulated the so-called divine inspiration theory. Democritus assumes that a truly good poet creates in the throes of a passionate zeal, ecstasy that is close to madness; and this ecstasy comes directly from the divine forces and not from the poet himself. Such inspiration theory, which remains fragmentary in Democritus's writings, was later more coherently articulated — as well as questioned — by Plato. In Plato's supposedly early dialogue Ion, Socrates persuades a rhapsodist that the poet himself is without any skill and only draws inspiration "by power divine":
For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only and therefore God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us. (Ion 534b—d)
Therefore, poets deserve no credit for their creations, which are not the result of their poetical skills; actually it is quite possible that the most beautiful song is sung ^"by the mouth of the worst of poets" (Ion 534a). The author as an individual person is eradicated, and he becomes nothing more than a mediator, a herald, of God's own messages. Socrates emphasizes greatly the non-reasonahl^e nature of the creative process.6 In Plato's Phaedrus, the connection between creation and madness (which has substantially marked modern discussions on creativity and authorship), is even more explicit: the sane, sober poets are doomed to failure.
Socrates' arguments in both dialogues — as long as we naively read them verbatim - can partly be understood as a refined means of paving the way for the notorious expulsion of poetry from Plato's "ideal polis". In the 10th book of The Republic, the poet is finally "unmasked" as a cheater with no proficiency. His products are merely copies of a second order and therefore lack any connection with reality - they are far removed
from truly being. It is interesting that the divine source of inspiration is no longer mentioned in Politeia. Of the poet's skill nothing but charlatanism remains: he does not know anything worth mentioning about the things he imitates. Imitation itself is represented as a kind of a game, addressing the worthless part of the human soul, the one which is subject to irrational emotions. Even if Socrates' (Plato's) statements need to be interpreted with exceptional care, his censorial condemning of poetry definitely unveils creative ecstasy and its connection to divine revelation (truth) as a complicated problem.7
Therefore it seems quite surprising that in his Poetics, Plato's great disciple Aristotle deals with literature explicitly, but says almost nothing about its author. Though it is quite possible that Aristotle was occupied with this question in another text, perhaps in the lost tri-partite dialogue On the poets (Peripoi^el^on), in the Poetics the only passage mentioning the sources of author's creativity is the following one:
Hence poetry implies either a happy gift of nature or a strain of madness. In the one case a man can take the mould of any character; in the other, he is lifted out of his proper self.
(Aristotle, Poetic^s XVII, 1455a)
This lapidary description does not implicate the privileging of either of the creative strategies mentioned above. Also, the source of the madness imanik^dri) is not really explained. Regardless, the overall spirit of Poetics allows us to surmise that Aristotle is inclined towards the rational grounding of the creative process, defined as mimesis. Something similar can be said for another influential account of the nature of creativity by the Roman poet Horace who in his versified Ars poetica attempts to unite harmonically two opposite poles. The great Augustan lyricist emphasises that both a natural gift and acquired skills are important for the poetic art:
Whether good verse of Nature is the fruit, Or form'd by Art, has long been in dispute. But what can Labour in a barren foil, Or what rude Genius profit without toil? The wants of one the other must supply Each finds in each a friend and firm ally.
(Ars Poeti^c^a 408-412)
It is true that Horace mentions that Greeks had talent and eloquence bestowed upon them by the Muse, but at the same time he bitterly mocks the fanatically "possessed" poets that repudiate any skill as unimportant. He explicitly criticizes Democritus for casting out all the sane poets
from the summits of the mountain Helicon — for him, a genius without work, effort and learning remains a highly suspicious and problematic category.
Similar dilemmas are the subject of the famous essay On the Sublime (Peri hypsus) by Longinus, a thinker who was — symptomatically — been "discovered" by the Pre-Romantics.8 Longinus occupies himself with the somewhat elusive concept of a (sublime) genius, a visionary of noble spirit and deep introspection. On closer inspection, five components (sources) of sublimity appear: the first two, namely the capability of great ideas and inspired sensitivity, are supposed to be mostly innete, while the other three
—	the working out of figures, nobility of expression and good composition - are completely learnable, acquirable. Longinus does not really give any account for what "innate" might mean, and inspiration theory passes through an interesting metamorphoses in his essay.9
It seems that the most influential classical discussions of authorship twirl among the oppositions skill/ inspir^ation, reason / irr^ationalitj and mimesis (imitation) / mediation, all of which are derived from the initial on-tological dilemma, the dispute over the real origin of the authorial work. Inspiration theory in its utmost shape seems to be a problem — perhaps because it is not easy to harmonize it with the practical, empirical experience of the creative process. Even if the convention of referring to the Muses remains a practice, the divine connection, the nature of a genius and the role of the ecstatic madness become increasingly questionable. Nevertheless, it is impossible not to notice that the irrational enthousi-asmos, originally grounded in inspiration theory, remains a component which no one is willing to dismiss completely; it retains much of its appeal even for thinkers who evidently lean towards more rational accounts of creativity.
There is no doubt that these theories profoundly influenced later reflections on authorship.10 Girolamo Vida's views on the poet as a creature of divine origin, Scaligero's poet as a creator of new reality, a^lter Deus, Petric's emphasizing of manic enthusiasm in creation, Castelvetro's condemning of plagiarism, and even Fracastoro's essential anthropological turn — as he relocates the source of ecstasy into the immanence of the sole creative process — all these renaissance discussions are deeply indebted to classical authors. Even the most radical Romantic views of the artist - a poet as a mysterious expressive source of poetry, a herald of spring, love and happiness (Novalis), a man with a broad soul, exceptional sensitivity and enthusiasm (Wordsworth), with an imagination that dissolves known to create new wholes (Coleridge), the "legislator of the world" (Shelley)
—	in the greatest part remain inside the certain delineation of possibilities
which were anticipated by classical thought, even if this through was not carried through to extreme consequences.
"Authorship" in Classical Literary Texts
Prior to or parallel to theoretical reflection, authorship issues have also been articulated in literature. Through thematization of poetry and its creator, the poet, they entered literary discourse quite early. In most cases, it is possible to discriminate between the problems on the level of ontology (regarding the source of poetic inspiration and the nature of the poet's personality) on one hand, and the closely related axiol^ogical problems which tackle the social position, value and function of the poet (poetry) on the other. While addressing the Muses as the ultimate source of the poet's inspiration or praising the magical powers of poetry seems to be a routine part of the epic world, it is only gradually that the textual "praising" of a poet/author is being developed. As shall be seen, the space for such self-thematizing has actually opened wide in lyrical poetry.
The oldest known authorial "signature" in world literature stands at the beginning of Hesiod's Theogony where, side by side with the Muses, their disciple appears as well: "And one day they taught Hesiod glorious song while he was shepherding his lambs under holy Helicon" (Hesiod, Theogonj 22—23).11 Together with Apollo, the Muses are adopting their standardised role here:
So said the ready-voiced daughters of great Zeus, and they plucked and gave me a rod, a shoot of sturdy laurel, a marvellous thing, and breathed into me a divine voice to celebrate things that shall be and things there were aforetime; and they bade me sing of the race of the blessed gods that are eternally, but ever to sing of themselves both first and last. (Hesiod, Theogony 31-33)
Obviously, the song is not really sung or invented by the poet; rather, it is dictated from the Muses. A subject is not an autonomous source of his creation, and he does not invent a poem by himself - on the contrary, his text is "dictated" by Zeus's daughters.
In a similar manner, the Muses had already inspired Homer, who never appears in the text in such a way.12 Yet the inspiration convention is articulated exceptionally clearly in the second book of The Iliad where the Muses are explicitly mentioned as the writers of the text, while the singers only hear the voice, themselves knowing nothing.13 On the other hand, from certain passages in Odyssey it is possible to infer that the poets, even
though chosen and thought by the Muses, do retain a certain amount of individuality. But anyway, the world of the heroic epic, with its inexorably sharp bronze in charge, cannot really be a favourable nursery for subtle authorial self-thematizations. It was not before the rise of the lyric Muse (with Mimnermos, Sappho, Anacreon and Callimachus) that the Homeric militaristic value model could be subverted and the vast realm of new subjectivity and intimacy opened.
Before tackling the poetry of Roman elegists who broadened this space to the extreme, another important theme that sprang up in Greek poetry should be mentioned. Teognis and especially Pindar have opened up the topic of immortal poetic glory and durability of great artworks. In his odes and fragments, Pindar praises lyrical art as a divine gift with magical powers and at the same time elevates song into a medium which enables the few chosen greats to survive for centuries, while "even deeds of might for lack of song fall into deep darkness" (7th Nemean ode). In his masterly Exegi monumentum, this idea was enhanced by Horace, who actually created one of its most influential formulations. The ode already employs a typical trick: on the rhetorical level the "monument" (namely, the object of canonisation) is actually the poems, but through the back door their author — a poet, born in a poor rural family, ascending socially by means of his artistic skills — is entering to the scene as well. The variation of this pattern was often to be seen later; it actually marks the modern fascination with the literary author.
Authorship issues have achieved a vividness unsurpassed for a long time in Roman poetry. Especially the elegists of the Augustan period opened up a whole new chapter in the history of textual presence of the author. As early as with Catullus, lyrical poetry in Rome abandoned public affairs to retreat into the privacy where the central position is occupied by the figure of the idolatrously adored woman-goddess.14 A similar view adopted by Tibullus, who deepens the themes of intimate love and withdrawal from depressing reality. Through the cult of a d^omina, the poet is textually constructed as a poet-lover writing about his shifting love luck. The space for thematizing the poet's fame, person, and social position is now wide open. By both Catullus and Tibullus, the authorial themes are only briefly indicated, but in the works of Propertius, another elegist who wittily varies the cult of the queen of heart, a new, important emphasis can be found. Propertius turns his girl into the only source of his poetic inspiration. In this way, he can rid himself of the "divine" baggage and at the same time preserve the ecstatic element in the creative process:
You ask, how do I write so many songs of love, how my soft book comes forth, the talk of all.
Not Calliope nor Apollo sings me this; my girl herself is all my inspiration.
Whatever she has done, whatever she has said, vast histories spring from nowhere into being.
{Eikgies II/l: 1-4, 15-16)
In the increasingly playful Roman elegy, the old conventions fall apart and become no more than material for a witty playing out that is taken to the outermost edge by Ovid. The poeta lascivus (ab)uses the conventional authorial repertory (Apollo, Muses, Aphrodite, inspiration theory, creative madness), leaving open the possibility to understand it all as a ludicrous ironization of poetic cliches: "And poets are called sacred, and beloved of the gods: / there are also those who grant us divine inspiration" (^mores III/9: 17-18). Humorously combining it with the elegiac cult of ladylove, Ovid even alludes to the philosophical dispute over mimesis:
The poet's creative licence embraces everything, nor are his words obliged to be true to history.
and you ought to have seen that my praise of the woman was fiction: now your credulity has hurt me.
{Amores III/12: 41-44)
Very often, Ovid deals with the social status of a poet, nostalgically (and nevertheless ludicrously again) looking back to the Greeks.15 He tackles with even greater passion the topic of poetic immortality, claiming impishly that it is the actual aim of the poets.16 On countless occasions, the lyrical subject praises himself together with his artefacts. The "canonisation" process, which Ovid does not hesitate to show in his texts, includes the poet with his biography and even his ladylove: "My gift then's to celebrate worthy girls in my song: / those that I wish, are made famous by my art" (A^mores I/10: 59-60). Again moving a step ahead of Propertius, Ovid invents a wanna-be Corinna: "I know one who spreads it around she's Corinna. / What wouldn't she give for it to be so?" (A^mores II/17: 27-30) and finally, he goes on to regret his praising of his ladylove because his eager "trumpeting" of her beauty has "prostituted" her.
Ovid's notorious narcissism and his straightforward admiration of his own genius, which displeased the rhetorician Quintilian {Institutio orato-ria X), attract this clever poet to the excessive textual presence. It hardly comes as a surprise that the denominator "Naso", Ovid's textual signa-
ture, appears as early as in the first verse of his first collection of poetry, the motto to ^mores. Actually, "Naso" constantly enters his texts, often in the exposed positions such as in Ars c^matoria where he suggests both to women and men who win the love game the inscription "we were taught by Naso"; and recommends usage of verses from his previous collection in the seduction process:17
and someone will say: 'Read our master's cultured song, in which he teaches both the sexes: or choose
from the three books stamped with the title Amores,
that you recite softly with sweetly-teachable lips ^
(Ars am^atori^a III: 341-344)
Ovid's authorial awareness and self confidence are immense. If the textual Propertius is ready to proudly set himself in the row of "great men of Rome" as a "great and glorious poet" in his first book of Elegies, Ovid, this supreme verse expert, does not hesitate to glorify himself as a champion of elegiac poetry: "It's acknowledged the elegy owes as much to me, / as the epic owes to famous Virgil" (Remedia amoris 395-396) and even as a founder of the new genre; namely the author of Heroides (versified letters of mythical heroines to their lovers) "invented that form unknown to others" (Ars amatoria III: 346). The poet's personality, life, skill and creative procedures enter the very centre of Ovid's love elegy without any doubt.18
Conclusion
From this condensed overview it is quite obvious that authotia^l issues were addressed on surprisingly high levels in both classical literature and accompanying theoretical discourse. Their variety can be well illustrated with the opposition between predominantly inspirationa^l and predominantly mimetic views — that is, the opposition between understanding a poet as a divinely inspired, ecstatic creator, or predominantly as a skilful craftsman. The same duality seems to be inherent in several terminological couplings that substantially marked the discussion on authorship. While the original Greek singer aoidos was connected to divine inspiration and preserves the prophetic dimension (later on so dear to Romantics), the professional master of the word poietes, appearing in the classical age, is secularized. Quite similar is the later philological antithesis with the crazing, divinely enraptured poeta vates on the one hand and the erudite, scholarly poeta doctus on the other. Finally, the same can be said about the cou-
pling Dionysian / Apol^lonian, actualised by Nietzsche's interpretation of the myth of Dionysus that rehabilitated creative madness. These dichotomies can provisionally be illustrated with such a scheme:
divine source	collective (intertextual) production
INSPIRATION	optoidtoecstus MIMESIS (imitation)
ecstasy / emotion	poeta vat:e poeta octuc	intellect / skill
Dionysian Apollonian
secular source	individual (unique) production
As can be seen, both of the imagined poles are differentiated from inside as well. While the mimetic pole is set between options that the authorial work is understood mostly as a collective act, bound to the existing tradition, or as a completely individual, unique creation, at the inspiration pole the dilemma is whether the source of inspiration is divine or secular. In general, the kernel of classical comprehension of authorial production gradually seems to be moving toward more secular and more individual views. In practice, it is very hard to find very clear manifestations of inspirational view, but the same goes for the utilitarian view that would completely deny the moment of geniality: even if the poet is understood chiefly as an imitator, he has never been reduced to the level of a sole craftsman. An echo of the (divine) inspiration theory has never completely died away, and the understanding of the production of an artwork as a distinctive process has remained a constant of Western thought.19
This is why the irrational element remains relevant or even constitutive for poetry even when the idea of "divine dictate" dissolves or petrifies as a mere convention, a possible object of playful self-referentiality, such as in Ovid's transgressive love poetry. With his narcissistic, excessive thematiz-ing of the poet and his role, Ovid ironically subverts generic patterns, stereotypes and even the authorial theory. The astonishing evolutionary curve whose highest point is definitely marked by Ovid's elegy clearly presents the ancient understanding of authorship in all its complexity. Authorial awareness comparable to Ovid's will only evolve after a long time in modern literatures — to enable the author, indeed in another context and in a slightly different manner, to re-enter the centre of the literary work as its genial originator.20 Variety, evolution and inner tensions of authorship issues in classical literature and philosophy obviously demonstrate that schematically linear, continuity-based accounts of history of the Western author simply do not endure.
NOTES
1	Such a pattern is inscribed into history of literature and visual arts through biographical anecdotes (C. M. Soussloff, The Absolutne Artiest 43-72).
2	As early as in the 17'h century, the most modern part of Western Europe has gradually been reorganized into a society of mass consumption, and literary works — under the conditions of growing welfare and literacy — have been turned into widely accessible commodities. Until the end of the century, when newspapers and periodicals had become indispensable, the mass market for literature had also become operative. In Britain particularly, the progress of printing and book-selling took place quite early, and the need for legislative solution of authorial rights (copyright) led to the "Statute of Anne" in 1710, which enthroned the author as a legal category. The authorial right gained the status of proprietorial right, and the author" s work was turned into a commodity. It is important to note that the author as a legal category has not come into being as a product of reflection in philosophy or poetics, but in the interest of business and trade (Rose, Authors and Owners).
3	Cf. Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art.
4	The 13'h century Franciscan monk St. Bonaventura discriminates four (equivalent) types of textual producers: scriptor who literally copies the words of others, compilator who merges the quotations, comentator that adds comments, and auctor who uses his own words.
5	The notion of the coherent "romantic author' itself can also be viewed as merely a construction of 20'h century theorists that intended to shake the "tyranny of the autho^'. Such a thesis was developed in Ken Ruthven's Faking Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001 (Bennett, The Author 71).
6	The same goes for its performance: during the recitation, the singers (rhapsodists), ornamented with colourful clothes and golden wreaths, "under the power of music and metre", are out of their minds, they are inspired and possessed (Ion 534a).
7	The question of "meaning" of Plato's texts remains highly complicated — because of their literary, dialogic structure, uncertain identification of (philosopher) Plato with the protagonist of dialogues Socrates, and especially because of the irony in Socrates' discourse. According to many interpreters, literal understanding of the "expulsion of the poets" is completely false (Kocijančič, Platon II: 997—1002).
8	Authorship of the essay as well as the identity of its writer remains unclear. The text itself most probably originates from the 1st century.
9	When Longinus recommends the creative imitation of great poetic predecessors, he maintains that from the creative genius of ancient writers some kind of emanation is entering the spirit of those that compete with them, such as from some kind of sacred orifices (On ^he sublime XII^.
10	Each of them has its own complex reception history which can not be discussed here — even though these histories are far from trivial.
11	Such a "signature" of course already presupposes a specific degree of fixation of both the text as an accomplished entity and an individual as its (main) creator.
12	With Homer as an assumed individual author of both great epics, the situation is even more complicated because of the problem of the transmission of stories in the oral culture, leaning on a completely different concept of authorship. In The Singer of Tales (1960), Albert Lord claims that Homer is at the same time very individual and a part of the oral tradition. He might have raised both texts to a new level, but he inherited much more than just the plots. In oral culture, each individual performance is unique but at the same time essentially traditional. In fact "collective authorship", even if sometimes obscured,
has remained a common practice in later periods as well (cf. StiHinger, Multiple Authorship; Lessig, Free Culturee).
13	"And now, O Muses, dwellers in the mansions of Olympus, tell me / for you are goddesses and are in all places so that you see all / things, while we know nothing but by report (The hli^a^d II: 484-486).
14	Such a sublimation is unprecedented. A woman gains fatal power over the poet, and Catullus' Lesbia becomes a prototype of later "queens of heart".
15	"Poets were once the concern of gods and kings: / and the ancient chorus earned a big reward. / A bard's dignity was inviolable: his name was honoured, / and he was often granted vast wealth" (Ars amatoria III: 405-408).
16	Cf. Ars amatoria III: 403-404. More seriously the theme sounds in the finale verses of Ovid's epic masterpiece Matamorphoses (XV: 871-879).
17	Of course, he also advises that readers read "Naso" when recovering from love: ^"You read your Ovid then, when you learnt about love; / now the same Ovid's to be read by you" (Remedia amoris 71-72).
18	Which is, according to Bennett, one of the key features of the Romantic author (The Idea of the Author 659).
19	The euphoric dimension has never completely abandoned the modern understanding of authorship - even before it came back in the Romantic vision of a poet as a visionary, isolated from the world.
20	Most often quoted in this respect is probably Wordsworth's revised prologue to Lyrical Ba^la^ from 1802 (Bennett, The Idea of ^he Author 654).
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