GG: forgery of Emily Dickinson

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

No, GG himself didn't forge Emily Dickinson....

I heard a news story yesterday evening and again this morning, about an
Emily Dickinson poem recently sold at Sotheby's turning out to be a very
well-done forgery.  The forger researched the type of paper and ink which
corresponded with the supposed year of composition, and otherwise was
careful in all details.  The forger has been in prison for a while on some
other crimes. 

Reminded me of this chunk from GG's "The Prospects of Recording," p341ff
in the _Reader_: 

"Hans van Meegeren was a forger and an artisan who for a long time has
been high on my list of private heroes.  Indeed, I would go so far as to
say that the magnificent morality play which was his trial perfectly
epitomizes the confrontation between those values of identity and of
personal-responsibility-for-authorship which post-Renaissance art has
until recently accepted and those pluralistic values which electronic
forms assert.  In the 1930s van Meegeren decided to apply himself to a
study of Vermeer's techniques and--for reasons undoubtedly having more to
do with an enhancement of his ego than with greed for
guilders--distributed the works thus achieved as genuine, if long lost,
masterpieces.  His prewar success was so encouraging that during the
German occupation he continued apace with sales destined for private
collectors in the Third Reich.  With the coming of VE Day, he was charged
with collaboration as well as with responsibility for the liquidation of
national treasures.  In his defense van Meegeren confessed that these
treasures were but his own invention and, by the values this world
applies, quite worthless--an admission which so enraged the critics and
historians who had authenticated his collection in the first place that he
was rearraigned on charges of forgery and some while later passed away in
prison. 

"The determination of the value of a work of art according to the
information available about it is a most delinquent form of aesthetic
appraisal.  Indeed, it strives to avoid appraisal on any ground other than
that which has been prepared by previous appraisals.  The moment this
tyranny of appraisaldom is confronted by confused chronological evidence,
the moment it is denied a predetermined historical niche in which to lock
the object of its analysis, it becomes unserviceable and its proponents
hysterical.  The furor that greeted van Meegeren's conflicting testimony,
his alternate roles of hero and villain, scholar and fraud, decisively
demonstrated the degree to which an aesthetic response was genuinely
involved. 

"Some months ago, in an article in the _Saturday Review_, I ventured that
the delinquency manifest by this soft of evaluation might be demonstrated
if one were to imagine the critical response to an improvisation which,
through its style and texture, suggested that it might have been composed
by Joseph Haydn.  (Let's assume it to be brilliantly done and most
admirably Haydnesque.) I suggested that if one were to concoct such a
piece, its value would remain at par--that is to say, at Haydn's
value--only so long as some chicanery were involved in its presentation,
enough at least to convince the listener that it was indeed by Haydn.  If,
however, one were to suggest that although it much resembled Haydn it was,
rather a youthful work of Mendelssohn, its value would decline; and if one
chose to attribute it to a succession of authors, each of them closer to
the present day, then--regardless of their talents or historical
significance--the merits of this same little piece would diminish with
each new identification.  If, on the other hand, one were to suggest that
this work of chance, of accident, of the here and now, was not by Haydn
but by a master living some generation of two before his time (Vivaldi,
perhaps), then this work would become--on the strnegth of that daring,
that foresight, that futuristic anticipation--a landmark in musical
composition."
(...)

That one refers back to the earlier article, "Strauss and the Electronic
Future," p94 in the _Reader_. 

-----

(Minor gripe about the _Reader_: it took me too long to find these essays. 
I was sure they mentioned Haydn, but these passages weren't caught in the
index.  And I browsed through at least ten other articles before getting
to them....)

Bradley Lehman ~ Harrisonburg VA, USA ~ 38.44N+78.87W
bpl@umich.edu ~ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/