As part of The New Criteron’s recent Best of series, Elizabeth Bishop is being considered at Arma Virumque. Most recently, Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box : Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments caused a bit of a stir (or, for some, a moral dilemma) even though, as Carol Bere points out, many of the poems had been published elsewhere. Elizabeth Bishop is a longtime favorite of mine, and I tend to agree when John Ashbery says, “For those who love Elizabeth Bishop, there can never be enough of her writing. The arrival of this trove of unknown manuscripts is therefore a stupendous event.” With this publication, however, we ought to consider: what do we owe a dead artist?
It has been said to the point of tedium that Bishop was a perfectionist, and as Helen Vendler points out, the notion of publishing some of these drafts would have mortified Bishop, had she been alive. Fair enough. I will even go so far as to agree that it is disrespectful to the author’s intentions to publish her miscellania. But Elizabeth Bishop is dead. We have her major works as she wanted them, down to every detail, every equinoctial tear in its right place. Is it wrong to want to supplement these works?
Perhaps it would be instructive to consider other authors edited and published posthumously. Two spring immediately to mind: Kafka and Plath. Kafka, as the story goes, left his manuscripts to Max Brod to be destroyed. Brod was obviously disobedient, and it is to him we owe most of the stories and all of Kafka’s novels. Brod’s disobedience–his willingness to dishonor his promise to his dead friend–is beneficial to all of us who love literature, even those who have not read Kafka; after all, what writer in recent memory hasn’t been influenced by Kafka in one way or another?
As I am considering this, I find I am struggling over whether Brod behaved badly. Certainly he broke his word. And in most situations, I would suggest such disregard would consititute bad behavior. There is a part of me that wants to know Brod’s intentions (was he publishing Kafka to share him with the world or to make money for himself? A little of both?) but I think those intentions don’t matter. As Aristotle pointed out, we are judged by the consequences of our actions and not the actions themselves. I’d say the consequences were good, and Brod’s behavior was praiseworthy; in the end, he honored his friend–as has much of the rest of the world since then.
Those who remain unconvinced ought to consider Plath’s Ariel, arguably her greatest work. The familiar version was much-fiddled with by Ted Hughes–the order changed, some poems dropped and others added (the dropped poems, incidentally, were quite cruel–I believe the words “scathing diatribes” are generally used to describe them). Now, after Hughes’ death, a new version (Ariel: The Restored Edition) has been published, and the ending is completely different. The “original” 1965 Ariel contains some poems written in Plath’s final days; the restored edition resonates around spring and rebirth, its final line of renewal (“The bees are flying. They taste the spring.”) rather than of destruction (“By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me. / I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.”). As her daughter, Frieda Hughes, notes in her introduction, both collections come from the same place and share a history–but one of them was created through the work of an editor.
There are times when a writer begs for a good editing. T. S. Eliot would not be half the poet he is without the extensive editing done by Ezra Pound, and Look Homeward, Angel would not exist (without editing, no one in his right mind would have published the thing). I believe Plath fell into the same camp–to my mind, Hughes’ Ariel is the greater work. But a good editor must sometimes ignore an author’s intentions in service of the themes the author has introduced in the work, in the service of the audience, and in the service of aesthetics. Is it such a far jump, then, from editing the works of one dead author to editing the works of another?
Edgar Allen Poe & the Juke-Box is Quinn’s vision of Bishop and not Bishop’s vision of Bishop. In no way does this invalidate the artistic work. Obviously we should not view this as a major work, but as a supplement, it is inoffensive. Indeed, some of the poetry in it, particularly “It is marvellous…” ranks with Bishop’s finest work elsewhere and expands our vision of the poet. This poem alone would justify the collection. That it is one of several works Bishop chose not to publish indicates that artists are not always the best judges of their own work–and Quinn’s rescue efforts should be lauded, not punished.