Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
— T.S. Eliot
There's theft and there's appropriation.
Theft is like porn: you know it when you see it. I recently sent an article to the editor of Successful Meetings; the following week, my article—poorly recast—appeared under a staff writer's byline.
That's theft.
Andy Warhol, on the other hand, made imitation boxes of Brillo, not for display in grocery stores, but in art galleries.
That's appropriation.
Whole books have been written about Bob Dylan's penchant for appropriation.
He's appropriated melodies from folk singers, blues players, country artists, and English balladeers; lyrics from novelists, playwrights, scriptwriters, and fellow composers; and paintings from other painters.
Critics are quick to call Dylan's borrowings theft, but even Shakespeare was hardly above appropriation, as T.S. Eliot noted.
"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal," Elliot wrote of Shakespeare.
"Bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion."
Dylan has appropriated from plenty of others; but he's welded what he's taken "into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn."
NOTE: Bob Dylan turns 80 this month. He resumes touring in June. A retrospective of his paintings opens in November. His archives opens to the public next May.
