As every competent advertising practitioner or propagandist would know, people tend to uncritically accept ideas that conform to their strongly held beliefs or give vent to their own deepest desires and expectations. This was certainly true with the poster that spuriously attributes to Abraham Lincoln an anonymous writer’s letter to his son’s teacher—an attribution that I made an effort to rectify in my previous two columns.
There is another popular inspirational poster that similarly uses a wrong attribution to give more weight to its message. The poster carries a very well-worded meditative poem and credits it as follows: “Found in Old Saint Paul’s Church, Baltimore; Dated 1692.” This attribution makes it appear that the poem, despite its very contemporary English, dates back to the American colonial period over 300 years ago and had been written anonymously. As it turns out, however, the poem is of much recent vintage. It is a 1920s creation by a Terre Haute, Indiana lawyer and poet, Max Ehrmann (1872-1945).
That poem is “Desiderata.”
Because “Desiderata” (Latin for “things to be desired”) still has a subsisting copyright, I can only quote a few lines for those whose recollection of it may have somewhat dimmed through the years:
“Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
“As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit…
“Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”Click to read
“Desiderata” by Max Ehrmann in full.
How did the credits for this charming meditation on life get it all wrong?
It turns out that sometime before 1959, the rector of St. Paul’s Church in Baltimore had come across a copy of “Desiderata” and included it in his collection of devotional materials. When he made a handout of it for his congregation, he identified its source by putting this notation on top of the handout: “Old St. Paul’s Church, Baltimore A.D. 1692.” In the ensuing years, as the handout changed from hand to hand and went through many printings, some printer evidently took the notation as indicating that the poem itself had been found in Old St. Paul’s Church way back in 1692, its founding date. Nobody noticed this mistake, and the poem’s suddenly acquired centuries’ old patina gave it even more depth and charm.
Indeed, so popular had the poem become that the U.S. magazine
Success printed it in its August 1971 issue. For this the magazine was sued for copyright infringement by Robert L. Bell, owner of Crescendo Publishing Co., which had acquired the rights to “Desiderata” from Ehrmann’s successors. After a five-year litigation, during which the defendants argued that “permission [to publish] was given gratuitously” in this particular case, the court ruled in favor of
Success magazine. However, on the strength of a copy of “Desiderata” published by Indiana Publishing Co. with a 1927 copyright notice, Bell was able to pursue his copyright claim elsewhere in the U.S.
So then, as in the case of the spurious Lincoln letter, I think the producers of the “Desiderata” poster should stop using the poem’s wrong attribution once and for all and give credit where credit is due. This will not only give justice to Ehrmann, who said in his diary that he wrote the poem simply “to leave a humble gift—a bit of chaste prose that had caught up some noble moods,” but also give our children and ourselves a keener sense of history and a greater respect for it.
From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times
, July 17, 2006 issue © 2006 by The Manila Times.
All rights reserved.RELATED READING:A Father’s Letter to His Son’s Teacher----------
Any thoughts about this poem and the essay about it? Click the Reply button to post and share those thoughts on Jose Carillo’s English Forum.
