On Imitation

Never call a true piece of gold a counterfeit

Second Act comes out in the UK one week today. Some people who pre-ordered have been getting their copy early, so if you order it now, you might get it early!

Amazon UK. | Amazon US. | Amazon Canada.

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Never call a true piece of gold a counterfeit: Thou art essentially mad without seeming so. Henry IV, part I

Derivative is often used as an artistic insult. Reviewers and critics wanting to describe why a work is lacking will say derivative, as if to mean it is a mere copy, and not a very good one. They are wrong. All art is derivative, it is produced in great chains and webs of influence. Everything derives from something. What they mean (and it is not merely ironic, but telling of their critical attention) is imitative. Samuel Johnson knew this, of course, and perhaps more critics should be made to read one Rambler essay every day over breakfast.

All imitations are inferior. No-one values mock Tudor houses, reproduction furniture, or cover bands as highly as the originals. You might think they are good, you might even prefer them, but that is not the same as judging from a position of knowledge that these things are aesthetically better. My Jimmy Stewart impression is pretty good, sometimes it gets a laugh. I wouldn’t recommend you spend time watching me rather than Jimmy, though. (This is why the new Ripley is not good; it’s pure imitation, top to bottom, and too slow at that.)

Many people do say they think that “lesser” works are better. They like imitation furniture that is new and clean and fits with the style of their room. Fine. But to go beyond preference to taste, we must know how each work compares to each other. Spend several years reading Wordsworth and Shakespeare and then you’ll read the imitators very differently. Trapse the galleries and museums and you’ll start to see your mock ornaments in another light. To imitate is to diminish.

This is a good thing. A life is optimized for easy pleasures will receive nothing greater. Just think how quickly some people decide what they like and stick to it. A long life with so little to fill it! Many believe aesthetic judgement is subjective. People should enjoy what they want. Snobbishness is unkind. If I like it, it’s good. And so on. All true, all true. The best wine is often the cheapest. But knowledge is real. Truth is real. Some art survives; most doesn’t. How frequently it is the imitators who are winnowed out!

We have to ask why some works survive. Why Homer, Chaucer, Milton; why Vermeer, Michelangelo, Rembrandt? Neo-Kantians will forever believe that great art represents something great about themselves: reading makes you empathetic, appreciating great art brings out deep human values in you, and so on. This is so much contemptible, egoistic, pseudo-philosophical nonsense! Great art survives because of itself! Not because of some Bloomsburyite sect of self-satisfied, secular priests of highbrow taste and fine feeling. The very idea is a gross affront to the concept of art and beauty.