One of the most intriguing literary puzzles of recent times might have been solved this week with the identification of Elena Ferrante, the mysterious author of the bestselling Neapolitan series, a four-volume bildungsroman that follows the lives of two female characters from childhood to adulthood, as a Rome-based translator.

Writing for the New York Review of Books, investigative reporter Claudio Gatti said that he had followed financial records to identify the translator as the face behind the books.

Despite being a reputed journalist, Gatti erred on more than one level. At a personal, more intimate level, this represents a clear breach of privacy, since no one except the writer had the right to identify herself, in spite of his argument that she was a person of public interest, akin to celebrities, and that she was the “biggest mystery outside Italy about Italy.” In a wider literary world, this issue raises questions about the association between an author and her work: Do we really need to know a writer to appreciate her creation? Or can a poem, drama or a novel exist by itself, devoid of the history and prejudices of the one who created it?

Most of us would want to know about writers while we acquaint ourselves with their works. We find in them a prism through which to view their creations; a map out of otherwise uncharted territory; a distant star that guides us in a journey through darkness. They provide us with a convenient way of studying their art. Their lives shape our perspectives about their corpus.

But this sort of association also engenders a lot of problems. Among other things, it can lead to the aura of the creator dominating his oeuvre. It can challenge the liberty occasionally taken by bold and rebellious writers like Mary Ann Evans (otherwise known by her pen name, George Eliot) to create new identities for themselves.  Worse still, our desire to give the creator a human face can sometimes challenge the existence of a writer, even of someone like William Shakespeare.

Perhaps none of the writers in English literature can match the identity crisis faced by the Bard. Throughout ages, many scholars have accused him of being nothing more than a figment of imagination. That too based on the dissonance between his works and life. After all, how can one reconcile a country bumpkin from Stratford who never completed his school, and was disparagingly called an “upstart crow” by some, with the dramatist who penned some of the greatest tragedies? His dramas, known as much for their beauty as for the way they represent kings, queens, dukes and elites in an unflattering light (which sure did not go well with Queen Elizabeth-I) must have been the handiwork of someone else, according to some scholars. Maybe they were written by members of the University Wits (a group that included Cambridge and

Oxford scholars like Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, and

Thomas Nashe) who wanted to poke fun at royal pageantry. Or perhaps by writers like Sir Francis Bacon

or Edward De Vere, the Earl

of Oxford, who wrote them out of spite for the queen.

All this despite possessing overwhelming evidence to support

his existence and bury forever

the dispute about the provenance

of his plays.

Scholars have tried to address this problem in different ways. New Criticism, which was in vogue during the middle of the 20th century, argued in favour of reading a text without taking into account its author and the milieu it is based on. Around the same time, French literary theorist Roland Barthes spoke out against the necessity of authorial intention and identity in interpreting a literary text. In his essay The Death of an Author, Barthes warned that the practice of using the life, experiences and biases of an author in interpreting a poem, novel or a drama not only limits the potential of manifold interpretations and understanding but is inherently flawed.

But none of these efforts have so far eliminated from the readers the itch to find out more about those behind the books. We cling to them as moss sticks to riverside rocks.  We even go as far as to imagine new identities for works lacking faces. Suddenly the Iliad and Odyssey become the works of Homer, Krishna narrated the Bhagavad Gita and the Mahabharata was written by Vyasa.

Had the Frenchman and his peers had their way, King Lear would have remained the same, but we would have seen the evolution of more varied and perceptive ways of studying it. And the world would have surely become a better place for writers. Especially for those who, like Ferrante, are devoid of the narcissistic impulse to plaster their faces on the covers of their books and allow others to peek and poke into their private affairs for new, refreshing insights.