Maybe the reader is something we can know nothing about/ Maybe even
ourselves as reader are almost completely mysterious. I have often
wondered about the actual act of reading a poem, and whether it is
possible to actually describe what it is, as a wholly subjective
experience: it seems to me so complex that any attempt at description
must necessarily be reductive. Each word, each image, vibrates such a
web of associations, memories and meanings, all such a mixture of
communal knowledges and individual understandings as to be totally
idiosyncratic. What we have in common in reading the same text and what
differs has to be articulated in language, and that itself leads to even
more wobbling lines of understanding and misunderstanding. But even this
doesn't properly include the processes which are not purely cerebral: the
physiological responses which occur in your body, like the skin
prickling, or the hairs upright. For example, I remember reading The
Trial, and having to put it down and go for a walk during the trial
sequence because I began to feel so hot and claustrophobic I couldn't
stand it. There are some books I really almost can't bear to read
because they have such effects on me. What explains this? And is this
what other people experience when reading the same books? How can I know?
Alison
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