Review: Cesarotti, Melchiore. “Historical and Critical Dissertation, Respecting the Controversy on the Authenticity of Ossian’s Poems.” Translated by John M’Arthur. In The Poems of Ossian. Vol. 3, 293–331. New York: AMS Press Inc, 1975. Originally published in Robert MacFarlan, trans., The Poems of Ossian (London: W. Bulmer and Co., 1807).
“Blackwell uses a special term to designate the auspicious combination of forces that produced the great epic writer:
“‘Since it is absolutely the Conjuncture, and Manners of the Times, that produce Poets, How comes it to pass that we have but one Homer?’” (Robert T. Clark Jr., “Herder, Cesarotti and Vico.” Studies in Philology 44 (1947), 645-671: 651), quoting Thomas Blackwell, An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, 2nd ed. (London, 1736), 71)
Interpreting folk works or figures as spontaneous, ‘epigenetic’ products of a people would therefore, presumably, prove incongruous; for, as Blackwell seems to suggest, the ‘historical conjuncture’ expressed in the form of a mythical poet figure is perhaps less an intrinsic feature of history proper than a limited historical phenomenon. And yet, the cultural process that assembles this figure is precisely what has for the most part been neglected in the texts inspired by this question. Both Vico and Herder, for instance, tended to confine the poetic personage to an organic expression of the people (Volk), admitting little room for discerning a more limited, institutional commission. Thus, while “it would be a serious mistake to deny the importance of the Enquiry [into the Life and Writings of Homer] for Herder, especially insofar as it prepared the young Herder for an acceptance of Vichian ideas” (Clark 653) – indeed, as “Hermann Hettner long ago pointed out [Hermann Hettner, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur im achtzehnten Jahrhundert, ed. Witkowski (Leipzig: Paul List, 1929), III, 23.], the book made a deep impression on the youthful Herder, who used it as the basis for his first literary-historical study, Versuch einer Geschichte der lyrischen Dichtkunst (written in 1764, but never published by the author)” (Clark 653) – the conjuncture nonetheless remained for Herder a deep structuring principal, rather than, as I hope to demonstrate below, a limited cultural development that resists ‘comparative’ analysis.
Some time in 1768, for review in his journal (the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek), Friedrich Nicolai sent Herder a copy of Michael Denis’ Die Gedichte Ossians, eines alten celtischen Dichters (1768), which contained, in addition to its translation of Macpherson’s Ossian, an extensive apparatus of notes, most of which were not by Denis, but by Melchiorre Cesarotti (1730–1808) – who, according to Croce, was one of the first Italians to discuss Vico’s theory of Homer [Benedetto Croce, Estetica come scienza dell’espressione e linguistica generale (Bari: Laterza, 1928; first ed. 1901), p. 205.]. Denis appropriated from Cesarotti’s translation of Macpherson the accompanying notes, added them to his own (in addition to Macpherson’s), and translated each page by page (Clark 657–658). “The astonishing thing, then, is the fact that although Cesarotti mentions the Scienza Nuova twice and Vico four times, Herder does not mention Vico in any published work before 1797. The simplest explanation of this is the one to be accepted, in spite of the violence caused by it to our sense of values. For Herder, Cesarotti was a much more important writer than Vico” (Clark 669).
In this author’s opinion, however, the mode of historical analysis to be found in Cesarotti’s treatment of the controversy surrounding the publication of Ossian’s poems deserves study in its own right. One of the first modern texts to sustain a lengthy meditation on an assembled, ‘author-less’, folk work, the “Historical and Critical Dissertation” specifically deals with the contemporary controversy over conceiving of a work as such. Further, with respect to publication and authorship, Cesarotti’s text attempts to discern the ‘archetypes’ at work in the present rather than the past, and through this gesture announces the critical project of elaborating the practices that describe one’s own time rather than another’s. It is, in effect, an application of Vico’s historical methods to a contemporary problematic.
II. The Ossian Compilation
Despite his having “not the least knowledge of the Erse language, or Caledonian dialect, and that he can only speak of it by what he has heard,” (Cesarotti 305) Samuel Johnson, along with others, argued against the poems’ authenticity on account of the universal laws governing the develop
mental stages of a culture (of which the quality of the poems were in clear violation). “When a language begins to teem with books, it is tending to refinement; […] speech becomes embodied and permanent; different modes and phrases are compared, and the best obtains an establishment. By degrees, one age improves upon another. Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance. But diction, merely vocal, is always in childhood. As no man leaves his eloquence behind him, the new generations have all to learn. There may possibly be books without a polished language, but there can be no polished language without books” (quoted in Cesarotti 306–307).
However, reaching the opposite conclusion, if with the same logic, Doctor Hugh Blair, a celebrated professor of rhetoric and belles-lettres at the University of Edinburgh, whose dissertation examined the character of the poems, entertained not the slightest doubt of their authenticity. Indeed, for Blair, the linguistic structure and cultural simplicity of the poems could only be the image and product of a less refined era of the past. “The heroes show refinement of sentiment indeed on several occasions, but none of manners. They speak of their past actions with freedom, and sing their own praise. A rape, a private insult, was the cause of war among their tribes. They had no expedient for giving the military alarms, but striking a shield, or raising a loud cry” (Blair, A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian (1763), quoted in Cesarotti 295). “The manner of the poetical composition bears all the marks of the greatest antiquity. No artful transitions, nor full and extended connection of parts, such as we find among the poets of later times, when order and regularity of composition were more studied and known” (Blair, quoted in Cesarotti 295–296).
The logic of universal development was closely followed by one of forgery, which Cesarotti himself considered, but eventually rejected, for two reasons: first, because the idea of rejecting fame is universally unimaginable, and second, because the task of composing a wholly consistent historical narrative of such intricacy is, simply, impossible (although if such a feat were, in fact, possible, he surmises, it would only make the fame deserving of it all the more alluring). “To suppose that two or three hundred years ago, when we well know the Highlands to have been in a state of gross ignorance and barbarity, there should have arisen in that country a poet, of such exquisite genius, and of such deep knowledge of mankind and of history, as to divest himself of the ideas and manners of his own age, and to give us a just and natural picture of a state of society ancienter by a thousand years; one, who could support this counterfeited antiquity through such a large collection of poems, without the least inconsistency; and who, possessed of all this genius and art, had, at the same time, the self-denial of concealing himself, and of ascribing his own works to an antiquated bard, without the imposture being detected; is a supposition that transcends all credibility” (Cesarotti 297). Even so, “it does not prove the impossibility of there being an ingenious forgery of a more modern writer,” although, despite his membership to a more clever age, he would also have “to be possessed of so much self-denial as to renounce his own glory in favour of an unknown person” (Cesarotti 298). But nonetheless, all reservations aside, the work is exceptional, whoever wrote it, and this, for Cesarotti, becomes the principal matter. After all, “To imitate Ossian to that degree, one must be another Ossian” (Cesarotti 313).
But with John Smith’s publication of the Gaelic originals in 1787, the question of authenticity gave way to questions concerning the relations between texts of variant status. “Is Ossian quite an imaginary being of Macpherson’s creation? or a traditional hero of the Caledonians? […] Are the ancient songs and poems, ascribed to Ossian, respecting the history of his family, really existing among the Caledonians? Did Macpherson translate from the originals the poems which he published under his name? […] But are these poems exactly corresponding to those of Macpherson’s Ossian?” (Cesarotti 322-323) Questions concerning the authorship of the text were thus quickly overtaken by questions concerning its generation. The figure of the genius (and his opposite, the forger) gave way to a sprawling genealogy of textual and oral transformations. The ‘poem’ as creative expression was replaced by the ‘compilation’ as index of popular forms.
“Ossian’s poems, whether recited or in manuscript, are subject, as we have mentioned before, to great variations in the different districts of the Highlands of Scotland; not only from the difference of dialects, but from the disunion, alterations, curtailments, additions, and miscellaneous matter introduced into them by reciters or transcribers, in various places, and at different times. The poems of that bard, it appears, were recited in fragments irregularly, and were blended by the vulgar with popular fables and other pieces on similar subjects, composed by posterior bards and senachies, of a genius style different from that of Ossian, as might be naturally expected in poems which pass through the mouths of the vulgar, and are successively transmitted by memory; and it is probable, that here and there various collections and compilations of them might be made, most of them indigested, without selection or judgment, by inexperienced and ignorant persons. It is therefore reasonable to think, that Macpherson and Smith, having collected together the greatest number they could of such manuscripts […] put together the fragments in the most rational order, and according to the natural connection of the subjects; thence had it in their power to compile and publish a genuine translation, worthy of the name of the author. Smith candidly confessed both for himself and for his colleague, that such had been their conduct.” (Cesarotti 323–324)
Ossian in this sense merely functioned as the Vichian type or personage representing (or typifying) the compilation. This development, however, was neither organic nor expressive of a people. In fact, the obverse fact of the institutional demand for an author to represent the texts was the concealment of the popular genealogies that comprised it – which, in effect, rendered the rationale of the compilation self-evident and, as it were, unavailable to scrutiny. But this was neither Macpherson’s fault nor intention. With the definition of ‘poet’ restricted to an ‘individual’ in a particular economy of literary production, the interrogation of authenticity and the general inquisition surrounding Macpherson’s publication could only be expected to discover, if the methods of its production were revealed, an inauthentic, and therefore illegitimate, work.
“In this place it is proper to observe, that the very system of Macpherson’s work may perhaps demonstrate his shyness in showing freely the original. He had in his possession several manuscripts of Ossian, and he had among them the genuine poems of Ossian, which were not to be found in any other edition though dispersed in all. But the true Ossian, as published in English, was only to be found in the compilation made by himself, and transcribed by his own hand. Whatever manuscripts therefore he might have offered to the public, the incredulous and malicious, on comparing the translation with the text, and finding them strictly uniform, would have said, that Macpherson had counterfeited the original, with a view to deceive the unwary.” (Cesarotti 324–325)
Hence the double bind imposed on Macpherson: in the hostile environment that greeted his text, the process of assembling and indexing a popular archetype could not be expected to withstand the attacks from an institutional model that prized translation over compilation, original over case. But at the same time, if the compilation was to exist at all, it would have to be presented under the aegis of an author. Macpherson was thus for some time forced to conceal the popular, assembled character of his translation.
When the transcriptions and notes were finally revealed, however, scholarship turned to legitimizing the logic of the compilation itself. As Cesarotti unquestioningly observed, Macpherson and Smith “put together the fragments in the most rational order, and according to the natural connection of the subjects.” Cesarotti, citing ‘contradictory’ historical facts as the criteria for distinction, thus affirmed Macpherson’s exclusion of the Irish songs that (hence) only ‘resemble’ Ossian’s works. “Nay we have a threatened invasion of Ireland by France mentioned, and such like absurdities, which are in constant contradiction with chronology, and the history of Ossian.” Macpherson accordingly identified the Irish songs, the Hibernian Ossian, as appearing ‘after’ Ossian.
Through operations like these, the folk compilation acquired new, if familiar, standards for determining a modified authenticity. Political and racial criteria, for instance, were able to recover, in the texts excluded from the ‘proper’ group, a comparable form of forgery: though the texts comprising the Ossian compilation were each a ‘version’ without an ‘original’, the Irish texts nonetheless qualified as “altering and counterfeiting them so as to suit their purpose, and the predominant ideas of the people of that country” (Cesarotti 330). Where there could only be alteration and counterfeiting, transformation and imitation, the racially motivated exclusion of texts recovered the category of the forgery through an act of force and assertion. In similar fashion, Ossian gained an era, if indirectly, through the placing of the Hibernian texts after the ‘originals’. Cesarotti, for his part, agreed with this editorial decision. “The same author believes he can assign the epoch of this novelty, and the circumstances that influenced the public credulity” (Cesarotti 330). In this way, the compilation format came to affirm both an imaginary historical era of a people and a concept of an original, authentic work expressing that people. Indeed, after suffering only a momentary disturbance, the former criteria for interrogating the work of an individual shifted or extended its dominion to that of the population. Though presented as an organic expression of an historical people, the compilation in fact worked to proleptically produce this illusion, in the past – if with the stipulation that they, the compilers, were its future.
Indeed, the first corollary to the assembling of an archetype is the retroactive effect of its having already existed. In being forced to conceal the poem’s complex sourcing, Macpherson promoted the impression of having reproduced through translation a more coherent and intact text (and author) than in fact existed. The Ossian he fashioned was imaged as having already existed. Then, when the text’s true production was revealed, the logic of its compilation was legitimized and presented as antedating its ‘discovery’. Even now, with an understanding of the text’s compilation and a critique of its logic underway, its integrity and habitual self-evidence remain implacable.
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