Reconstruction Vol. 14, No. 4
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Taste in Pope's The Dunciad : A Bourdiesian Reading / Hossein Pirnajmuddin and Ebrahim Zarei
Abstract
Alexander Pope as the most representative poet of his age is very much concerned with 'high' and 'low' culture and art. He ascribes socio-cultural decline to vulgar taste in literature and criticism. An exemplar poem in which he addresses the matter of taste is The Dunciad in which the poet traduces and censures some of his contemporary literary figures, excoriating them for producing works which according to him promulgate vulgar taste and aestheticism. Pierre Bourdieu has stressed the overarching significance of taste in classifying people into different strata and social spaces. Arguing for the centrality of the notion of taste in Pope's conception of culture and art, the aim in this article is to examine it in the light of Bourdieu's theorization of culture. The writers examine the modality of taste as a social marker in Pope's seminal poem. As such, central to the analysis is Pope's appropriation of and contribution to the discourse on taste as a means of self-fashioning, of consolidating his status as the arbiter of 'true' taste in literature.
Keywords: Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, Pierre Bourdieu, culture, taste, self-fashioning.
Our pride is more offended by attacks on our
Tastes than our opinions."
La Rochefoucauld, maxims
Introduction
<1> The Dunciad as a landmark of satire is a mock accolade, a mock paean, written to exalt the goddess Dullness and to address her chosen apostles ─'hack writers'─ as they generate vapidity, absurdity and tastelessness. Originally it was written as a counterattack on Lewis Theobald, who had formerly excoriated Pope's Edition of Shakespeare in 1725. The poem masterly fleshes forth what Pope deems as the 'tasteless,' culturally 'decadent' and 'demotic' writings of the "dunces" of Grub Street. To Pope and his fellow Scriblerians, Grub Street denoted literary and cultural junk, a threat to the sound sense and 'taste' of the age. This article seeks to examine the relevance and applicability of Pierre Bourdieu's discussion of the significance and centrality of the matter of taste in socio-cultural marking to Alexander Pope's work by focusing on the figurations of taste in The Dunciad.
Taste
<2> The concept of taste is of paramount significance in Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory. The omnipresence of this concept in Bourdieu's discussions can be accounted for in terms of his social stratification theories, formed based on the idea of the aesthetic taste. Taste is that human ability to judge what is proper and what is not considered proper. It can be defined as an individual's personal and cultural patterns of choice and preference. It is the drive to make distinction between things such as styles, manners, goods and works of art. As Bourdieu states, "taste is an acquired disposition to 'differentiate' and 'appreciate'" (466).
<3> In Bourdieu's discussions, taste turns into a classifier and it functions as a marker of social class. It appoints and assigns an individual to a specific, social space or a group with whom he shares some likes and dislikes, attachments and detachments, 'tastes' and 'distastes.' It also distinguishes this class of individuals from those whose tastes are disparate. Bourdieu contends that taste "unites all those who are the product of similar conditions while distinguishing from all others. And it distinguishes in an essential way, since taste is the basis of all that one has− people and things− and all that one is for others, whereby one classifies oneself and is classified by others" (56).
<4> In different fields there exist binary oppositions in terms of which individuals are categorized. Some of these oppositions include high/low, unique/ordinary, and important/trivial. In the matters of culture, art, literature and even politics, a person's adherence to one side of these binaries will inevitably engender dislike for the other side and as such taste acts as a classifier. According to Swartz "taste implies distaste;" these binary oppositions, which are products of tastes and distastes, "dictate a 'sense of place' in the social order and thereby fulfill the social closure functions of inclusion and exclusion" (185). As Swartz further explains, in matters of taste "all determination is negation; and tastes are perhaps first and foremost distastes, disgust provoked by horror or visceral intolerance ('sick making') of the tastes of others" (56). Furthermore, taste as a classifier is manifest in everyday choices as well as in the preferences of fine arts, literature, and all the cultural concepts. The social milieu, family condition and upbringing together with the educational system create a certain definition of the self and a taste which 'predisposes' the individual to certain aesthetic preferences and orientations which identifies and discriminates different members of a class and different classes. As a result, cultural capital is manifested by the choices an individual makes, either those of everyday life or of the more complex cultural preferences. In other words, the pursuit of cultural capital is directly contingent upon taste, for cultural capital is "a form of value associated with culturally authorized tastes, consumption patterns, attributes, skills and awards" (Webb et al x). Therefore, having a good stock of cultural capital presupposes the possession of a legitimate and sound taste in art, culture, consumption patterns and skills.
<5> Another main issue in Bourdieu's analysis of taste concerns the function and manifestation of individuals' taste in different aspects of their lives and how it classifies them. Noting that "Bourdieu's main concern is with the principles behind one's taste," Webb explains that, to Bourdieu it is critical to discern the reason why some individuals would involve themselves in the field of cultural production, and why some would prefer to buy such works as paintings, theatre tickets or favor a specific writer in comparison to others (146). Moreover, the taste of social agents as consumers becomes of paramount importance in social life. As Bourdieu asserts, "to the socially recognized hierarchy of arts, and within each of them, of genres, schools or periods, corresponds a social hierarchy of consumers" (1).
<6> Bourdieu believes that "choosing according to one's taste is a matter of identifying goods that are objectively attuned to one's position" (232). This is important since in the field of cultural production for instance, the taste of the writer in accordance with his dispositions and aesthetic preferences, conjoined with the taste of the readers culminates in the creation of a work of art that might be criticized by those individuals whose dispositions and tastes conflict with the form or content of the presented work, or might be advocated by those whose tastes have affinities with the work of art and the taste of the creator of that work of art. Equally important is the distribution of cultural capital among different classes and class fractions. Those endowed with higher amount of different forms of capital, specifically cultural capital in the field of cultural production, would distinguish themselves by manifesting their more 'refined' and aesthetic tastes.
<7> In the field of cultural production there exists a whole gamut of products; however, "of all the objects offered for consumers' choice, there are none more classifying than legitimate works of art" (Bourdieu 16). Bourdieu classifies different sorts of tastes as: 1) "legitimate taste", that is the taste for legitimate works of art present in "the highest fractions of the dominant class that are richest in educational capital"; 2) "Middle brow taste", which "brings together the minor works of major arts and major works of minor arts" and is observable and more common in the preferences of middle class people; 3) "Popular taste" which represents the aesthetic tendencies of working-class people (16).
<8> Bourdieu, then, argues that the field of cultural and artistic production and consumption is a prime domain of social classification and stratification. As such, applying his theorization of taste could shed light on the relation between Pope and his readers on the one hand and Pope and his literary rivals on the other hand. At issue here is how Pope presents himself as an authority, an 'arbiter' on matters of taste, which goes hand in hand with his deployment of satire in the interest of gaining cultural authority, one which is in a relation of mutual articulation with forms of capital.
Discussion
<9> Obviously, it would be a gross simplification to say that Pope's The Dunciad was just an acrimonious response to Theobald's vilifications. A compendium in itself, it explores the whole gamut of Pope's concern for culture, society and literature of the era. In it,"Pope stigmatized his literary enemies as of all that he disliked, and feared in the literary tendencies of his time ─ the vulgarization of taste and arts consequent on the rapid growth of the reading public, development of journalism, magazines and other popular and cheap publications" (Abrams et al 1087; emphasis added). This is by and large the standard estimation of Pope's treatment of his enemies. What is of interest is the ambiguity in this statement as to whether the critics here are of a mind with Pope regarding the 'vulgarization of taste and arts' by the so-called hack writers. The very term 'vulgar' (of people, 'popular') indicates the inherent elitism involved here, the hierarchizing of society in terms of taste - taste as social marker, in Bourdieu's critical parlance.
<10> If the eighteenth century literary sensibility can be elucidated in terms such as "prudence, decorum, propriety, reasonableness, unflappable calm, discriminating taste, discretion, control, dignity" (Sowerby 238), then Pope's poetry is one of its major constituents. In many ways The Dunciad assumes the task of bringing to light and fulminating against what according to the arbiters of taste was the 'follies of the dunces.' Paul Baines maintains that it is "a kind of negative canon, a baneful labeling of those writers who appeared to transgress against social strata or mix literary forms, an attempt to scrutinize and police cultural spaces" (192; emphasis added). This 'indecorous' mixing of literary genres which was abominable to the 'great' writers of the eighteenth century was a common feature of the products of these so-called 'hacks.' Pope images such works as mere heaping of materials so that this mixture would seem to be natural in such writings:
How tragedy and comedy embrace;
How farce and epic get a jumbled race;
How time himself stands still at her command,
Realms shift their place, and ocean turns to land.
Here gay description Egypt glads with flowers
Or gives to Zembla fruits, to Barca flowers
Glittering with ice here hoary hills are seen. (Book I, 67-73)
<11> The 'transgression' of the principal doxa ̶ decorum, propriety and reasonableness ̶ of the eighteenth-century literary field, such as the breaching of the unities of time and place and the mixing of genres, is presented as a grotesque stemming from heaping together all 'glittering' images in one scene as bulk would require. This would be a true affront, more offensive than, say, Theobald's vilifications, to the gatekeepers of the canon of 'sound taste,' to Pope as Dryden's heir. However, it seems that the ridiculing of the Grub Street hacks for their 'lack of decorum' serves as a significant element for Pope in his own self-fashioning, and not primarily as a concern for literary and cultural deterioration. Although the eighteenth-century literature highly values propriety and decorum, the mixing of the genres cannot be considered to have such a corrosive and lamentable influence on the contemporary literature, as Pope endeavors to manifest it does. Pope is in the pursuit of cultural capital and superiority in his criticism of the hacks, hence the pose of a highly acclaimed critic in culture and literature, a guardian of true taste and legitimacy. Moreover, he exaggerates. Shakespeare, to whom Pope pays great homage (he kept his bust along with those of other authors such as Dryden and Milton in his chamber "as perpetual reminders of literary greatness" (Barnard 11-12)), was reputed for mixing different genres. However, when it comes to the Grub Street writers Pope severely criticizes this lack of propriety.
<12> In addition, to some of his critics, Pope did not fully follow the principle of decorum himself. As Barnard states, "Warton's search through Pope's poetry revealed little that earned him a place in the first rank of poets. Again and again he finds Pope lacking in originality. The Pastorals contain not a 'single rural image that is new', and they confuse Greek scenery with English" (21). The Dunciad was also censured by Warton:
The fourth book's subject is 'foreign and heterogeneous, and the addition of it… injudicious, ill-placed, and incongruous'. A more radical charge, and one which articulates clearly the root objection of the Dunces, is that the poem misrepresents the figures and institutions it satirizes. (Barnard 22)
<13> As Reichard puts it, "one need not agree completely with all that Pope says of scribblers. When The Dunciad concedes the average hack even 'less human genius than God gives an ape' (I.282), Pope is doubtless going a little too far" (690).
<14> Lack of decorum and propriety is not the only flaw of the hacks' productions. Pope's scorn for the Grub Street writer's concern with size also suffuses the poem:
He roll'd his eyes that witness'd huge dismay,
Where yet unpawn'd, much learned lumber lay,
Volumes, whose size the space exactly fill'd;
Or which fond authors were so good to gild;
Or where, by sculpture made for ever known. (Book I, 115-19)
The lines describe the mock epic moment in which Theobald is ready to sacrifice himself and all his 'unread' books for the sake of saving art and culture by putting them on fire. What Theobald is about to sacrifice simply looks like a heap of wood to be burned. As John Butt explains:
the library has been divided into two parts; the one (his polite learning) consists of those books which seemed to be the models of his poetry and are preferred for one of these three reasons that they fitted the shelves, or were gilded for show, or adorned with pictures: the other class our author calls solid learning; old bodies of philosophy, old commentators; old English printers, or old English translations; all very voluminous and fit to erect Altars to Dullness. (360-61)
<15> Elsewhere, Theobald's library is referred to as "a gothic Vatican! Of Greece and Rome" (line 125). Should there be a book in the meretricious shelves of such writers, it serves to take up space by its volume, its name and even its ostentatious color and cover. It could be said that this exemplifies the hacks' attempts to hoard objectified capital as a means of distinction (what Pope also does, though in a rather different way). Cultural capital can be divided into several subtypes. One of these subtypes is 'objectified capital,' referring to those physical, cultural goods that can be owned, exchanged for economic capital, or kept to serve for the purpose of 'symbolically' conveying the cultural capital. As described by Allan Luke, objectified capital is "the transformation of that cultural capital into a visible portfolio of artifacts of writing, speech, performance, and multimodality" (356). Books are the symbolic goods that help accumulate objectified capital and symbolic capital. Here, the objectified capital, such as the distinctive important books from great writers, is present, but the manner of appropriating those symbolic goods is not legitimate. According to Bourdieu, "the manner of using symbolic goods, especially those regarded as attributes of excellence, constitutes one of the key markers of class and also the ideal weapon in strategies of distinction" (66). Thus, the inappropriate and illegitimate 'manner' of using these books places such poets in the low social class of mediocrities and dunces. Another pertinent point is the relationship between taste and objectified capital. It is in fact an individual's taste which bestows a sort of relationship with objects of cultural significance. To put it in Bourdieu's terms, taste "governs the relationship with objectified capital, with this world of ranked and ranking objects which help to define it by enabling it to specify and realize itself" (231). In Pope's estimation, however, due to their 'vulgar taste,' the stock of objectified capital Theobald and his peer dunces own is of no value. They are rather there for ostentation. Dennis Todd explains Pope's imaging of what is in reality his rivals' capital-accumulating strategy as a decay of taste:
Thus, the main feature of the chaos of Theobald and dunces is that matter comes to replace the manner. In a series of puns Pope reveals Theobald's library as a monument of the spirit's metamorphosis into matter. 'Volumes' are not books but physical dimensions 'whose size the space exactly fill'd'. Ogilby is 'great' only because it swells the shelf. Newcastle 'shines' not with wit but with 'gilt'. (179)
<16> Parallel to this is Pope's representation of Grub Street. Famous for its concentration of impoverished ' hack writers,' aspiring poets, and low-end publishers and booksellers, Grub Street existed on the margins of London's journalistic and literary scene. Mass publication, democratization of writing and book seller's patronage of writers were considered as the primary reasons which gave voice to the Grub Street hack writers. As for Grub Street, Pope's attacks on 'the Dunces,' the denizens of this vicinity, could also have something to do with some actualities of this locale. This place was one marginal to the actual city of London, with some more important streets such as Drury Lane and the Fleet. Grub Street was preponderantly the residence of working class people such as bowyers and fletchers or the writers and artists who were considered second-rate mediocrities and characters of literary and artistic nonentity. Considering the center vs. margin binary and Pope's fashioning of himself as a guardian of the cultural center, then, the whole milieu of the actual Grub Street is understandably imaged as a source of propagating vulgar taste, one with a 'pernicious' influence on the aesthetic apprehension of art and cultural products. That is, 'Grub Street' stood metonymically and metaphorically for 'vulgar,' 'popular' taste. Tellingly, what seems to be responsible for the vulgarity of these characters' dispositions ̶ habitus ̶ in Pope's view, sinking them deeper into the wasteland of 'tastelessness' and unsophistication is the stage upon which these individuals have been nurtured, namely, Grub Street. There seems to be, in Pope's representation, a vicious circle connecting Grub Street with its effluence and sewage, both literally and metaphorically, and its inhabitants who with their vulgarity tend to reproduce and exacerbate one another.
<17> This correlation between one's dwelling and social position has also been theorized by Bourdieu. He accentuates the importance of this relationship in his consideration of the variables influential in determining an individual's cultural and social rank. He delineates "the independent variable ─ occupation, sex, age, father's occupation, places of residence etc., which may express very different effects ─ and the dependent variable, which may manifest dispositions that vary considerably depending on the classes divided up by the independent variables" (18). This shows the significance of where one lives, not only as an independent variable in classifying individuals into different social strata, but also as an element which affects an individual's disposition. Etymologically the term habitus implies the relation between where one lives, the social context in, and with, which one interacts as a social agent and the dispositions one has. In the case of 'the dunces,' here Grub Street serves as an elemental factor which marks its denizens as socially low. Habitus "expresses, on the one hand, the ways in which individuals 'become themselves' - develop attitudes and dispositions - and, on the other hand, the ways in which those individuals engage in practices" (Webb et al xii ). It is through hishabitus that Pope is endowed with good judgment and taste and it is through his habitus that he practices it. 'Legitimate taste,' then, is habitus-bound, not something one could inherit, buy or imitate. Pope uses this to his advantage in his attacks on Grub Street dwellers imaging the vulgar dispositions and 'illegitimate' tastes of the residents as the sewage that springs from the cultural refuse of this 'Grub.' If there is any waste/effluence imagery it is applied both to the place and the people. Baines clarifies the point:
The 'Cloacina' episode from Book II of The Dunciad, for example, is not mere mischief but a highlighting of the local connection between journalism and the sewer which was visible to every Londoner. The prevailing metaphors and images of The Dunciad - disease, fire, plague, poverty, prostitution, riot, madness, mud, excrement - are shown to derive their power and resonance from actual historical circumstances in a fairly narrow area of London: 'the region was uniquely suited to the symbolic role cast for it by the satirists.' (190)
<18> Ironically, however, some critics have noted that there was something vulgar about Pope's scuffle with his enemies as the subject matter of his poetry, particularly in The Dunciad (Barnard 14). A notable example of these enemies was Colley Cibber who was even raised to the position of Poet Laureate of the time, successor to such celebrated and illustriously acclaimed poets as John Dryden whom Pope considered as his literary father. To Pope this was a strong proof of literary and cultural decadence. He considers figures such as Cibber as pretenders to art who are incapable of reaching beyond the sensory appreciation of art. This sensory appreciation of art, as Bourdieu postulates, is associated with low taste. Pope's disappointment at not becoming the poet laureate because of lacking academic capital and patronage and being 'marginal' in some respects - religiously, politically and physically - is certainly reflected in his vilification of Cibber. His attempts at associating himself with different social groups of colossi of the contemporary literary world indicates his desire to accumulate social capital. In keeping with this, his 'sensational' attacks on Cibber, emphasizing his 'illegitimacy,' could attract public attention.
<19> To explain this 'inadequacy' of 'hack writers' from the viewpoint of Pope - a shaper of literary taste, a setter of literary and cultural standards - in terms of Bourdieu's theorization of taste we should refer to what Bourdieu says about a 'beholder' (consumer) of art who lacks the kind of 'disposition' (taste) deemed necessary for the 'proper' appreciation of art by the setters of standards of 'high' art (such as Pope). According to Bourdieu such a 'beholder,' "Not having learnt to adopt the adequate disposition,"
stops short at what Erwin Panofsky calls the 'sensible properties' . . . He cannot move from the 'primary stratum of meaning we can grasp from the basis of our ordinary experience' to the stratum of secondary meanings' i.e., the level of the meaning of what is signified', unless he possesses the concepts which go beyond the sensible properties and which identify the specifically stylistic properties of the work. (2)
<20> To Pope, just as the abovementioned beholder, the Grub Street hack writers fail to go beyond the level of sensory experiences and 'sensible properties' of works of art. They apprehend and appreciate a simple piece of art by downgrading 'sublimity' to simplicity. In The Dunciad their taste for 'literary junk' is epitomized by the competition held by Goddess Dullness, in which they race over waste for the trifling effigy of a mediocre plagiarist. Nonetheless, Pope is also by no means indifferent to such 'sensible properties.' Just as the Grub Street writers did their best to compile bulky, physically conspicuous works, Pope also paid a great deal of attention to the physical properties of his books, constantly changing the formats and design of the completed works. He also pandered to the demands of the market though he did it through allegedly manipulating "pure taste" rather than "popular taste." As Mattias Frey explains, "while the popular taste is intimately and primarily interested in the immediately and clearly beautiful and sensual, the pure taste indulges 'indifference and distance' toward the very question of content" (149).
<21> To Pope the hacks are considered as mercenaries who write solely for financial gains. As Barnard notes, some of the writers of the time objected to Pope's attacks against the hacks and their "main complaint, however, was that Pope 'reproaches his Enemies as poor and dull; and to prove them poor, he asserts they are dull', and to prove they are dull, he asserts they are poor'" (14). Pope aims at accumulating economic capital by engaging in the translation of classical works and providing an edition of Shakespeare. However, in doing so he also has an eye on other forms of capital (cultural, social and symbolic) too.
<22> One more reason for the savaging of his enemies is, in keeping with the essentially aristocratic code of honor, Pope attempts to defend his honor. However, upholding one's personal honor and playing the role of defending 'true taste' - the mark of civilization - from the ravages of the 'barbarians' coincide here. The notion of honor is also defined negatively, that is, the dunces, being 'dunces,' cannot distinguish honor from 'dishonor.' As Gee notes: "filth, whether literal or allegorical, seems to generate success rather than shame. […] In Grub Street […] "effluvia" have a certain crude value. So much so, in fact, that the Dunces mistake their 'brown dishonours' for marks of real triumph - they lack the discrimination to distinguish the two (118)."
<23> In an apocalyptic vein Pope prophesies that the prevalence of vulgar taste will serve as a beginning of an end not only to art and truth, but also to all fields of knowledge such as philosophy, physics and metaphysics. This explains why he ends the third book of The Dunciad thus:
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all. (355-56)
This implies that to Pope the matter of taste is not just a social marker, as Bourdieu theorizes it; it is also the very mark of civilization, something whose corruption means social and civilizational corruption - anarchy. It is a 'moral' marker, one which distinguishes man from animals. Thus Pope's view of taste stems from his essentially humanistic perspective with its emphasis on the development and integration of all human potentials. As Sowerby observes, "Pope constantly keeps before us the relation between poetry, criticism, and moral sense. True wit, true judgment, and true taste do not merely belong to a realm we might label the aesthetic; they are only possible when literary endeavors are fully integrated with the rest of life" (13-14).
Conclusion
<24> Although one could relate Pope's representation of taste to other factors such as, for instance, what James Noggle has called "the skeptical sublime" ("a current in British satire, starting in the Restoration and culminating in the final Dunciad, in which writers attain a peculiar kind of literary authority by facing the possibility of radical skeptical doubt" (viii)), seeing it through the lens of Pope's engagement with different forms of capital could add a new edge to our understanding of the modality of this central concept. "Good sense, which only is the gift of Heav'n" ("Epistle to Burlington" 43), is how Pope images taste. That is, it is a 'given' rather than something ideologically/discursively constructed or acquired. This is exactly the kind of conception Bourdieu tries to expose as a 'myth.' To Pope, taste is something bestowed upon an individual innately and by birth and it cannot be earned or acquired through education. It is plausible to claim that one major reason for Pope to propagate this myth further is his lack of capital. Due to his religious ties and allegiances he was debarred from a university education with its cultural/symbolic cache and kudos. Pope is deprived of accumulating this sort of institutionalized cultural capital; therefore, he attempts to attribute the 'true taste' to innate faculties and something which cannot be acquired through education. However, this is rejected by Bourdieu as a myth. As a figure lacking such socio-cultural privileges he fashions himself as a possessor of genuine or 'legitimate' cultural capital. In fashioning himself as the righteous arbiter of true taste in possession of a great deal of symbolic capital, first he does his best to accumulate economic capital by translating the classics such Homer and by manipulating what Bourdieu calls the "game" of publication to sell more books, and then he marshals all his talent to present himself as the legitimate critic of the age by criticizing his literary rivals in his satires.
<25> Pope's concern with the concept of taste and its role in the cultural and literary decay of his age finds its most ample expression in The Dunciad. Taste as a social classifier plays a significant role in this poem, as Pope decries and denounces what seemed to him the growing decay of the taste of his contemporaries. What is considered as vulgar taste, exemplified in the demotic writings of such 'dunces' as Theobald and Colley Cibber, is deemed culpable for the general corruption of culture, and thereby society, from The Scriblerians' point of view.
<26> To Pope, the 'dunces' and their productions symbolize literary junk, cultural refuse. They transgress the norms of literary and artistic excellence ─ the neoclassical rules ─ by mixing of genres and their inordinate attention to sensory experiences of art. Pope's 'distaste' for the taste of some of his contemporaries is ultimately an ideological insistence on their lack of cultural capital. He dramatized the endeavor of the dunces to come into possession of cultural capital and symbolic capital through their involvement in the field of literary production and consumption (accumulation of instances of objectified capital such as trophies, awards, books and paintings). This he tries to show as doomed to failure because to him a 'taste' for culture is innate and cannot be inherited, bought or imitated. This conception is exactly what Bourdieu theorizes as a myth (by and large, a bourgeois one) according to which taste is a given rather than something discursively constructed and serving discursive purposes. Given that he was one of the first English authors to make much profit and accumulate much symbolic capital solely by writing (his great interest in manipulating book formats and styles in order to sell more), this is of course ironic. The 'distinction' he was anxious to make between himself and his socio-cultural others is no doubt a myth but arguably nobody could forge it so masterfully. And there lies the real 'distinction.'
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