The Value Added Theory and Metanoetic Prolepsis

This comes from translation, but applies equally well (or better) to musical settings.  I call it the value added theory.

We see translation, often, as trying (and inevitably failing) to create the perfect replica of the poem in a different language. Why inevitably failing? Because the "replica" model is an impossible one. No two texts are replicas of each other in two different languages. Notice, also, that the original text is accorded the status of being perfect, and so every difference will be debited to the account of the translation. This is manifestly unfair. Even if the original is in fact "better" in many ways than the translation, we tend to grant a kind of metaphysical status to it that makes the differences all the more evident.

Borges was one of the first to point out that the translation is judged inferior because of this metaphysical difference, not because all originals are empirically better than every possible version of them. Empirically, a translation can surpass the original.

The value added theory or "meeting of great minds" theory goes beyond this, to say that the translation can be better than the original because we have a great literary mind working with material by another great literary mind, we have something extraordinary going on: the encounter itself.  

The caveat is that the brilliant poet-translator might not bring anything of all that interest to the encounter.  For example, suppose for the sake of argument Ashbery's Rimbaud is about as good as that of a very good translator like Mary Ann Caws. We can't make the argument that there is a "meeting of the minds."

I think that we think of this instinctively when we want to hear a great version of "All the Things You Are," if we already love the song, or of Chopin's Preludes, so it works for musical "interpretation." Or if we think it's wonderful to hear Bird, Dizzy, Max Roach, Bud Powell, and Mingus play all together and feed off each other. The combination is more than just the sum of these five ingredients.

Now there is also the "goose-bump factor." Just thinking of that combination might give you goose bumps, in excess of the actual results, and thus alter your perception. That might effect the Ashbery example too: we might get goose bumps of excitement reading the translation, knowing who Ashbery is, that we wouldn't get if it if we were told it was "translated by Joe Schmoe."  

With a musical setting, we have a poem that we already admire, say by Lorca (por ejemplo).  We still have the poem itself, and we have another work of art, the song, that represents a creative encounter with the poem. We might think of that as a set of creative instructions for performing the poem. It would be like the meeting of great minds you would have when a great director directs a great playwright. In fact, the great play can only be great as theater in a great mise en scène. Of course, you need a singer as well as a composer. The singer singing the song would have a creative encounter with the poet and with the composer. The critic's job is to tell us what's happening here, saying why there is value added in the setting and the performance (if there is!).

An inadequate setting or performance adds something that we don't simply see  as valuable. Instead of enhancing the performance of the poem, we get instructions for performing it very badly.

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I like the idea of explaining my theoretical concepts with everyday language terms, like "the meeting of the minds" theory or the "goose bump effect." Compare that with the effect of Greek terminology. I could come up with the brilliant idea of "metanoetic prolepsis" to describe the goose flesh effect: our anticipation of being delighted by the creative encounter of two minds.  Which terms is more effective?  

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 Being around smart people makes you smarter. So the ideal seminar or tete-a-tete with brilliant colleague also has that hypernoetic effect.