by Fraser Hibbitt for the Carl Kruse Blog
If it isn’t a joke already, it should be: the English Literature classroom with its overproduction of loose interpretations; rather, loose translations. To think that it is a good thing to read a passage and say: This passage isn’t actually saying what it is saying but it is saying this. Someone who doesn’t have a mind for it, or a care for it, will say: on the contrary, it could also be this, and I believe my case is the stronger for if you follow my logic… Now the teacher may overlook the interaction, sitting satisfied, thinking to themselves: yes, good, they are thinking, engaging with the text; they will see soon enough (no matter those that don’t ever see soon enough) that there is no single or correct way to read this text, but the principle of engagement is the key, to be able to think openly – this, of course, once their desire to be right sublimates into honesty. Now, at this point, there may be another voice in the teacher’s head, one that they are not fully aware of, that drums this little number: What the hell does it mean to think openly, to interpret openly? To be able to embellish a text with a load of would-be meanings? Does meaning even have anything to do with the merit or value of a piece of writing, a piece of art?
Interpretation goes both ways; it is an expansion of your interest, for whatever reason, and it is a struggle to detain your interest. You may be more on one side than the other. Now, to be clear, this is about interpretation in all forms of art. Life is also interpretation but with far costlier consequences, and one that forces you into action. But with art, why the urgent need? It is something you can enjoy, even enlightens and expands the mind and inner vision; so why conduct a doubling of life with these needy interpretations? Letting the intellect ravage such a thing? Well, there may be a few reasons. Art is often difficult. The higher kind is emotionally, spiritually, difficult to look at directly for it throws you into relief. Everyone knows you can face many things out of naivete and innocence, just like you can be witness to difficult art when you are naïve; if it touches you, you can become almost fearless in that pursuit. In another ten years, you may shudder at the same passages that once brought you excitement; or, the door of the mind may, once again, be ripped off the hinges.
Interpretation can clear all that. It can destroy the experience of art. The intellect gathers up its forces and dismantles, ‘de-constructs’, and leaves it a whimpering piecemeal thing, at least to your senses. Now the difficulty has been replaced with something self-made, so much more for the ego; its parts are malleable, refined even, fit to shape. The mind flexes, revels in its power, but after a while, doesn’t it all seem a little tame? The intellectual capability has over extended its reach, puffed itself up, and is left emotionally vacant. It might be true that you cannot revisit that state of mind which first lit up unexpectedly, when reading, listening, seeing, as a child and the art made intuitive sense to you. Nothing else was needed; it lived in you as you lived in it. The journey onwards ought to be a journey backwards, approaching that state, not a greater sophistication, a mere intellectual grasp, or a promotion of an attitude. That interpretation itself is so unreliable as truth, as our teacher from before knew, contributes no small part to the vociferous argument that circulates the globe. Who can live in the flux of meaning without landing somewhere, thankful for solid ground? Then up they stroll until they meet someone who has landed elsewhere, aghast to hear this stranger’s idiocy.
If we are not careful, life will follow the rigours of art interpretation: “yes, I’ve heard that before, I’ve seen that before…I know how to interpret”, someone might say, in that run-of-the-mill sardonic attitude. Interpretation builds upon interpretation…the very ability to interpret then becomes the buffer between you and reality, between you and this art. Do you then approach life and art in order to merely interpret them? The whole enterprise now becomes an intellectual game, instead of an intimate meeting; art and life become something suspicious, something that is trying to pull the wool over our eyes. I was naïve once, never again! Or do you approach them as you wish to refine the senses, be in the world of things? If we are not careful, art will follow the rigours of life, perhaps even the larger life going on around us. Susan Sontag wrote in her essay ‘Against Interpretation’ that ‘…our task is not to maximize the amount of content in a work of art…’, relating this dire need to exhaust art as one of the symptoms of a culture of excess, a culture of excess which dulls the sharpness of the senses.
============
The Carl Kruse Blog Homepage is at https://www.carlkruse.com
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Fraser include Sophisticated Despair, Doing Things of Utter Irrelevance, and the Poetry of Arthur Rimbaud.