On Reading
The philosopher Paul Ricoeur compared reading a text to the execution of a musical score, an analogy that highlights the plurality of possible readings while keeping those readings situated in the text. Just as each musical performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto differs from all others, even those others performed by the same musician, while still remaining true (or false) to the score, so too will each reading of Moby-Dick differ and realize new semantic possibilities of Melville’s novel. Each reading of a text and each execution of a score involves interpretation; each interpretation brings forth more than the intended and inherent meanings of the text and sheet. What the author and composer write functions more as a guide for interpretation than a dictator of meaning. Nevertheless, the reader has no more liberty to make the text mean anything he wants it to mean than the musician has the liberty to play impromptu melodies when performing Chopin. Reading is an exercise of pluralism, not relativism. It gives birth to a surplus of meaning, not its absence.
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I remember hearing a story, perhaps apocryphal, about this poem by Robert Frost:
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
As the story was told to me, someone read a paper giving a deep analysis of the poem, finding all kinds of symbolism in the snow, the hemlock tree, and so on. Robert Frost was in the audience, and said it was a very impressive analysis, but what actually had inspired the poem was that he had been feeling down, went for a walk in the woods, a crow knocked some snow on his head, and for some reason it lifted his spirits.
I would not argue in this case that the text had no meaning apart from the meaning different readers saw in it. But it does seem to me that readers can find meaning in texts that was not intentionally put there. And of course in Biblical interpretation there is the matter of “proof texts” and rather wild claims (or so it seem to me) of things such as the claim that by attending the marriage feast at Cana, Jesus “raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament.”
I think that a text, including a biblical text, can mean different things to different people at different times. No valid interpretation, however, can add to the words of the text meaning that is not there. The Frost poem, for instance, cannot be so interpreted as to make some kind of statement about Socrates, based on the presence in the poem of the world “hemlock.” I agree with you (if I understand your point correctly) that the story about the wedding at Cana says nothing at all about the institution of marriage itself; it could just as well have been set in a public house, or at a completely secular kind of party. This type of issue can be raised in conjunction with interpretations that have been used to develop much more important doctrines than marriage as a sacrament.
But it does seem to me that readers can find meaning in texts that was not intentionally put there.
Very much so! Authors don’t invent the words they use from scratch; they pull from a vocabulary that’s rooted in time and space and has its own history of which the author may or may not be aware. The reader might also find connections and significances that exist in the text but we not deliberately or consciously put there by the author. And in some cases, such as the works of Homer, we have no idea about authorial intent.
No valid interpretation, however, can add to the words of the text meaning that is not there.
Agreed, though I think a valid interpretation could contradict the interpretation posited by the author.
Agreed, though I think a valid interpretation could contradict the interpretation posited by the author.
Wouldn’t this mean that a text could mean one thing, and also its opposite? Isn’t it a claim of logic that a thing cannot be B and Not-B?
I remember reading in the beginning of Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory of a case where a man arrested for smoking in a gas station argued that the sign NO SMOKING PERMITTED did not forbid smoking, but merely permitted people not to smoke. The judge didn’t buy it. Here is a case where the author’s intention did determine what the text meant. Also, a sign in the London underground read DOGS MUST BE CARRIED ON THE ESCALATOR, raising the question of whether those not carrying dogs were permitted to ride the escalators.
Wouldn’t this mean that a text could mean one thing, and also its opposite? Isn’t it a claim of logic that a thing cannot be B and Not-B?
Yes and yes. To be more specific, something cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same way. This law of logic, however, does not prevent two different, logically conflicting interpretations to both be valid. The text may allow for both interpretations to be held. For example, readers of Tolkien debate who is the true hero of the tale? Frodo and Sam are the usually contestants. Assuming that the work has one true hero, a valid case could, in my opinion, be made for each. Frodo and Sam cannot both be the one true hero, but the text allows for interpretations in support of both–again, assuming the work has one true hero. It might seem odd, though, for one person to hold to both said interpretations.
Here is a case where the author’s intention did determine what the text meant.
Not exactly. What determined the enforced interpretation was the judge’s understanding of the authorial intent and his decision to make that understanding the basis for how the sign should be legally interpreted.
Man, I love this stuff. Pick up a copy of Walter Brueggemann’s “Theology of the Old Testament.” The book uses Riceouer’s methodology (or at least appears to). Blew my mind.
“Agreed, though I think a valid interpretation could contradict the interpretation posited by the author.”
Absolutely it could. When I write fiction, it never fails to disclose to me things that I never intended when I put down the words. An author can’t “own” the interpretation of his work any more than he owns the words of which he constructs it. That is, he hasn’t the authority to confine interpretation of his work within parameters of his own devise.
When I write fiction, it never fails to disclose to me things that I never intended when I put down the words.
But surely there can be wrong interpretations, can’t there? If I accept Huck Finn’s judgment of himself that he is wicked and is going to hell for his kindness to Big Jim, I have simply misread the book. If someone fails to recognize that something is intended satirically, they have missed the point, not come up with a valid interpretation. If someone concludes from Candide that we live in the best of all possible worlds, they just don’t get the book.
When I write fiction, it never fails to disclose to me things that I never intended when I put down the words.
Yes, but what if your readers laugh at the serious parts and don’t get the jokes? Or rather, what if a handful of your readers laugh at the serious parts and don’t get the jokes? Are their interpretations valid?
Something can, of course, be written badly, so that the serious parts are unintentionally funny. But I think usually the careful reader, who may laugh at the unintentionally funny parts, still know that the author’s intention was not to be funny.
Yes, there is an infinite number of wrong interpretations. That said, one can realize that Huck is wrong because one is an atheist and doesn’t believe in God and hell. Or, one can realize that Huck is wrong because he has misinterpreted God’s will that we love one another. Or he can realize that Huck is wrong because racism is reprehensible. But one could also read the book from Huck’s perspective and miss Twain’s point completely. The question then would arise, has Twain provided language that makes the latter interpretation impossible? If not, the flaw is in Twain, not in the racist reader.
Yes, there is an infinite number of wrong interpretations.
Okay! This is what I wanted to hear.
Yes, there is an infinite number of wrong interpretations.
Yes. And right interpretations as well. The key to any interpretation: support it with the text!
The number of correct interpretations would be huge; but I’m not sure that it would be infinite. The number of wrong (or impossible) interpretations, not being limited by anything at all (such as a finite number of words with a finite number of permutations of combination), must be truly infinite.
A professor I had often had students complain to him about comments on papers, “That’s not what I meant”. “But,” he would say, “that is what you in fact _wrote_.”
Ricoeur by the way was a pious Calvinist (French Reform)