On the T.S. Eliot email list Dunja and me were getting more and more bothered by the extensive consideration of “the author’s life” when interpreting poetry, e.g. psychologizing the author in order to decrypt the symbolism offered in a piece of art. We wrote the following critical mail together:
You wrote: “why not consider something as important
as an author’s life? It, too, goes into the matrix of
influences that make up a work of art.” I’ll just
refer to the distinction I’ve already made calling it
“the context of discovering” and “the context of
justification” (or in the case of poetry, it should be
maybe dubbed as “the context of creation” and “the
context of interpretation”). Author’s life might be
interesting for us, it might tells us WHY the author
reached for this or that symbol, but it remains
completely outside of the scope of artistic interest,
i.e. of what is artistically genuine in the poem. So I
agree with you that it belongs to the matrix of
influences that make up a work of art, but I think it
remains unimportant for its artistic significance.
Many different things fall under the category of such
influences - a present emotional state, historical
circumstances, the fact that exactly on the day when
the poem was written something specific happened, etc.
etc. and it is impossible to capture them all (which
implies that a complete interpretation based on such
insights is entirely impossible).
Once again, it might be interesting to know how and
why a piece of art was born, but its interpretation
shouldn’t be about that. At least I am not interested
in such interpretations. They tell us nothing of the
intrinsic meaning of the poem, its symbols, structure,
ideas. Otherwise, we are underestimating the poem and
the genius of the author - his ability to give us art
in the poem and the language itself. Understanding of
art requires our understanding of language the work
was written in and that should be enough for its
“decryption”. If it were not enough, that would imply
that the poem requires extrinsic elements (extrinsic
concerning our common history and our common language)
in order to be understood, in other words, it would be
incomplete. A border-form of literature where at first
glance we could think that extrinsic/psychological
facts should be considered would be autobiographies,
letter-collections as well as diaries. But even there
I would say, that for them to be considered to be
complete and real art, they offer the full package -
i.e. the symbolism, form and content give the reader
with a knowledge about the “life-form” the author was
living in (and with that I do not address to his
private life, but to the culture and language game he
lived his life in) all hints and methodological tools
(s)he needs to interpret a poem. We do not need to
know *more* about neither Kafka nor Milena to get a
complete understanding (and there are many “complete
understandings”) of his letters to Milena if(!) we
want to consider it as the piece of literature it is
(and also this shows that the intention of the
author-god (in Derrida’s terms) is not even needed to
sanctify a piece of writing as literature). That means
especially that interpreting a piece of art is not(!)
about revitalizing the mythical author-god’s
intention.
Now, i want to put a radical question here, and that
is: is knowledge of anything extrinsic (except for our
knowing the language the poem was written in, where I
take “language” in its broadest sense) at all needed
for the interpretation of a poem? This might sound too
strange, but let me give an explanation of this
attitude. A poem of Eliot we have just read is not
*his* poem anymore, it is ours, seen through our eyes
(so mine, yours etc.). In other words, there is no
“the” Eliot’s poetry, there is only his poetry with
infinite many indexes, each of which refers to the new
reader, and so to the new potential interpreter.
Taking this into account, it seems that it is never
possible to understand “the original”, as _there_is
_no_original_. If you read the poem it is already your
poem, there is not “the” poem we all refer to, if not
the very trivial fact that there is a poem with the
letters “t-i-t-l-e” (fill in any arbitrary title) at
the top and a corpus of black letters. As soon as I
begin to read it, it is irrecoverably my poem. The
repetition IS the original. And the identity of the
original consists only in it’s own differentiation
throughout all our individual readings (but that is a
dialectical concept of identity - but give me a
better alternative). What I am trying to do is not to
discharge the author, but only to give him/her a
reasonable role in relation to “his/her” poetry and
our interpretation. We can see him/her as the author,
that is, the cause of the existence of this very poem,
but considering interpretation he/she is on one level
with each of us - in the worst case he/she can
misinterpret his own arts (e.g. if his/her
interpretation is not consistent with the structure of
his/her arts). Now, if this is so, then it is a
question what we are at all interpreting! Whose
language? Whose intentions? The author’s? Seen in
which paradigm? With which background knowledge? And
if these questions are justified, wouldn’t it then be
enough to take the poem as it is (without any further
external insights) and make an immanent analysis and
immanent interpretation of it, with the meanings and
references that are simply a part of our language and
so of our initial understanding of the poem? This is a
very interesting question, I think, and includes a lot
of (language-)philosophical problems…
Back to your post! The example with a change of the
poem only shows that such insights are interesting for
the record of textual history, as you yourself pointed
out, but they remain insignificant for the
interpretation of the poem as I expect it to be.
Furthermore, once we decide to include such insights
in our interpretations we need to satisfy certain
criteria, so that our approach can be valid. For
instance, we need to be able to *understand* a certain
psychological state of mind, to be able to interpret
it (-> to be psychologists), we need to know all those
little private events that constitute such moments, we
need to know what *exactly* the author had in mind
when he did/wrote what he did/wrote, etc. etc. I don’t
think any good artistic (as well as philosophical)
work deserves such a treatment.
As for the “private language” problem, I don’t think
we meant here the same thing, and my reference to
Wittgenstein referred to the language which is such
that cannot be encrypted because it is private. In the
sense you seem to be using this word, I can only refer
to what I’ve already said: that it is a question if
such references should be at all included in our
interpretation.
Finally, about TWL, I can only say that your questions
refer to what I wouldn’t call the interpretation of a
poem at all. Answering them would for sure be
interesting but it all belongs to the “context of
creation” and not the one of “interpretation”. Let me
ask you something else in return: is it possible that
a poem like TWL or a novel like Ulysses is worthless
unless it is interpreted with recourse to all those
external psychological personal moments? I am sure
there are millions of interpretations taking into
account this or that historical or biographical
moment, but such interpretations are of no
significance for me.
And one more thing. Once we say that the intention of
the author isn’t of essential importance for our
understanding of the poem, I don’t see how can we
bring this moment back without falling in
contradiction or being inconsequent. We cannot simply
say “in general, this isn’t so important”, and then,
when we don’t know how else to interpret something, we
reach for the biography and some cheap psychology. For
sure it is of great help for (one kind of)
interpretation to have knowledge about other works of
art (in case of Ulysses for example the Odysseus
myth), socio-political circumstances, a general
knowledge of history. But this is what I called with
Wittgenstein an “understanding of the life-form” the
author was living (which is strongly connected to our
life-form) and not(!) psychological/personal facts
about the author.All the best!
One answer gave the following quote, which fits our thesis nicely:
Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function
of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
DH Lawrence
