THE ADAPTATION, INFLUENCE AND PLAGIARISM IN LITERARY ART

Based on Harry Levin states about literary work that “The relation between liter
ary works and social fact is reciprocal, Literary is not only the effect of soci
al cause, it is also the cause of social it self.” In accordance to the statemen
t above, we can see that there is a close relation between literary work and soc
ial fact, that fact lead to the notion that nowadays almost there is originality
of literary work, Sapardi Djoko Damono states in his book entitled Pegangan Pen
elitian Sastra Bandingan that “Sastrawan mempunyai kecenderungan untuk meminjam,
langsung atau tak langsung”, Sapardi also writes that the great artist like Sha
kespeare according to the experts is not original but it is influenced by the hi
story, chronicle text and even verbal tradition, as it is quoted by Sapardi from
Clements (1978: 129) that “Puisi epic berkembang sedikit demi sedikit dari ting
kat folklore lisan kearah puisi tertulis”. It can be concluded that the main sou
rce of literary works is verbal tradition. Let we discuss about this further by
knowing more about it causes that is adaptation, imitation and influence. Anothe
r kind of imitation that leads to the creative treason is called plagiarism.
Adaptation is the process of imitation based on literal translation from works w
ritten in different tongue. As Sapardi cites in his book that the adaption is us
ed to reveal and solve the social problem accordance to the zeitgeist. The story
of Marah Rusli entitled Salah Asuhan is considered as the adaption of Malin Kun
dang, but it is adapted by the zeitgeist of the story made. The development of m
odern literature shows that the interrelationship among literary works is common
thing.
Influence is the most prominent reason to develop comparative literature. In thi
s case, influence must be understood widely not only imitation processes which c
reate new literary work based on the previous literature. The concept of influen
ce is the relation which force the incidence to causality goes to intermediate c
orrelation. In the process of influence there is emitter and receiver. Transmitt
er play big role to the achievement process of emitter to receiver. Transmitter
is a medium to send message from emitter to receiver; those are translator, revi
ewer, critics, scholar, travelers, or vehicles like book and journals. In the fa
ctors of influences there is giving (active) and receiving (passive), and there
is leader and follower and next is called as imitation, as it is written in Comp
arative Literature and Literary Theory by Ulrich Weinstein that “Influence defin
e as unconscious imitation and imitation as directed influences”. Imitation is t
he process to imitate something based on our way, like the relation between the
teacher and the student. On the contrary, influence is the process of revealing
something in single, concrete manner, and it must be sought in many different ma
nifestations (Shaw.CLS.Adv.issue, p.144). The conclusion is “The Influence canno
t be quantitatively measured”, moreover adaptation, imitation and influence play
role to find the originality of literary works.
The latter and unacceptable is plagiarism. Plagiarism is the kind of imitation c
onsidered as the “creative treason” because it is the imitation on the sly or qu
otation without reference to the sources. There is treason to the creative proce
ss to the author who create the literary works imitated, and the creative proces
s or the creative imitation of the plagiarist is doubtful.