As a writer the issue of having my own voice has often troubled me. I had my own persistent influences, and some of my works echoe them. However maybe, if not the best, then the most straight way to abandon those influences to the degree that is deemed useful, is to not identify them as belonging primarily to those authors anymore.
I believe that everyone, not just those who write, potentially have their unique voice. It is just that writers are better placed to dig up their internal world than most people, most of the time.
Some of my finished stories are in styles arguably near Poe's, Kafka's, De Maupassant's and Borges'. But they are still my own, and like Borges claimed in a famous oxymoron, each writer gives birth to his own precursors.
Maybe it is easier to attribute certain literary elements to famous writers, so that one does not feel the burden of developing them all of his own. At least this has been so for me. But certainly those writers in turn were influenced by others.
However, nevermind the circle or in the best case spiral, of re-use of literary techniques, one has the ability to have his own themes. I recall Kafka's claim that his first novel, Amerika (the lost person) was an attempt to mimic one of the novels by Dickens, only in a darker and more modern setting. Structurally it may have been similar, but then again arguably without this note by Kafka himself, few people if any would have made the connection.
In literature, which is not an exact science (but arguably also due to the fact that its subject is more vast than any of the exact sciences; its subject being mankind) one seeks arguably a progeny that paved ways in the hostile ground of expression, but only so that he can create his own paths. In a poem by Constantine Cavafy the young poet is consoled by an older one, with reference to the existence of a "polis of ideas" to which all poets belong, and have that distinction already, regardless of their work. Then again in a short story Borges claims that a writer "judges all fellow writers by what they have already produced, while himself of what he has in his mind"...
You can take part in the thread, if you want to, by mentioning what you think of the issue of finding one's more or less unique, or distinctive voice in the realm of letters, or elsewhere. Happy new Year, may 2013 be a lot better for all :)
I believe that everyone, not just those who write, potentially have their unique voice. It is just that writers are better placed to dig up their internal world than most people, most of the time.
Some of my finished stories are in styles arguably near Poe's, Kafka's, De Maupassant's and Borges'. But they are still my own, and like Borges claimed in a famous oxymoron, each writer gives birth to his own precursors.
Maybe it is easier to attribute certain literary elements to famous writers, so that one does not feel the burden of developing them all of his own. At least this has been so for me. But certainly those writers in turn were influenced by others.
However, nevermind the circle or in the best case spiral, of re-use of literary techniques, one has the ability to have his own themes. I recall Kafka's claim that his first novel, Amerika (the lost person) was an attempt to mimic one of the novels by Dickens, only in a darker and more modern setting. Structurally it may have been similar, but then again arguably without this note by Kafka himself, few people if any would have made the connection.
In literature, which is not an exact science (but arguably also due to the fact that its subject is more vast than any of the exact sciences; its subject being mankind) one seeks arguably a progeny that paved ways in the hostile ground of expression, but only so that he can create his own paths. In a poem by Constantine Cavafy the young poet is consoled by an older one, with reference to the existence of a "polis of ideas" to which all poets belong, and have that distinction already, regardless of their work. Then again in a short story Borges claims that a writer "judges all fellow writers by what they have already produced, while himself of what he has in his mind"...
You can take part in the thread, if you want to, by mentioning what you think of the issue of finding one's more or less unique, or distinctive voice in the realm of letters, or elsewhere. Happy new Year, may 2013 be a lot better for all :)