Thank you Henry for engaging with my question. It is very illuminating and helps my understanding of your perspective. Coincidentally, it is quite helpful that you use Ivan Ilyich as an example – a story very dear to me, which I recently wrote a guide for on Audrey. I'd completely agree with your description of Ikiru as a strong misreading. And the importance of understanding the book in the context of Tolstoy's Christianity.
Perhaps a different way of characterising my perspective is as a dialectic between text and reader, knowledge and interpretation. A reader who ignores the meaning of the text, learns nothing from it and imposes their own weak or lazy interpretation. But a reader brings their unique experience, their understanding, to work on the text. In their specific reading, they give something of their life, receive something from the text, and are transformed by it.
To use another example from Tolstoy. I am coming to the end of my fourth reading of War and Peace. My understanding of it has changed remarkably over fifteen years or so. When I was 25, I had not experienced heartbreak, the loss of loved ones, or any significant depression or failure. This time around I read for the first time as a father. All these experiences allow a new level of dialogue between myself and the text.
What interests me is not the original meaning or an arbitrary interpretation, but the process of transformation or reinvention that goes on between great stories and engaged readers. I think this might make me quite relaxed about some weak misreadings. They don't necessarily have to be the end of the story. They may be a waypoint on a journey. An ongoing relationship with a text, which may last a reader's entire life.
"the process of transformation or reinvention that goes on between great stories and engaged readers" :) Thanks for this. cool to imagine this multiplied across generations and continents with works like Master and man or How much land. The latter definitely works for time, health, etc, once you sense them as limited! Reminds me of Hayek's Sensory order, in its ongoing experiment in understanding and mapping the outside world, inside the body.
There's also a Bach chorale recording that is so well balanced to me, simultaneously bleak, magisterial and relentless, that it mocks me slightly differently with each season. 'Wer Dank opfert, der preiset mich, BWV 17' Monteverdi choir/JE Gardiner version.
I love that you set it up in terms of wanting vs not wanting to learn. If we want to learn from a text then we need to sincerely and respectfully interrogate what is actually in it and not just see things we'd like to see confirmed.
Had always known this re Austen, but good point on Ivan Illych. To me, the text appeared to be deeply spiritual and indeed about salvation, but I actually did not catch that the salvation was specifically christian. Will have to go back to it!
the servant is the one true Christ-like figure, self sacrificing in Ivan's time of need. Bergman understood this in his film Cries and Whispers, which is fairly horrible (my wife walked out) but very strong on this point
Henry-- I like this essay very much. I suspect I will have a different way of thinking about it when i write a piece inspired by this, but I say upfront that even if i disagree it won’t be an attack on you. Or, if it’s an attack, it will be a clumsy, disorganized attack involving troops who didn’t get nearly enough sleep the night before.
also "making the most of life" pshshhhhtht "what's going to happen to you if you fuck around being a fool -- you'll be wretched and only grace can save you" more like it
totally, the irony of people saying stuff like about *about this particular book*.... is too much... Tolstoy is doomed to be misread as his own wretched character!
A weak misreading is a form of misapprehension, whereas a strong misreading is a creative reimagining; I have based that, loosely, on work by Harold Bloom and Jonathan Bate---you see this in theatre, where there's a world of difference between a weak misreading of a play that pulls out "relevant" themes without cohering the production, and a strong misreading that transforms the play so thoroughly it has become something fresh and original again; in the latter case, of course, the result is usually a new play, rather than a new production, most of the time, e.g. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Think, too, of musical performances: Glenn Gould strongly misread the Goldberg Variations, but very weakly misread Mozart, his recordings of which are almost unbearable.
I understand what you mean, but there are do many contradictory/complementary literary theories (I won't list them) and lit criticism that it's rather dogmatic to say that overlooking some aspect of a work is wrong. There is no absolute when it comes to literary theory/criticism, only relatives. Which is why I take issue with your use of the word 'wrong'. Anyway, thanks for responding to my comments
It's good that you hold such strong opinions (which you're perfectly entitled to) but saying people are wrong about a book or play - isn't that simply another opinion?
Well it depends if you believe that words have meanings and that books also have particular meanings. The idea that everything is open to interpretation means ignoring some of those fixed meanings, and, imo, often goes with not seeing some of the specificities of the text.
Every reader (except the truly committed relativist, a vanishingly rare breed, despite the rather extravagant claims of some theorists) agrees that it is possible to misread a text. But, as you acknowledge, nearly everyone also agrees that texts don't have a singular and unitary meaning, either. The interesting question is not whether some readings are wrong but how to determine the validity or invalidity of a particular reading. Your invocation of "knowledge" doesn't really do much to help me understand the method you're endorsing. Is "knowledge" knowledge of history that helps us understand why and in what context a book was written? Is it knowledge about human nature that helps us discover why texts seem to have universal appeal? If so, does the fact that we don't have much certain knowledge about either history or human nature (or the ways these might manifest in a text) mean that we can never truly know what a text means? Do we argue that the text means what its author intended it to mean? (Probably not, especially if we agree with Wimsatt and Beardsley that we can't reconstruct an author's intent reliably from a text. Psychoanalytic critics and ideological critics have shown us the potential fruitfulness of reading a text for precisely what its author didn't intend to communicate.)
So, sure: the idea that some readings are more valid than other readings is a necessary precondition for developing a method for reading texts. But this doesn't get at the really interesting debate: what forms of knowledge are preconditions for interpretation, which forms of meaning-making are reasonable and justifiable, and so on.
Also, I'm curious as to why you think that self-help or affirmation are improper uses of art, as you seem to imply in your discussion of the Frost poem. Surely some art is intended to inspire or to provoke us to help ourselves. (Walden comes to mind, for example.) And surely it is a benefit that people feel comforted, inspired, or affirmed by a work of art. So why is this necessarily a form of misreading? Or am I interpreting you uncharitably here? (Therapeutic reading is the subject of a new monograph by Jon Baskin, which I really will get around to reading, at some point.)
My objection to art as affirmation is about the way that our own preconceptions get in the way of knowing how it is what it is---and thus lead us to believe something false about what it is, as per my examples of Jane Austen, Frost, Tolstoy, and so on. I would class, for example, a Freudian reading on Hamlet, as making the same error: imposing a theory that is evidently not in the language of the play. Fine to be comforted: at some grand level, great art is all about reconciling the individual to themselves. But the reduction of art into affirmation or comfort is trivial *as an act of criticism* and misleads us into wrong interpretations. My argument is about interpretation, not all the uses of art. Knowledge might be of history, but it will often simply be of the whole text itself, as I mention in the essay. I am trying to persuade non professional readers about the ways in which interpretation ought to work, i.e. don't value your own immediate response over knowing the text and its context.
Thank you Henry for engaging with my question. It is very illuminating and helps my understanding of your perspective. Coincidentally, it is quite helpful that you use Ivan Ilyich as an example – a story very dear to me, which I recently wrote a guide for on Audrey. I'd completely agree with your description of Ikiru as a strong misreading. And the importance of understanding the book in the context of Tolstoy's Christianity.
Perhaps a different way of characterising my perspective is as a dialectic between text and reader, knowledge and interpretation. A reader who ignores the meaning of the text, learns nothing from it and imposes their own weak or lazy interpretation. But a reader brings their unique experience, their understanding, to work on the text. In their specific reading, they give something of their life, receive something from the text, and are transformed by it.
To use another example from Tolstoy. I am coming to the end of my fourth reading of War and Peace. My understanding of it has changed remarkably over fifteen years or so. When I was 25, I had not experienced heartbreak, the loss of loved ones, or any significant depression or failure. This time around I read for the first time as a father. All these experiences allow a new level of dialogue between myself and the text.
What interests me is not the original meaning or an arbitrary interpretation, but the process of transformation or reinvention that goes on between great stories and engaged readers. I think this might make me quite relaxed about some weak misreadings. They don't necessarily have to be the end of the story. They may be a waypoint on a journey. An ongoing relationship with a text, which may last a reader's entire life.
"the process of transformation or reinvention that goes on between great stories and engaged readers" :) Thanks for this. cool to imagine this multiplied across generations and continents with works like Master and man or How much land. The latter definitely works for time, health, etc, once you sense them as limited! Reminds me of Hayek's Sensory order, in its ongoing experiment in understanding and mapping the outside world, inside the body.
There's also a Bach chorale recording that is so well balanced to me, simultaneously bleak, magisterial and relentless, that it mocks me slightly differently with each season. 'Wer Dank opfert, der preiset mich, BWV 17' Monteverdi choir/JE Gardiner version.
This fucking rules
:)
I love that you set it up in terms of wanting vs not wanting to learn. If we want to learn from a text then we need to sincerely and respectfully interrogate what is actually in it and not just see things we'd like to see confirmed.
Had always known this re Austen, but good point on Ivan Illych. To me, the text appeared to be deeply spiritual and indeed about salvation, but I actually did not catch that the salvation was specifically christian. Will have to go back to it!
the servant is the one true Christ-like figure, self sacrificing in Ivan's time of need. Bergman understood this in his film Cries and Whispers, which is fairly horrible (my wife walked out) but very strong on this point
Yes, that servant and wait... isn't there even feet-washing in the text? jesus, okay.
this is quite good https://x5ofspadez.medium.com/jesus-anarchy-suicide-the-death-of-ivan-ilyich-8a35e565efb5
Henry-- I like this essay very much. I suspect I will have a different way of thinking about it when i write a piece inspired by this, but I say upfront that even if i disagree it won’t be an attack on you. Or, if it’s an attack, it will be a clumsy, disorganized attack involving troops who didn’t get nearly enough sleep the night before.
attack away!
also "making the most of life" pshshhhhtht "what's going to happen to you if you fuck around being a fool -- you'll be wretched and only grace can save you" more like it
totally, the irony of people saying stuff like about *about this particular book*.... is too much... Tolstoy is doomed to be misread as his own wretched character!
I went into this thinking that a strong misreading would necessarily be worse than a weak one, but instead I may have learned something!
A weak misreading is a form of misapprehension, whereas a strong misreading is a creative reimagining; I have based that, loosely, on work by Harold Bloom and Jonathan Bate---you see this in theatre, where there's a world of difference between a weak misreading of a play that pulls out "relevant" themes without cohering the production, and a strong misreading that transforms the play so thoroughly it has become something fresh and original again; in the latter case, of course, the result is usually a new play, rather than a new production, most of the time, e.g. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Think, too, of musical performances: Glenn Gould strongly misread the Goldberg Variations, but very weakly misread Mozart, his recordings of which are almost unbearable.
“My argument is about interpretation, not all the uses of art”
That’s good, I like that.
I understand what you mean, but there are do many contradictory/complementary literary theories (I won't list them) and lit criticism that it's rather dogmatic to say that overlooking some aspect of a work is wrong. There is no absolute when it comes to literary theory/criticism, only relatives. Which is why I take issue with your use of the word 'wrong'. Anyway, thanks for responding to my comments
It's good that you hold such strong opinions (which you're perfectly entitled to) but saying people are wrong about a book or play - isn't that simply another opinion?
Well it depends if you believe that words have meanings and that books also have particular meanings. The idea that everything is open to interpretation means ignoring some of those fixed meanings, and, imo, often goes with not seeing some of the specificities of the text.
I take your point but the use of the word 'wrong' in relation to something as subjective as literature comes across as too absolute
Literature is not as subjective as you think. That's the error.
Every reader (except the truly committed relativist, a vanishingly rare breed, despite the rather extravagant claims of some theorists) agrees that it is possible to misread a text. But, as you acknowledge, nearly everyone also agrees that texts don't have a singular and unitary meaning, either. The interesting question is not whether some readings are wrong but how to determine the validity or invalidity of a particular reading. Your invocation of "knowledge" doesn't really do much to help me understand the method you're endorsing. Is "knowledge" knowledge of history that helps us understand why and in what context a book was written? Is it knowledge about human nature that helps us discover why texts seem to have universal appeal? If so, does the fact that we don't have much certain knowledge about either history or human nature (or the ways these might manifest in a text) mean that we can never truly know what a text means? Do we argue that the text means what its author intended it to mean? (Probably not, especially if we agree with Wimsatt and Beardsley that we can't reconstruct an author's intent reliably from a text. Psychoanalytic critics and ideological critics have shown us the potential fruitfulness of reading a text for precisely what its author didn't intend to communicate.)
So, sure: the idea that some readings are more valid than other readings is a necessary precondition for developing a method for reading texts. But this doesn't get at the really interesting debate: what forms of knowledge are preconditions for interpretation, which forms of meaning-making are reasonable and justifiable, and so on.
Also, I'm curious as to why you think that self-help or affirmation are improper uses of art, as you seem to imply in your discussion of the Frost poem. Surely some art is intended to inspire or to provoke us to help ourselves. (Walden comes to mind, for example.) And surely it is a benefit that people feel comforted, inspired, or affirmed by a work of art. So why is this necessarily a form of misreading? Or am I interpreting you uncharitably here? (Therapeutic reading is the subject of a new monograph by Jon Baskin, which I really will get around to reading, at some point.)
If anyone's interested, I quite liked this essay, which I found on Substack, on the question of what forms of historical knowledge one needs to really get a book: https://davidsess.substack.com/p/historicing-the-great-books-and-letting
My objection to art as affirmation is about the way that our own preconceptions get in the way of knowing how it is what it is---and thus lead us to believe something false about what it is, as per my examples of Jane Austen, Frost, Tolstoy, and so on. I would class, for example, a Freudian reading on Hamlet, as making the same error: imposing a theory that is evidently not in the language of the play. Fine to be comforted: at some grand level, great art is all about reconciling the individual to themselves. But the reduction of art into affirmation or comfort is trivial *as an act of criticism* and misleads us into wrong interpretations. My argument is about interpretation, not all the uses of art. Knowledge might be of history, but it will often simply be of the whole text itself, as I mention in the essay. I am trying to persuade non professional readers about the ways in which interpretation ought to work, i.e. don't value your own immediate response over knowing the text and its context.