The rewrite: Harriet Beecher Stowe and Pierre Menard
I can’t remember why I was doing it, but the other night I was researching the life of Harriet Beecher Stowe and I discovered a few surprising things.
The first was that Stowe had seven children in addition to writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
The second was that in her later years (Stowe lived to be 85), when she suffered from dementia, Stowe forgot she had written the book and set out to write it again:
The incurable mental malady of Harriet Beecher Stowe has progressed alarmingly. Mrs. Stowe’s vagaries, regarded as mere eccentricities, first amounted to actual aberration of mind about a month prior to the final attack. The interval was chiefly spent by her in writing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” over again. She imagined that she was engaged in the original composition, and for several hours every day she industriously used pen and paper, inscribing long passages of the book almost exactly word for word.
This was done unconsciously from memory, the authoress imagining that she composed the matter as she went along. To her diseased mind the story was brand new, and she frequently exhausted herself with labor which she regarded as freshly created. The worldwide fame of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was now an anticipation to her, and she talked wildly of the popularity which the book was going to win. Even to the kind of pen, paper and ink used, Mrs. Stowe repeated the first composition, and if the manuscript could be compared with the corresponding portions of the original copy it is not likely that much difference of appearance would be discovered.
That is astounding, although sad. But it also sounded a bit familiar. It sounded like a short story by Jorge Luis Borges that appeared in his wonderful book Ficciones
Borges’ high-toned, somewhat ironic style takes a bit of getting used to if you haven’t read him before. But here’s an excerpt from the story (which is not so much a “story” as a spoof of academic literary criticism). It’s about a man named Pierre Menard who sets out to write Don Quixote:
He did not want to compose another Quixote ””which is easy”” but the Quixote itself. Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide””word for word and line for line””with those of Miguel de Cervantes…
The first method he conceived was relatively simple. Know Spanish well, recover the Catholic faith, fight against the Moors or the Turk, forget the history of Europe between the years 1602 and 1918, be Miguel de Cervantes. Pierre Menard studied this procedure (I know he attained a fairly accurate command of seventeenth-century Spanish) but discarded it as too easy. Rather as impossible! my reader will say. Granted, but the undertaking was impossible from the very beginning and of all the impossible ways of carrying it out, this was the least interesting. To be, in the twentieth century, a popular novelist of the seventeenth seemed to him a diminution. To be, in some way, Cervantes and reach the Quixote seemed less arduous to him””and, consequently, less interesting””than to go on being Pierre Menard and reach the Quixote through the experiences of Pierre Menard…“My undertaking is not difficult, essentially,” I read in another part of his letter. “I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.”…
The rest of the rather brief story is a subtly humorous comparison of the two versions (Menard’s is presented as being fragmentary), such as this:
It is a revelation to compare Menard’s Don Quixote with Cervantes’. The latter, for example, wrote (part one, chapter nine):
. . . truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor. Written in the seventeenth century, written by the “lay genius” Cervantes, this enumeration is a mere rhetorical praise of history. Menard, on the other hand, writes:
. . . truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor.
History, the mother of truth: the idea is astounding. Menard, a contemporary of William James, does not define history as an inquiry into reality but as its origin. Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened. The final phrases””exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor ””are brazenly pragmatic.
The contrast in style is also vivid. The archaic style of Menard””quite foreign, after all””suffers from a certain affectation. Not so that of his forerunner, who handles with ease the current Spanish of his time.
So here’s my question: was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s second version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin informed by everything that had happened in her life since she wrote the first one, including the Civil War? I would love for Borges to explain.
Wow. Though we are contemporaries I would have certainly wished for a teacher such as you in my youth. You are an artful presenter of things and ideas. It is quite a gift. You actually inspire me Neo-neocon. I guess I should go back now to your assignment.
Neo, the answer to your closing question is a firm NO, if she was indeed demented. Recent memory goes, remote memories stay in dementia. That’s why Alzheimer’s patients cannot remember what happened yesterday, but have precise recall of events of 40 years before.
Even now, I can recall huge chunks of short stories I wrote twenty-five years ago. I bet I could re-produce all of them with something approaching word-for-word accuracy (I was not prolific). As soon as the narrative starts in my head, it’s as vivid as when I first put it down on paper. The hard part of writing, organizing your thoughts and emotions, is already done. It comes out fully formed. That’s probably what Stowe was experiencing in her confused state. She just forgot she had already written it down.
Dementia is not confusion.
There is more in Borges’s story, about imagining books as if they were written by Shakespeare, and the new insight it would bring. I’ve used the concept a few times. I experienced a practical reality of it when reading in Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews when I thought I was aiming for James’s Letter. I read 4-6 verses in joyful astonishment and the newness before I realized the error. Even though the magic was gone, I found it instructive to read Hebrews straight through as if it had been written by James. Great Fun.
Whenever I read something of own from 30 years ago, I want to edit and redo it. Some of that is mere stylistic improvement, but sometimes it is because my thought is slightly different now. Yet that is not only my development, but a change in the world around me. The exact words sometimes do have a slightly different meaning 30 years later – because I have adopted 3 more children, because of 9/11, because of google, email, and Skype. Try it.
Maybe also pertinent is Borges’s famous story “Funes the Memorious.” Funes fell off his horse. This crippled him, and the blow to his head also cursed him with a perfect memory.
Both “Funes … ” and “Pierre Menard … ” were published, as translations into English, in the volume entitled “Ficciones.” That was in 1962, and the stories were very popular when I read first read them about ten years later. By then, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was thought to be silly at best, but if I’d known Neo’s story of demented recall, then “Uncle Tom … ” would certainly have acquired a new prestige. Embarrassing to admit, but youth’s been wasted on worse things.
Is Uncle Tom’s Cabin read today or is it just of historical significance?
Is Uncle Tom’s Cabin read today or is it just of historical significance?
The latter.
A remarkable post! I was going to call it “extraordinary”, but, of course, when you write on sort of “by the way” topics that occur to you as the strange alchemy of your mind interacts with sudden detours from the current news cycles, it is far more usual an occurrence than not for you to write something that requires–inspires!–a lot of feverish thought.
Had we world enough and time, a person could write a dozen books based just on the various trajectories that thoughts take from multiple points in your post.
There are times when a group of thoughts, quotations, and questions, comes in a package that makes it like one of those multi-tools that are demonstrated on TV ads, and once you read it, it becomes a part of your prized mental toolkits. It reminds me of the class I took decades ago in 9th grade (I think) that taught about Greek and Latin prefixes, suffixes, and roots to words in English. It can be like a key that unlocks a door, and the moment you walk through it, it forever changes the way you look at some things.
Thank you for a wonderful experience. You’ve expanded my world, and I wish I had the words to explain the excitement I felt when I read this post.
And, yes, I know, I know–when I read something I find exhilarating I’m like a little kid with a fabulous new toy, and my emotions take flight, and so does my comment.
Minta Marie Morze:
I had no idea this post would spark so many thoughts, but you’re welcome, glad to be of service!
Have you read much Borges? If you haven’t, my guess is that you would really really like him. Three of my favorites are the short stories “The Library of Babel,” “Funes, the Memorious,” and “The Babylon Lottery,” all of them to be found in Ficciones.
Neo, I never read Borges, so that is one of the gems in your treasure-box post. I will read him now, and for the first time, which has immense charm to it–there are a lot of authors to which I have sadly reached the end of the printed books, although rereading books is great too, because of all the things you see anew.
Moreover, I read Cervantes decades ago, when I was a teenager–I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it.
And there are so many other aspects of your post–abut the act of translation, when books are translated into several languages there are multiple not-really-twinned books in existence, what you need to know about the geographic and temporal location of the author, trying to emulate a literary style, satire and the worlds of the critics–especially modern and post-modern criticism–and so much more.
I have read books that have been translated by different people over time, and the translator makes an incredible difference! Moreover, in a way every mind that reads a book is, in its own way, a different translator. There is an enchantment at work in the perception of markings on a contrasting surface.
So many things to think about and explore!
Thanks again!
Minta Marie Morze:
Well, I think you have a treat ahead of you, then.
Borges didn’t write very much, though. I’ve read most of what he’s written, but to me, Ficciones is far and away the best.
I also noticed once, when I briefly got hold of a copy in Spanish, that even though my Spanish is awful (took it in high school and forgot more than I learned), I could understand a great deal of his writing even in Spanish. I only read a few pages, but I was surprised. I think it was a combination of that fact that I already knew the stories, plus the fact that his prose (although erudite) is straightforward and not flowery. I concluded at the time that, with Borges, the translator mattered less than with a lot of other writers who might be more flowery or use more figures of speech.
I really don’t know whether that’s true, but that was my quick impression.
Those stories—the Library one the Funes one and the Lottery one—are some of my favorite stories ever. They are more like philosophical meditations with a fictional bent.