Speaking of inspiration -- the creative kind -- people have long wondered where it comes from and how it works. Maybe the American composer Aaron Copland came closest to an answer when he said, "Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness -- I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness."
The riddle was back in the news last week with the truly odd discovery that folk/rock icon and songwriter Bob Dylan apparently owes more than he should to the 1991 English translation of "Confessions of a Yakuza," the biography of a gangster by a Japanese doctor named Junichi Saga. The book is a gripping account of life in the Japanese underworld before World War II, and the English-language version garnered rave reviews in some major U.S. newspapers. Still, it's not a work one would automatically associate with Mr. Dylan.
The evidence is persuasive that Mr. Dylan did, in fact, read "Confessions of a Yakuza" recently. Passages from several songs on his 2001 album, presciently titled "Love and Theft," are word-for-word the same as passages from translator John Bester's fluid, hard-hitting translation. Two questions spring to mind: What does this mean? And does it matter?