Who wrote Vysotsky’s songs? A strange question, of course Vysotsky. And now imagine that after 100 years, some literary critic came to the conclusion that Vysotsky could not possibly write songs about sailors, geologists, miners, soldiers, climbers, boxers and sprinters, because he was never a sailor, geologist, etc., and in general was not educated enough to write good poetry.
Imagine that for each of the songs our literary critic found a more plausible, from his point of view, author and began to create theories why it was beneficial for these authors to hide under the pseudonym «Vysotsky».
Complete nonsense, the reader will say, none of his contemporaries ever doubted the authorship of Vysotsky. Meanwhile, something similar happened to another actor and poet, William Shakespeare, although none of his contemporaries doubted his authorship either. A recently published book by a well-known American historian, Columbia University professor James Shapiro, is devoted to this topic.
Perhaps the ability to experience and describe what someone else experienced is the main property of talent.
The question that Shapiro asks is not who is the author of Shakespeare’s works, but where did the myth come from that someone else wrote them. The main arguments against the authorship of Shakespeare are reminiscent of the arguments of our fictional literary critic: low birth, insufficiently educated, was not a courtier to describe palace intrigues so plausibly. Shapiro’s book resembles a fascinating detective investigation. Historian’s conclusion: Although there are dark places in Shakespeare’s biography, all existing conspiracy theories are much less convincing, and contain significantly more contradictions than his official biography.
Ultimately, the question comes down to this: can a gifted person go beyond his social background, education and profession and describe an unknown reality as if he experienced it himself. The example of Vysotsky and Shakespeare shows that it can. Yes, the educated reader will say, but both Vysotsky and Shakespeare were actors, and we already know that an actor can transform and worry about another person from the Stanislavsky system. How is it with other professions?
It seems to me that the ability to experience and describe what someone else experienced is the main property of real talent, regardless of profession. The most striking example of such a transformation into another is the story “Kholstomer”, in which Tolstoy managed to penetrate the “inner world” of the animal to such an extent that Turgenev could not help admiring, with a touch of some professional envy, the remark: “Listen, Lev Nikolaevich, right, have you ever been a horse.”
J. Shapiro «Contested Will», Simon&Schuster, 2010