The biggest problem with this discussion is the fact that in all the best literature form and content are inseparable. Who can imagine Shakespeare’s greatest sonnets in any other form? Who can imagine Woolf in minimalist prose or even in the lyrical prose that passes as poetic in America today? Milton on lithium, a flowing Hemingway, a Parker that doesn’t rhyme? After all is said and done, our opting for content today is as blind, and limiting, as the classical and Renaissance translators’ opting for form was then. Yet while our translations are more faithful, in terms of content, theirs are so often much better, or at least more interesting poems. The age-old goal of inseparable form and content is, in this primarily prosaic age and culture, no longer so important. Many fewer people today read a poem and say, “What beautiful images; if only the poem sounded as beautiful!” When I wrote a book of literary parodies in 1991, I wanted to parody contemporary American poets, but I could think of only one poet whose style was recognizable to a broad range of well-educated readers: Dr. Seuss. We do have some recognizable prose stylists, but not very many. In the English-speaking world today, language is primarily for the communication of information, whether data or confessionals. Another factor contributing to today’s emphasis on content is the popularity of naturalism, or realism. Most writers feel that they should be true to nature. Most readers feel that what they read, unless it’s clearly fantasy, should be realistic as possible. They especially like to read novels based on true life and poetry based on the true expression of real feelings. When writers read in public, most feel obliged to tell a story about the poem or prose piece, usually linking it to something that happened in their lives. Often the writing is so confessional that there is no need for this; yet it is still done. Authenticity reigns, and authenticity is mostly about content. Yes, better writers know that it is more important to seem authentic than it is to be authentic, but in either case what readers see, and what writers talk about, is authenticity. Authenticity is an ethical brother of fidelity. Serge Gavronsky put the matter of authenticity most baldly: “Readers always want — it’s a Romantic preoccupation, never existed before the nineteenth century — authenticity. They somehow
believe that if someone signs a text, that text was secreted by that
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