Thirty or so years ago, I read my young daughter Richard Scary's Big Book of Trains. It was a picture book, all about trains. Then I noticed that all of the passengers were white, middle class people; the porters, waiters, and other service people were African American. At that point, I understoon about "the death of the author." Scary may have intended to have written about trains, but probably without intending to do so, he also wrote about race relations in America. My conclusion is that the intentions of the author may be of some interest, but in the final analysis (of course there is no "final" analysis), the text, as interpreted by the reader, must speak for itself, and the author cannot exclusively speak for it.
3
So true about endless and often conflicting interpretations of literature. As a student of ancient Greek, it is fascinating to look at over 2000 years of opinions about Medea, for instance, not to mention all the other great plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
About 30 years ago I said, in one of my university classes, something about the "meaning of a symbol". The professor cocked her head and rolled her eyes and said, as if trying to talk a toddler down from a roof, "There is not meaning. There are no symbols."
I still read for "meaning" and I occasionally go hunting for symbols. I just would never dream of mentioning it to any professors of Literature.
I still read for "meaning" and I occasionally go hunting for symbols. I just would never dream of mentioning it to any professors of Literature.
I took a creative writing class which required each student's writings be critiqued by the other15 students. I was happiest when my writings received 15 different "interpretations." I liked that my color blue was not their color blue. I reread books all the time and every time it is a unique experience. I really don't think any author cares.
1
As a sensitive and lonely high school student, believing in my soul that great authors were trying to tell me something, trying to understand what they were trying to tell me made life worth living. Arriving at college in 1965 and landing in an English Department dominated by an arid form of New Criticism--which insisted that authors' intentions don't matter (if there were any intentions)--I fell into confusion and despair. Like Zoe Heller, it "made me want to lie down in a darkened room and cry." Unlike Zoe Heller, that's pretty much what I did, until eventually, to save myself, I gave it up and went to law school.
Of course, as Adam Kirsch observes, "What Shakespeare . . . thought about Hamlet is unknowable" and great literature is enriched by "the amount and variety of interpretation it has provoked," but to conclude from these truisms that authors' intentions don't matter is absurd. Reading literature as if only the reader matters renders the study of literature an amusement, rather than a profound human undertaking. When people lament the death of the humanities, I mourn that the humanities, by making themselves frivolous, have elected suicide.
Of course, as Adam Kirsch observes, "What Shakespeare . . . thought about Hamlet is unknowable" and great literature is enriched by "the amount and variety of interpretation it has provoked," but to conclude from these truisms that authors' intentions don't matter is absurd. Reading literature as if only the reader matters renders the study of literature an amusement, rather than a profound human undertaking. When people lament the death of the humanities, I mourn that the humanities, by making themselves frivolous, have elected suicide.
There's another possibility--certain authors (Shakespeare, Milton, & Austen, to name 3) deliberately created ambiguity so as to allow (at least) 2 plausible interpretations of their stories. So, e.g., there's one intended version of Paradise Lost in which Milton is of Satan's party, and another in which Milton is on GOD'S team--two parallel fictional universes. And the primary purpose of this deliberate anamorphism was didactic, i.e. ,to train readers to be flexible enough to see BOTH sides of an ambiguous reality. And...these greatest authors also used hidden word clues to accentuate that ambiguity-- hence the SATAN acrostics by Brooke (1562), Shakespeare (1599), and Milton (1667), all hidden in plain sight, which are connected, and which accentuates that ambiguity: http://tinyurl.com/k4gxf2t http://tinyurl.com/nf3jckq @JaneAustenCode on Twitter
I think there are even more possibilities than that. Like any good dichotomy, it's only as good as you want it to be, which is really most of the time, not that good at all. I think both views have their place, and I prefer to take even another, to say that both are kind of true at the same time.
To read a text and discover what the author meant to say is its own kind of pleasure. But the author is always a mystery. So even if one endeavors to seek out all the clues, her historical context, her biography, etc. one is still faced with an unsolvable problem. Unless we have the author there next to us, to us, they are figuratively (and more often literally) dead. So it is necessary for us then, to reconstruct the author in our minds. My Jorge Luis Borges, might be different from yours. I may think he was trying to say x, you, he was trying to say y. This is not to say intentions are always unknowable, but simply unprovable.
So it's up to the reader whether she wants to seek the pleasure of figuring the author's meaning out, or create her own. I tend to place primacy on those authors that have something to say, especially when their works are deliberately philosophical and when their lives back up their philosophies (like Dostoevsky, Sarte, or Mishima). But on texts that don't offer up as much intentionally thematic meaning, I find other meanings, my own meanings. I wouldn't dare deconstruct Leo Tolstoy, but I probably would deconstruct Stephanie Meyer or something.
To read a text and discover what the author meant to say is its own kind of pleasure. But the author is always a mystery. So even if one endeavors to seek out all the clues, her historical context, her biography, etc. one is still faced with an unsolvable problem. Unless we have the author there next to us, to us, they are figuratively (and more often literally) dead. So it is necessary for us then, to reconstruct the author in our minds. My Jorge Luis Borges, might be different from yours. I may think he was trying to say x, you, he was trying to say y. This is not to say intentions are always unknowable, but simply unprovable.
So it's up to the reader whether she wants to seek the pleasure of figuring the author's meaning out, or create her own. I tend to place primacy on those authors that have something to say, especially when their works are deliberately philosophical and when their lives back up their philosophies (like Dostoevsky, Sarte, or Mishima). But on texts that don't offer up as much intentionally thematic meaning, I find other meanings, my own meanings. I wouldn't dare deconstruct Leo Tolstoy, but I probably would deconstruct Stephanie Meyer or something.
Every scent - perfume or cologne - changes with the wearer, regardless of the perfumist's intent. Should that not be true of the book and the reader as well?
Kirsch: "John Milton declared his purpose in the opening stanza"
Really? I don't think so. There are no stanza in Paradise Lost. The poem is in blank verse. "Bless me, what do they teach them in these schools", as C. S. Lewis would say.
Really? I don't think so. There are no stanza in Paradise Lost. The poem is in blank verse. "Bless me, what do they teach them in these schools", as C. S. Lewis would say.
Blank verse can be written in stanza form. Paradise Lost was written in stanza form.
https://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_1/text.shtml
https://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_1/text.shtml
Yes, Paradise Lost is written in blank verse. And, yes, a blank verse poem can also broken into stanzas. But there must be line spaces for stanzas. Paradise Lost doesn't have line spaces. It is not stanzaic. It does have verse paragraphs, but they are not stanzas. The declaration of Milton's intention occurs in the first verse paragraph.
After a working life as a minor artist, I have come to believe that the test of any work of art is if it expands beyond the intent of the artist. That is to say that the sum of a great creation is far more than the understanding of its creator.
3
The work's creator, writing from a foundational human soul, is sometimes unaware of the many meanings his work unfolds, like a pebble thrown in the water.
1
'That is not what I meant, at all. That is not it, at all.'
It's frustrating to realise you can't control what your reader makes of your brainchildren any more than a parent can control what the world makes of flesh-and-blood children - though there's always the urge to try.
If someone really misinterprets your work, you may either take it as a helpful criticism and revise to bring it more in line with your intentions, or bring the lesson to your next work; or you may just shrug and say, with Schiller, that against stupidity the gods themselves strive in vain (more colloquially, 'you can't fix stupid').
My 'favourite' misreading was in a NYT comment string in which a commenter held up Achilles as a role model - for dragging Hector's corpse behind his chariot. That, he maintained, is the lesson we should learn from the Iliad - don't just kill 'em, humiliate 'em, let 'em know who won. The rest of the post made it clear his tongue was not in his cheek. One had to wonder why, if the poster's reading was correct, Homer made the aesthetic blunder of not ending the story there, but tacking on the subsequent chapter in which Achilles wimps out and gives back the body to Priam.
It's frustrating to realise you can't control what your reader makes of your brainchildren any more than a parent can control what the world makes of flesh-and-blood children - though there's always the urge to try.
If someone really misinterprets your work, you may either take it as a helpful criticism and revise to bring it more in line with your intentions, or bring the lesson to your next work; or you may just shrug and say, with Schiller, that against stupidity the gods themselves strive in vain (more colloquially, 'you can't fix stupid').
My 'favourite' misreading was in a NYT comment string in which a commenter held up Achilles as a role model - for dragging Hector's corpse behind his chariot. That, he maintained, is the lesson we should learn from the Iliad - don't just kill 'em, humiliate 'em, let 'em know who won. The rest of the post made it clear his tongue was not in his cheek. One had to wonder why, if the poster's reading was correct, Homer made the aesthetic blunder of not ending the story there, but tacking on the subsequent chapter in which Achilles wimps out and gives back the body to Priam.
2
I believe that Homer's ambiguity in this case and many other instances was conscious and intentional on the part of the poet.
"When I wrote the poem two persons knew its meaning;myself and God .Now God alone knows it ",said Browning when asked the meaning of a poem.To a certain extent ,it is true that once the writer finishes his work and the book goes into the hands of readers ,his hold over it virtually comes to an end.Now the reader interact ,conduct a dialogue with the book and interprets it in his own way .Like law ,a book is what you interpret it to be.Writer's intention is immaterial.This explains why there are so many different books written from different angles on the Mahabharata or Bhagvadgeeta.It is true not only about classics or great books but about relatively not so great books also.
1
Seeing the world in a grain of sand and infinity in a wild flower, as Blake suggested, may also fit with this 'pick just one' argument. As several commenters note, often from their own felt experience as readers of course, pre-, anti-, or post-structuralism doesn't really matter, at least to me. Having taught literature from both perspectives, and believing both but neither all that passionately, it seems important to move from micro to macro ends of one's optic nerve (neurobiology be damned) in thinking and feeling about a text at a given moment in history. Engagement, reflection, dialogue with others, joy, rage - those seem crucial. Do they need a critical/theoretical base? Perhaps. It all makes for what is most important: exchange of meaning via words.
2
Having been an English grad student road warrior in the roaring 70's when Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, and Paul de Man were all the rage, I know exactly what it feels like to be a minority of one in a seminar room. When I even mentioned words like 'text,' 'New Criticism," Cleanth Brooks or Penn Warren, I was literally sent to the water cooler (and not for liquid refreshment!). You can guess that my intellectual education was of the 'self-taught' variety - I was the ultimate grad-school autodidact!
And then I read Dante! BOOM! There is a fabulous terza in Canto IX of the Inferno (how apropos!) that says, "O You who have strong intellects / Observe the teachings which are hidden / Under the veil of these strange verses! / -- Yes, 700+ years ago, Dante was well aware of all the pseudo-intellectual catfights which have felled a forest of trees and bled ink wells dry for decades!
But, now that I teach in the placid waters of a Catholic boys high school, my students are able to learn about those eternal verities of which Faulkner spoke -- and when they return from Harvard, Yale, or Stanford, they proudly tell me about their own battles to keep the text always in front of them -- and all the ivory towered blather to the rear!
And then I read Dante! BOOM! There is a fabulous terza in Canto IX of the Inferno (how apropos!) that says, "O You who have strong intellects / Observe the teachings which are hidden / Under the veil of these strange verses! / -- Yes, 700+ years ago, Dante was well aware of all the pseudo-intellectual catfights which have felled a forest of trees and bled ink wells dry for decades!
But, now that I teach in the placid waters of a Catholic boys high school, my students are able to learn about those eternal verities of which Faulkner spoke -- and when they return from Harvard, Yale, or Stanford, they proudly tell me about their own battles to keep the text always in front of them -- and all the ivory towered blather to the rear!
7
I don't get these sorts of conversations, they seem to abound today. What, we have to choose between several multiple choice simplistic and somewhat absolutist selections? Only one of which is true, am I missing something? This is incredibly dim. What about, what is, and why not all of the above? I know my reading experience encompasses, or not, many considerations from my very personalized response to numerous contextual perspectives. It is increasingly disconcerting that so many otherwise intelligent people today seem to lack the ability to grasp more than one truth, or way of perceiving whatever at one time. In almost every situation in life, be it a book, a battlefield, some music, there are multiple even infinite perspectives and experiences, all of them true in that they occur.
13
Worth far far more than TwoCents -- thank you for such a wise framing of the 'argument.'
2
Yes, literature as agent of self-discovery and of contact with other minds, ideas and views.
1
Of course the successive readings of a text become part of its meaning.
Of course a special place and consideration should be given to the intentions of the author, though they too are most often subject to contradictory interpretation.
Of course the individual reader makes out of the text his own interpretation, or various interpretations through his own rereadings in a lifetime.
Of course we are as the great polymathic literary scholar Cushing Strout used to say, not in the realm of 'either'or' but in that of 'both-and'.
Of course a special place and consideration should be given to the intentions of the author, though they too are most often subject to contradictory interpretation.
Of course the individual reader makes out of the text his own interpretation, or various interpretations through his own rereadings in a lifetime.
Of course we are as the great polymathic literary scholar Cushing Strout used to say, not in the realm of 'either'or' but in that of 'both-and'.
2
The late great Christopher Hitchens once said (and I'd had almost exactly the same thought myself, as undoubtedly many others have) that he'd read seven books by Vladimir Nabokov, and four of them were Lolita. He's quite right: The book changes every time I re-read it, even if I myself haven't changed very much. If I didn't know better I'd think Nabokov's ghost sneaked into my house and re-wrote it as I slept.
'How do I know what I think till I see what I say?" said EM Forster. After his death some short stories, which he suppressed in his lifetime and characterized as mild porn for his own enjoyment, were published. If only the author's intentions mattered, those stories would be utterly worthless to me, a woman primarily attracted to other women. However, I find Forster's genteel misogyny in works such as Maurice and Passage to India distasteful and like his work less than when I was young and able to overlook it more easily. Certainly it was not his intention to alienate me - but he succeeded, and in that case in order to get what's worthwhile in the book I must ignore, if not actually read against, the author's intention.
'How do I know what I think till I see what I say?" said EM Forster. After his death some short stories, which he suppressed in his lifetime and characterized as mild porn for his own enjoyment, were published. If only the author's intentions mattered, those stories would be utterly worthless to me, a woman primarily attracted to other women. However, I find Forster's genteel misogyny in works such as Maurice and Passage to India distasteful and like his work less than when I was young and able to overlook it more easily. Certainly it was not his intention to alienate me - but he succeeded, and in that case in order to get what's worthwhile in the book I must ignore, if not actually read against, the author's intention.
And the winner is...Zoë Heller! Adam Kirsch surely knows he's cheating by leaping from the novel -- a final and definitive work -- to a play. A play like "Hamlet" begins (usually) as text but that is just a starting point, a blueprint for what the director, set designer, costumers, lighters and actors do with it. It is INTENDED to be interpreted and reinterpreted. A great play allows for such richness. However, while Shakespeare is often reset in different times and bringing in all female cast or all male cast or all (insert race, age, height) type cast can bring to light various elements of the play, it doesn't really do to play The Importance Of Being Earnest as sober drama or have Sunday In The Park With George performed by people who really can't sing. You hardly upend "Paradise Lost" by realizing the villain has the best part. Is "Othello" dramatically changed just because anyone with any sense would prefer to play Iago?
2
Nina Christopher surely knows that a novel at least as much, if not more than, the text of a play is a script awaiting interpretation by a director, set designer, performers, etc. — all of whom called by that script into action in the theater of the reader's mind, a brand new production with each reading.
2
to me this is one of the pleasures of literature: the interaction of the individual reader's unique sensibilities at the moment in time they encounter the text with the many varied elements that are found in the text. that's why the experience of re-reading is often surprising and more enjoyable than the memory of prior encounters, as we read and are changed by the experience of reading, we are different readers when we return to the same text again. I also find it interesting to read how certain authors respond to their own texts when they return to them many years later and discover things that they are certain they were not aware of at the time they wrote them. it's an intriguing phenomenon and certainly worth examining. thanks for the discussion.
9
They matter more if the reader's interpretation grotesquely subverts the sense of the book. If a reader argues that Sense and Sensibility is Austen's prescient warning about climate change, then that interpretation is clearly far less valuable than anything Austen intended.
2
Students who get confused about the possibility of more than one "right" answer are soothed by the knowledge that, although there may be many valid interpretations, not all interpretations are valid--and some are much better than others.
2
Yes, but too many literary discussions, particularly of classics, are tainted by Cliffs Notes interpretations. Shakespeare in particular becomes a different playwright once you toss out everything you've been told to think and read the plays with fresh eyes.
A few weeks ago I found myself in a place where the only book in English was a translation of Sophocles' Oedipus plays so I read Sophocles for the first time since I was in school. I was dumbfounded by the power of these apparently simple stories. The intentions of the author seem crystalline and the idea of me or anybody else seeing more deeply into them with our own interpretations seems ludicrous to me. Freud's interpretation of the story has no foundation in the work and seems to me to say something about Freud but nothing about Sophocles or Oedipus.
3
But you deny yourself the pleasure, then, of wondering about many aspects of these deceptively simple plays. There is much to contemplate and question and i don't see why there should not be. How can you think the intentions of Sophocles are crystalline when he himself has embedded so many contradictions. The Freudian analysis is only one of many, all of which I find interesting.
Needn't be either/or. What about your own thoughts and actions? Are you sure they're wholly consciously determined? Are you sure they're entirely driven by unconscious motives, or other forces? Why would literature be any different?
11
Thought experiment:
1) Given: let's assume each reader is a prism
made up of a unique combination of facets of varied dimension.
Every source whose light that passes through an individual prism will
take on a unique appearance given to it by that prism.
2) Question: is there a measure or standard of photon strength,
size and/or quality that can reliably apply distinctive attributes to
each source of light, no matter what prism the source's light has
happened to pass through?
My answer is "very probably, yes". We are not likely to be discussing just anyone's play or novel or short story, I think. While exact meaning can very well be somewhat different for each person, I suspect that some works will
always be seen by nearly every reader as radiating more light than other works.
Put differently, there are very few viewer disagreements about no-hitters
pitched in the major leagues, or about the validity of a 500-foot home run.
While each action has its unique causes and characteristics, standards can
coexist very comfortably with personal points of view.
1) Given: let's assume each reader is a prism
made up of a unique combination of facets of varied dimension.
Every source whose light that passes through an individual prism will
take on a unique appearance given to it by that prism.
2) Question: is there a measure or standard of photon strength,
size and/or quality that can reliably apply distinctive attributes to
each source of light, no matter what prism the source's light has
happened to pass through?
My answer is "very probably, yes". We are not likely to be discussing just anyone's play or novel or short story, I think. While exact meaning can very well be somewhat different for each person, I suspect that some works will
always be seen by nearly every reader as radiating more light than other works.
Put differently, there are very few viewer disagreements about no-hitters
pitched in the major leagues, or about the validity of a 500-foot home run.
While each action has its unique causes and characteristics, standards can
coexist very comfortably with personal points of view.
3
It's odd that Mr. Kirsch doesn't see the great difference between the following sentences, which he seems to understand as analogous: "The idea that readers could know an author’s intentions better than she does herself is, of course, deeply destabilizing to our usual ways of thinking about literature. If a text can mean anything the reader wants it to mean, then why read it in the first place?" But of course, there's nothing surprising or alarming in the notion that a reader can know an author's intention better than the author does; there's Freud and a host of others to tell us just how rarely we understand our own intentions. Authors have no more privileged access to their intentions than other mortals, so of course readers [the patient, attentive kind] can understand what an author meant more fully than the author did, just as a good therapist can tell a patient what the patient really intended by that seemingly careless response. It certainly does not follow from that rather mundane assertion that the text can mean anything at all that the reader wants it to mean. What an absurd conclusion to draw. The meaning is still governed by the attempt to understand what the author meant, even if it is understood from the outset that the author is not necessarily in any privileged place to understand her or his own meaning. That's why, as both authors end up affirming, it all comes back to what the text says, which is of course not a matter of opinion but of interpretation.
10
"But of course, there's nothing surprising or alarming in the notion that a reader can know an author's intention better than the author does; there's Freud and a host of others to tell us just how rarely we understand our own intentions." Freud doesn't tell us that. Can't think of anyone else who does either.
By definition, "intentions" mean only and nothing more than that meaning we assign to them — our intention. That they may have wider or deeper meaning than our intention is the province of the unconscious, a dynamic of "interpretation" that Freud brought into understanding.
By definition, "intentions" mean only and nothing more than that meaning we assign to them — our intention. That they may have wider or deeper meaning than our intention is the province of the unconscious, a dynamic of "interpretation" that Freud brought into understanding.
"If a text can mean anything the reader wants it to mean, then why read it in the first place?"
A great deal of truth in this. After all, when we view impressionist art, we often want to know what the artist's intent or vision was. Why shouldn't literature be the same? Because it uses language we partake in each day? Words are strokes.
But I think the general public tends to trivialize creative writing because it uses words, and people think words are a thing they mastered back when they learned to string them together into complex sentences.
Not so.
A great deal of truth in this. After all, when we view impressionist art, we often want to know what the artist's intent or vision was. Why shouldn't literature be the same? Because it uses language we partake in each day? Words are strokes.
But I think the general public tends to trivialize creative writing because it uses words, and people think words are a thing they mastered back when they learned to string them together into complex sentences.
Not so.
3
The Hamlet we read today, or see on stage, depends on the director, actor, producers, and everyone else connected with the production. How Hamlet is portrayed aids in our interpretation. Just watch a few different Hamlets produced over the years to see what I mean.
4
Different retinas perceive color in different ways. In fact, the same person's eyes will perceive colors differently by the end of the day, as can be experienced by covering one eye for twelve hours or so. It would be ridiculous to try to determine whether or not the colors seen in the morning, or by a blue-eyed person, are more "correct"--closer to what we "should" see--than the colors that evening eyes, or brown eyes, perceive.
Similarly, different readers will derive different understandings, or truths, from a piece of writing.
Of course an author's intentions matter in one sense. Some readers will not care, however. They will find the truths they are looking for and be satisfied either to have their previous ideas confirmed or to feel they have discovered new ones.
Meanwhile authors struggle to make themselves clear, in other words, to force as many readers as possible to see the truths they wish to communicate. We can ask ourselves what they intended, but ultimately the whole process of writing and reading is an ongoing celebration of the glorious variety of the human mind.
Similarly, different readers will derive different understandings, or truths, from a piece of writing.
Of course an author's intentions matter in one sense. Some readers will not care, however. They will find the truths they are looking for and be satisfied either to have their previous ideas confirmed or to feel they have discovered new ones.
Meanwhile authors struggle to make themselves clear, in other words, to force as many readers as possible to see the truths they wish to communicate. We can ask ourselves what they intended, but ultimately the whole process of writing and reading is an ongoing celebration of the glorious variety of the human mind.
8
Any author worth his salt says what he means and means what he says.
1
Mr. Kirsch, like our psychoanalyst telling us what we "really mean."
1
POMO no mo.
I like my cheese with a bit of Kirsch, but Satan was a Heller for sure.
I stand with (and from) Adam, I guess. My introduction to literature was Winnie the Pooh. It was the only story I wanted to hear, and in her endless recitations my mother took to putting her finger under each word to hold the place. And so I learned to read. I was about three, and my takeaway from that first classic was that Christopher Robin was a bit of a dork, although we didn't have that particular word at the time.
Thomas Wolfe taught me that what an author writes is what he writes, and at Chapel Hill in the fifties there were a lot of people who knew him...
I still walk the blasted heath on occasion, being very careful not to trip over Pandemonium!
-dan
I like my cheese with a bit of Kirsch, but Satan was a Heller for sure.
I stand with (and from) Adam, I guess. My introduction to literature was Winnie the Pooh. It was the only story I wanted to hear, and in her endless recitations my mother took to putting her finger under each word to hold the place. And so I learned to read. I was about three, and my takeaway from that first classic was that Christopher Robin was a bit of a dork, although we didn't have that particular word at the time.
Thomas Wolfe taught me that what an author writes is what he writes, and at Chapel Hill in the fifties there were a lot of people who knew him...
I still walk the blasted heath on occasion, being very careful not to trip over Pandemonium!
-dan
2
A bunch of years ago, I wrote a short story that seemed true & crushingly sad and, for the first time, was written in a style I could call my own. I read it to the folks in my writers group and they were in hysterics. It was painful that these people I trusted so misinterpreted my sincerity. But their laughter exposed my own limitations and blinkered viewpoint. How great: they found something in my work that I couldn't see. It gave me the courage to go on.
2
The master said, "You did not interpret my meaning well," and banished this servant from his sight, forcing him to create ad copy in obscurity forthwith.
I always felt pity for the poor servant. Like many masters, his expected his servants to make the most of his text without clearly understanding it himself.