Guilty! the Judge said, and it was over.
The charge? Maintaining that his work was his own, that he had done it himself, that he had made the choices and invented the words and imagined the whole thing, whatever it was, the novel, the poem, the play.
What it was, was not on trial. Nothing to do with the message. No, it was all about attribution.
Because the great spiritual merger had already taken place. The masses had undergone enlightenment, and the government had seen it—actually, seen TO it—and then declared that artists could face jail time for pretending to be what many of them said they were: Continue reading