Robert Lowell (1917-1967) was an American poet. He won the National Book Award (1960, by Life Studies) and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1947 and 1974). He is known to us for being a pacifist: he claimed reasons of conscience in the II. In order not to go to the World War (and was imprisoned for a while), he wrote against the Vietnam War.

In 1960, newly awarded the major prize, he published the book Imitations. In that book “translated” to Homer, Safo, Villon, Leopardi, Rilke, Pasternak, Baudelaire and Rimbaud, and we use quotation marks because (they are Lowell’s words), “I have tried to write live English, trying to do what my author might have done to live in America today.”

The critique welcomed Imitations without any objection, and no one doubted the originality of the work.

The paradox evidenced by these and others is known: If Periko Smith had done the same thing as Lowell (and they would have fished it), then what?

The answer is also known: Periko Smith would have been burned in the plagiarism fire.

The debate, as far as literature is concerned, concerns: Why can a recognized writer manipulate (translate, copy) literary tradition smoothly, while if a stranger does it, the penal code applies to him?

In Bernardo Atxaga’s famous method of plagiarism, one of the rules was “to have a little name.” The debate is well known and there are views of all kinds.

However, Lowell did not hide what he was translating into the poets he loved, and clearly exercised his competence as a writer.

Writers have often used this competition or privilege in a provocative way, to arouse debates, to underline contradictions, to arouse someone…

It doesn't seem like that was Xabier Lete's intention. I will hardly judge what my intention was, but you will agree with me, whether it was the laughing of our ignorance or the awakening of the discussion, which completely failed.

So? Why did Lete behave like Periko Smith? This is the debate, which is no longer literary, but of another kind… Moral, by chance?

But beware, I'm told it's very ugly to talk bad about the dead, and to shut me down.

So, since we cannot talk badly about the dead, I will go on to talk badly about the living, about all those who, instead of thinking about the defendant, have attacked the accuser. Neoliberalism is not imposed without accomplices, even in literature.