The Myth of Posterity

In 1945, the great Finnish composer Jean Sibelius prepared a major bonfire of several of his unpublished works, including his still-incomplete Eighth Symphony (which he had promised to a variety of American orchestras for well over a decade). It was a major loss for music, since Sibelius remains one of the most innovative 20th century composers and symphonists. However, some sketches and possibly even a complete score of the Eighth remained—glimpsed by some—on his bookshelf. But he consigned this to secrecy and made his family promise never to release it to the public. He died in 1957, and no mention of the symphony or any subsequent material appeared, despite repeated requests to his estate. Some rumored that at the turn of the 21st century new works would materialize, but other than some found sketches among his published papers and notes, no discovery was forthcoming. Today we only have 3 minutes of music that may have been intended for the Eighth Symphony. 

On the one hand, who cares? A composer, or an author, writes or composes X number of works in his or her life, and that’s the best we can hope for. How dare we demand even more from them, such as the voyeuristic desire to pour over every sketch and aborted novel? If an author, say, wants to bury a work for eternity, he or she certainly has the right to do so. And many have. So many works, hinted at in letters or through word-of-mouth, have disappeared, buried in vaults or libraries—or destroyed outright. Even Jane Austen’s family systematically suppressed all her teenage writings and incomplete novels lest posterity judge her for being too frivolous (or vulgar). Jane, herself, may have wanted these works hidden from the public, considering that she extensively revised First Impressions (an epistolary novel, from reports) into the more modern Pride and Prejudice.

Luckily for us, these works gradually passed into print when her controlling nieces and nephews died off and other family members, who didn’t know Jane personally, abandoned their scruples. And thank goodness! For what we gained was more than a few curiosities, but glimpses of the master at work: incomplete gems such as Catherine, Love and Friendship, The Watsons, and Sanditon spoke with Austen’s unique voice, some of them showing paths not fully pursued, or abandoned in an attempt to change with changing times. Without these works, we wouldn’t completely understand who Jane Austen was as a writer, where she had come from, and where she wanted to go. Some of the works are much more raw as well, showing a strain of satirical nastiness only glimpsed in a few of her letters (since many of those were destroyed, too) or an autobiographical melancholy that she carefully hid from view elsewhere. Should these have remain hidden from a prying public? Should we have destroyed them in concordance with the family’s wishes—even at the expense of closing the book on a fuller appreciation of Austen’s life?

In a word, no. The very last thing we should honor is an artist’s dying wishes. Artists are by nature paranoid, egotistical, and vain to the last degree. A dying artist is even worse. Dying artists think about their legacy, about why no one loves them, about who will love them a hundred years hence (Sibelius certainly did). They fear being forgotten—or worse, remembered for the wrong reasons (a has-been, a washed-out talent, a hack, an anachronism). The last work an artist turns to in his or her old age is usually themselves. They try to ruthlessly preserve a persona as if, with the right additions and deletions, they can preserve it from beyond the grave. It puts me in mind of the pharaohs instructing their priests to built vast sarcophagi in stone to preserve their ka for eternity...when they might have fed the people dying at their feet. Why think of posterity at one’s death? Why not simply sacrifice one’s scruples by offering the public everything it wants—everything you’ve withheld like a dragon guarding its treasure horde?

For a writer doesn’t ultimately own his or her works. At best, a writer is an amanuensis, channeling inspiration and art and craft into something that just might survive the age. Yet to focus these powers does not mean you invented them, or even breathed them into existence. In a sense, the work was always here...the artist just helps us see it. For example, many parents beat their children out of a cockeyed notion that they created them. The only creation involved was simple biology. It came through us, but it was by no divine act of our own. Even my own children are not my creation: they’re both too pure, too unique, too amazing for me to have dreamed them up. The great things of this word pass through us, can be guided and shaped by us, but do not leap fully-formed from our brains. To claim otherwise is a tremendous act of hubris and a willful self-deception that leads to acts of misguided confusion—such as creating a bonfire of your unpublished works.

I entreat authors to jealously guard their works in their lifetime; let nothing you think beneath you see the light of day. But don’t destroy it. Don’t make grand pronouncements on the fate of your works like an Assyrian despot. Instead, build up your hidden treasures and store them away, less a horde than a future ‘dig’ for budding literary archeologists. Let them find one of these hidden works and bear it off happily to an excited public. What’s the harm in that? I imagine that when this world is nothing more than a memory, the vague notion of a legacy will no longer stir your blood. Even your very works will seem like a shadow that someone else invented, in another time, in another existence. But the thought that you made someone happy in that far-away world might—just might—bring a smile to whatever remains of your fabled lips.