< previous page page_201 next page >

Page 201
ever, tell us how hazardous are our general criteria for identity and how much such concepts as Truth and Falsity, Authentic and Fake, Identity and Difference circularly define each other.
Notes
15a618ec9e7a226e83a3ec91f2bb0396.gif
1. See also Haywood 1987:1018.
15a618ec9e7a226e83a3ec91f2bb0396.gif
2. Cf. ibid., ch. 2, on literary forgeries. In this sense every novel which is presented as the transcription of an original manuscript, a collection of letters, and so on, could be intended as a form of historical forgery. But on this line of thought, every novel, insofar as it is presented as a report about real events, would be a historical forgery. What usually prevents novels from being so is the whole series of more or less perceptible "genre signals" that transform any pretended assertion of authenticity into a tongue-in-cheek statement.
15a618ec9e7a226e83a3ec91f2bb0396.gif
3. See in ibid., p. 91ff, the question of the fake fossilized remains.
15a618ec9e7a226e83a3ec91f2bb0396.gif
4. See ibid., p. 42ff, on editorial interference.
15a618ec9e7a226e83a3ec91f2bb0396.gif
5. Goodman (1968) says: "A forgery of a work of art is an object falsely purporting to have the history of production requisite for the (or an) original of the work" (122). Thus the Parthenon of Nashville would be a forgery (or at least a mere copy) because it does not have the same story as the one of Athens. But this would not be sufficient in order to evaluate it aesthetically, since Goodman admits that architecture can be considered an allographic art. Given a precise plan (type) of the Empire State Building, there would be no difference between a token of that type built in Midtown Manhattan and another token built in the Nevada desert. In fact, the Greek Parthenon is "beautiful" not only because of its proportions and other formal qualities (severely altered in the course of the last two thousand years) but also because of its natural and cultural environment, its location on the top of a hill, all the literary and historical connotations it suggests.
15a618ec9e7a226e83a3ec91f2bb0396.gif
6. See Havwood (ch. 1) for apocrypha and creative forgeries.
15a618ec9e7a226e83a3ec91f2bb0396.gif
7. On van Meegeren, see ibid., ch. 5; Goodman 1968; Barbieri 1987; and the bibliography in Haywood.
15a618ec9e7a226e83a3ec91f2bb0396.gif
8. See the chapter devoted by Haywood to the Schliemann case as a complex web of different cases of Ex-Nihilo Forgery. "Not only had Schliemann not uncovered Priam's fabled city (but a much earlier one)but it has recently been revealed that Schliemann's discovery of the fabulous treasure which became world famous was a hoax. . . . Most of the treasure was genuine in the sense of being genuinely old. . . . The treasure was a forgery because its provenance was false. Schliemann even inserted the fictitious tale of discovery into his own diary. . . . The parts were genuine but the whole was fictional. Schliemann forged authentication and invented a context" (9192).
15a618ec9e7a226e83a3ec91f2bb0396.gif
9. If an Author B copies a book Oa and says, "This is Oa, made by Author A," then he or she says something true. If, on the contrary, the same Author B copies a painting or a statue Oa and says, "This is Oa, made by Author A," then he or she certainly says something false. (If both say that Ob is their own work, they are guilty of plagiarism.) But is it true that an Author B who has masterly

 
< previous page page_201 next page >