The Gift

A modern classic cherished by many of the greatest artists of our time, The Gift is a brilliant, life-changing defense of the value of creative labor. Drawing on examples from folklore and literature, history and tribal customs, economics and modern copyright law, Lewis Hyde demonstrates how our society--governed by the marketplace--is poorly equipped to determine the worth of artists’ work. He shows us that another way is possible: the alternative economy of the gift , which allows creations and ideas to circulate freely, rather than hoarding them as commodities. Illuminating and transformative, The Gift is a triumph of originality and insight--an essential book for anyone who has ever given or received a work of art.

“A classic.... If you want to write, paint, sing, compose, act, or make films, read The Gift.” —from the Introduction by Margaret Atwood

“Brilliant.... If you care about art buy this book and let it give itself to you.” —The Boston Globe

“Fascinating and compelling.... Seems to light up everything it touches, including the reader’s mind.” —The New Republic

“Inspiring.... Reckons with the act of creation.... Suggests how to keep art sacred.” —The New York Times Book Review

“In a climate where we know the price of everything and the value of nothing, Lewis Hyde offers us an account of those few, essential aspects of human experience that transcend commodity.... A manifesto of sorts for anyone who makes art, cares for it and understands that our most precious possessions are not for sale.” —Zadie Smith

“No one who is invested in any kind of art can read The Gift and remain unchanged.” —David Foster Wallace

“Few books are such life-changers as The Gift: epiphany, in sculpted prose.” —Jonathan Lethem

“Brave and startling.... Lewis Hyde is one of the finest essayists of his generation.” —Robert Bly

“Absolutely interesting and original.... An exciting book for anyone interested in the place of creativity in our culture.” —Annie Dillard

“This long-awaited new edition of Lewis Hyde's groundbreaking and influential study of creativity is a cause for across-the-board celebration.” —Geoff Dyer

“Exhilarating.... Explores its subject in a thoroughly original manner.” —*Los Angeles Times

• “Intriguing.... An original and provocative critique of capitalist culture.” —*The Nation
• “The Gift is fascinating on the power of art to take us beyond ourselves.... I would share The Gift not only with anyone grappling with the question of how to balance a creative passion with making a living, anyone interested in life and literature, but also with ‘all thinking humans’ (Lewis’s original intended audience).” —Anita Sethi, *The Guardian
• “Wise [and] charming.... A glimpse from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom, it is, like the best gifts, good beyond expectation.” —*The Village Voice
• “A source of inspiration and affirmation in my artistic practice for over twenty years. It is the best book I have read on what it means to be an artist in today’s economic world. It has shown me why we still use the word gift to describe artistic talent, and that self lessness, not self-expression, lies at the root of all creative acts.” —Bill Viola

Auteur

LEWIS HYDE is a poet, essayist, translator, and cultural critic with a particular interest in the public life of the imagination. In addition to The Gift, he is the author of Trickster Makes This World; Common as Air; A Primer on Forgetting; and a book of poems, This Error is the Sign of Love. He has also published two volumes of translations of Nobel laureate Vicente Aleixandre’s poetry and is the editor of On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg and The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau. A MacArthur Fellow and former director of creative writing at Harvard University, Hyde was the Richard L. Thomas Professor in Creative Writing at Kenyon College until his retirement in 2018. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, the writer Patricia Vigderman.

Texte du rabat

"A classic. . . . If you want to write, paint, sing, compose, act, or make films, read The Gift." -from the Introduction by Margaret Atwood

A modern classic cherished by many of the greatest artists of our time, The Gift is a brilliant, life-changing defense of the value of creative labor.

Drawing on examples from folklore and literature, history and tribal customs, economics and modern copyright law, Lewis Hyde demonstrates how our society-governed by the marketplace-is poorly equipped to determine the worth of artists' work. He shows us that another way is possible: the alternative economy of the gift, which allows creations and ideas to circulate freely, rather than hoarding them as commodities.

Illuminating and transformative, The Gift is a triumph of originality and insight-an essential book for anyone who has ever given or received a work of art.

Échantillon de lecture

CHAPTER ONE

 

Some Food We Could Not Eat

 

i • The Motion

 

When the Puritans first landed in Massachusetts, they discovered a thing so curious about the Indians’ feelings for property that they felt called upon to give it a name. In 1764, when Thomas Hutchinson wrote his history of the colony, the term was already an old saying: “An Indian gift,” he told his readers, “is a proverbial expression signifying a present for which an equivalent return is expected.” We still use this, of course, and in an even broader sense, calling that friend an Indian giver who is so uncivilized as to ask us to return a gift he has given.

 

Imagine a scene. An Englishman comes into an Indian lodge, and his hosts, wishing to make their guest feel welcome, ask him to share a pipe of tobacco. Carved from a soft red stone, the pipe itself is a peace offering that has traditionally circulated among the local tribes, staying in each lodge for a time but always given away again sooner or later. And so the Indians, as is only polite among their people, give the pipe to their guest when he leaves. The Englishman is tickled pink. What a nice thing to send back to the British Museum! He takes it home and sets it on the mantelpiece. A time passes and the leaders of a neighboring tribe come to visit the colonist’s home. To his surprise he finds his guests have some expectation in regard to his pipe, and his translator finally explains to him that if he wishes to show his goodwill he should offer them a smoke and give them the pipe. In consternation the Englishman invents a phrase to describe these people with such a limited sense of private property. The opposite of “Indian giver” would be something like “white man keeper” (or maybe “capitalist”), that is, a person whose instinct is to remove property from circulation, to put it in a warehouse or museum (or, more to the point for capitalism, to lay it aside to be used for production).

 

The Indian giver (or the original one, at any rate) understood a cardinal property of the gift: whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away again, not kept. Or, if it is kept, something of similar value should move on in its stead, the way a billiard ball may stop when it sends another scurrying across the felt, its momentum transferred. You may keep your Christmas present, but it ceases to be a gift in the true sense unless you have given something else away. As it is passed along, the gift may be given back to the original donor, but this is not essentia…