The word “precursor” is indispensable to the vocabulary of criticism, but one must try to purify it from any connotation of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that each writer creates his precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future. —Borges
Love this. He was good, that Borges, wasn't he?
ReplyDeleteThere is one of the 70s campus novels, a Bradbury or a Lodge, where a character's field of research is T.S. Eliot's influence on Shakespeare. Every time he explains to someone what he does, they try to correct him: "You mean Shakespeare's influence on Eliot." And he patiently has to explain that, no, he meant exactly what he said.
It's played for laughs, but it is really a perfectly serious idea. Borges knew.