Alison wrote:
<snip>
Robert Frost, an exemplar surely of clarity, held that determining whether a
poem was any good or not by whether it's obscure or not is a total waste of
time (or words to that effect).
[...]
But what is meant by obscurity, anyway?
<snip>
Coincidentally, prompted by the suggestion that a cognitive approach may not
add much to an understanding of *The Road not Taken* beyond the rather banal
observation that *life is a journey* underlies it all, I've been arranging
Frost's words into categories (all too many of these) over the past few
days. No need to bore the list with the results - except to say that besides
the sorts of interpretation that most 'good' readers would probably arrive
at consciously and be able to talk about, some more unusual readings are
also well supported at a cognitive level. A 'yellow wood' [or would] is a
more positive version of a 'blue funk', for example: in each case the
categories *cowardice* and *willingness* intersect. 'Yellow', 'fair' and
'black' share two categories (*character* and *scene*) whilst 'yellow' and
'black' fit the category *turning leaves*. This has implications for the
treatment of time and indecision in the poem.
Applying the categories *causality* and *cessation* to Dickinson's 'Because
I could not stop for Death - / He kindly stopped for me -', another *life is
a journey* poem, leads to the alarmingly circular 'Because my stopping
stopped because of stopping, stopping stopped because of me'. The poem is
clear at a narrative level and a 'good' reader would have picked up most of
this in any case; but perhaps the 'translation', however absurd, points
shows up Dickinson's self centredness and interest in 'circuit' and
'circumference' a little more starkly.
One sort of obscurity happens, I think, where meaning at the category level
takes precedence over narrative or other levels of meaning. That raises a
question begged in both my previous paragraphs: what is 'good' reading in
the first place? Is reading poorer when play at the category level goes
unnoticed?
Christopher Walker
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