What did Mrs Plato write?
Allen Esterson alerted me to and sent me the link to this bizarre item. (Did I see references to it at the time? Possibly. There might be a faint memory – but if so I didn’t follow them up.)
A study by an academic who has spent more than 30 years looking at Bach’s work claims that Anna Magdalena Bach, traditionally believed to be Bach’s musical copyist, actually wrote some of his best-loved works, including his Six Cello Suites…”I also discovered that the only complete manuscript from the time for the Cello Suites was a manuscript in the hand of Anna Magdalena, and that the original manuscript in the hand of Johann Sebastian had vanished.”
Oh well then. What more is there to be said? It couldn’t possibly be that she simply copied the manuscript (because such things have never been known; manuscripts never were copied; wives never were asked to copy their husbands’ work; original manuscripts never simply disappeared) or that the original manuscript was used to wrap the leftover strudel that Johann Christian took to school; therefore, beyond a reasonable doubt, Johann Sebastian Bach did not write the Cello Suites, his wife did.
Suppose someone found a fair copy of Emma in James Austen’s hand, or one of Wuthering Heights in Branwell Brontë’s, or one of Middlemarch in Lewes’s. Would people be rushing to claim any of them wrote the items in question? They wouldn’t you know. And rightly so. Suppose someone noticed a letter in which Frederick Douglass thanked Thoreau in the warmest terms for his help and inspiration – would people fall over themselves in the stampede to say that Thoreau wrote A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass? Suppose someone found a Christmas shopping list on which Toni Morrisson planned to buy a typewriter for someone named George Smithers – would everyone decide George Smithers had written Beloved? Suppose some alert scholar noticed that a contemporary of Emily Dickinson’s named Albert Innacan wrote poetry for the Amherst Gazette and that his poetry featured a lot of dashes – would new books pour off the presses claiming that Albert Innacan wrote Emily Dickinson’s poetry?
I don’t think so. So why do people swallow this kind of nonsense when it goes in the other direction? Can’t they see how pathetic and shaming it is? And if they can’t, why can’t they? Why will they insist on being so silly?
I leave it to your wisdom to determine.
Yoko O’Bach
I think the consensus of scholarly opinion leans toward the claim that Jane Austen *did* write Emma ;-)
“So why do people swallow this kind of nonsense when it goes in the other direction? Can’t they see how pathetic and shaming it is? And if they can’t, why can’t they? Why will they insist on being so silly?”
I think it’s time to call in the ‘Viennese delegation’ (to use Nabokov’s terminology).
Ur-typical case of abreaction here on the part of Patient O.
For further details contact:
Dr Sigmunda Freud
Ringallee 101
Vienna.
Cash only — no cheques accepted.
“So why do people swallow … ”
Ach, ja …
Svallow
You see? Vy does Patient O. say ‘svallow’? Alvays dey are svallowing someding, not true? You see? You see?
Vot a find, vot a treasure Patient O. iss.
Dat vill be one tausend dollars.
In cash, plees.
What really grates in the Telegraph report is the “researchers believe” bit, when in fact it is essentially the absurd claim of a single music professor: “Famous works attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach were not penned by the great composer but by his second wife, researchers believe.”
It is essentially the same story, though more complex, in relation to the claims about Mileva Maric’s alleged contributions to Einstein’s early achievements. In 1990, “New Scientist” reported “New evidence has been produced to support the claim made last year that Albert Einstein’s first wife, Mileva Maric, was a major contributor to three seminal papers which he published in 1905… And a book by a Russian physicist has been found which describes how the original manuscripts were submitted for publication under the joint name ‘Einstein-Maric’.
Though the article immediately goes on to say that the claims have “been strongly denied by John Stachel, professor of physics at Boston University, and editor of Einstein’s collected papers”, the implication is there that there is genuine *new evidence* to support the claims. And as for Stachel’s denial – well, he would, wouldn’t he. After all, as a lifelong Einstein scholar his reputations is at stake, etc, etc, etc.
The claims now have such wide currency that in Time magazine this year Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and a former managing editor of TIME, wrote, as if it is now known to be an historical fact, that Mileva Maric was a Serbian physicist [sic] who “helped [Einstein] with the math of his 1905 [special relativity] paper”.
Leaving aside the nonsense about Maric helping Einstein with the (simple) mathematics of his 1905 relativity paper [see: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=218%5D since when has someone who failed (twice) her diploma exams for teaching mathematics and physics at secondary, and for whom there is not a single document containing any extra-curricular ideas in physics, qualified to be called a “physicist”.
Mind you, she is also widely ‘known’ to be a “brilliant mathematician”. Didn’t that linguist woman Troemel-Ploetz publish evidence that this is a fact?
OB- don’t tell me you wrote that blog posting yourself! Surely the barman at your local must have done it on a beer mat and you nicked it.
DavidMWW
Shouldn’t that be:- “I think the consensus of scholarly opinion leans toward the claim that Jane Austen did “write” Emma”?
Me ? Shvindel !? Copeland, always with the slander, you shtik-drek !
I apologise unreservedly for any offence caused by the post immediately above.
Look again, David – the name in the post is James, not Jane! (I should have used Francis, instead.)
“Surely the barman at your local must have done it on a beer mat and you nicked it.”
No, actually, I have a little man chained in the cellar whom I feed on turnips and Power Bars; it is he who does all this scribbling, despite his deteriorating eyesight and atrophied muscles.
“What really grates in the Telegraph report is the “researchers believe” bit, when in fact it is essentially the absurd claim of a single music professor”
You know…that’s classic journalism. I noticed similar tricks only yesterday in a Guardian piece on Peter Singer. It said “scientists” were surprised that Singer had said animal research could sometimes be of value. All scientists? What scientists? Well, the reporter quoted…one. How many? One. And said Singer “admits” animal research can be of value. But in fact Singer has always said that, he wasn’t admitting anything, and there was nothing to be surprised about, and the quotation from the one scientist (a doctor) didn’t actually express surprise anyway.
There ought to be rules against calling one person ‘scientists’ or ‘researchers’. What about journalistic ethics? What are their editors doing? It’s an outrage.
OB
Oh, sure. The name is James now. It would be, wouldn’t it? It couldn’t be the man in your cellar made a mistake, and you are covering his ass by discreetly changing “Jane” to “James”.
[Crawls back under duvet]
There ought to be rules against calling one person ‘scientists’ or ‘researchers’. What about journalistic ethics? What are their editors doing? It’s an outrage.
You are perfectly right. But note that there’s often an inconsistency (in the quality press) between general news / op-ed columns and the science sections. Example: for over a decade WSJ editorials have been in total denial about anthropogenic climate change – and yet the science section of the same newspaper has regularly preached the opposite message (ditto to some extent in the German press, or at least in my daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine). Often the political hand, so to speak, does not know what the scientific hand is doing. And basically the political hand will call you a ‘scientist’ or a ‘researcher’ if you’re on their side.
Sadly, probably only a small percentage of readers get beyond the op-ed pages.
Turin shroud no artifact, Vatican scientist claims …
You’re under a duvet, David? Well then good morning! Don’t you look cute and diverse in that duvet. I understand it’s just a piece of cloth, but of course it’s also a sign of your faith. I hope you don’t think I’m at all uneasy or nervous about it. No no no no, not at all. [gasp] Er – is it hot under there? No no, I don’t mean that. Ah – did Allah tell you to wear it? Oh I’m sorry. Um – does Jack Straw ask you to take it off when you visit his surgery? Does it come in different colors? Do all the men in your family wear one? Uh…oh, excuse me, there’s my bus, bye.
>Turin shroud no artifact, Vatican scientist claims…< Sorry, Cathal, you’ve got that wrong. The newspaper report would run:
“Turin shroud no artifact, scientists claim…”
And should that not be “Artefact” – an aberration or distortion in the object viewed or studied, because of material or mental confusion.
As opposed to an “Artifact” – a thing made.
There is no doubt that the Turin Shroud was made. It’s a piece of cloth, after all!