When we first began talking about the uses of imitation in class I immediately scoffed. How would I truly be able to use my own voice? Quickly I remembered the origins of my writing experiences. I had always enjoyed reading but I had no idea how books became books. I could hardly get my head around the fact that another human being had managed to write something so intricate. To capture emotion and conversation into words on a page was an idea I was perpetually drawn to; the thing was, I had no idea of where to start. My first self conscious pieces of writing were plain and without the personality and structure of the novels that I enjoyed reading. Because of this, I began to study these novels and then to imitate them. Soon I began to change them to my liking, all the while getting a feel for the sentence structure that my teachers had tried to pound into my head but never could.
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Before being introduced to academic writing I don't think that I ever even thought about voice or style and what that really meant. Now when I consider questions like “is voice style or content?” I wonder which idea I believe to be reality. In one of my classes we are currently tackling a literary theory called Russian Formalism. The Formalists wanted to study literature in a more scientific manner than the other theories did at the time. One of the things they addressed was the idea that images in poetry. They said that images were reused by poet after poet almost unchanged, what made the poem unique was the form of the poem and the style of the poem. Voice, therefore, is style rather than content. I agree with this particular idea for many reasons. I would not be the writer I am today, though I could improve, if I had not sat myself down and started imitating established authors' works. When I began messing with the way the sentences were written, what words were used, I saw that while the content stayed relatively the same the style was completely different then the original authors. For me, this is what voice is. To show this I imitated the passage on love from Frankfurt.
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“ According to Spinoza, when Joy comes from outside sources, rather than from within, those outside sources become something treasured, depended on and even loved. To Spinoza, love is a reaction to the things that provide a person with the feeling of joy. This is seen as something that cannot be helped because people want to love the object that, to them, represents joy. People strive to exist as themselves, joy helps them to accomplish this goal which is why they love what causes them joy. Personally, I agree that Spinoza has the right idea. The focus on the individual is apparent this idea because it focuses on the love people feel for things that will cause them to “find themselves” or find out “who they really are”. Spinoza also explains that people tend to preserve the things they love. Because these thing bring them joy these things become loved. A persons life and acquisition of insight into himself are sometimes dependent solely on external sources of joy. People also, according to Spinoza, work hard at protecting the things they love and that bring them joy to ensure their continual joy” (Imitation of Page 44- 46).
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While doing this imitation I found it difficult to not add my own take on Spinoza's ideas as presented by Frankfurt. I did, however, feel like I garnered a better understating of Frankfurt's piece. While I messed with the style, changing words and rearranging sentences how I wanted them, the content remained (mostly I hope) the same. I found this exercise helpful in finally pinpointing the idea of voice and seeing how imitation plays a huge part in the training of new writers. My writing style became distinctive from Frankfurt's style while the content was the parallel. All in all, I still feel the same about voice as I did in the beginning of the essay, though that isn't to say that content should be entirely disregarded.
Posted by victoria on October 17, 2008
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