Modern manuscripts, a fragile heritage
Modern manuscripts, a fragile heritage
If the architects of the Pyramids of Giza had bequeathed to us the sketches, rough drafts and plans which they made as their ideas were gradually transformed into stone, they would perhaps have provided us with keys for understanding the innermost workings ofEgyptian society five thousand years ago.
But these precious records have disappeared, like the early drafts of many writers and composers, and the preliminary sketches of many painters and sculptors, effacing all trace of the doubts, hesitations, and tensions which can help us to feel the pulse oflife at a given time and place.
Even when such traces have survived, they have often been inaccessible, neglected, or misinterpreted. Today, however, they are increasingly prized as precious evidence by scholars who are following in the creative footsteps of modern writers and retracing the development of works of literature from the author's initial idea to the completion of the published text and its reception by critics. This return to the original sources coupled with a determination to preserve the fragile heritage of modern manuscripts has given rise to a new branch of study called manuscriptology.
The purpose of manuscriptology, which might be described as textual archaeology, is to establish fully authentic texts of works of literature and to respect the intentions of their authors and the cultural memory of the group to which they belong. The publication of rigorously documented critical editions is the culmination of this process. One recent initiative in this field is an international co-publication project, described in this issue by Amos Segala, which has led to the creation of the "Archives Collection", a series of critical editions of literary works by 20th-century Latin American, Caribbean and eventually African writers.
It is sometimes said that such research is an encroachment on authors' privacy and that the act of creation should be inviolable. However, this issue of the UNESCO Courier is not so much a contribution to the lively debate that has arisen around this question as an attempt to show how modern scholarship and technology are using original manuscripts to throw light on the complex gestation of works of modern literature.