Jeff,
In the spirit of trying to move this on, I'll try to dwell swiftly on some
of these points.
When you write "I’m sorry, but I still think you have a commitment to an
ultimate meaning" (before that was "a single, ultimate meaning", so no
longer "single"?) I'm afraid this is why further communication is not
impossible, at least unbearably impeded. You refuse to accept my statements
and insist that you know better than I do what I believe. The only
conclusion I can draw from this is you think I am ignorant of my own beliefs
or you think I am dishonest. Both are insulting though in different ways.
And clearly despite those 4, now 5, long emails we have not moved on an
inch. And my plea to you that we treat each other's views with a bit more
care - which implies respect - has fallen on deaf ears.
Of course any critical approach to a poem which is wary of external or
biographical inferences has to be "text-based". What other possibilities are
there?
You have very much misunderstood my Frost example if you infer from it that
my approach to reading poems 'is based on public approval, hence your fear
that people might think you are “off your trolley”'. That last phrase was
intended as my own judgment on the putative interpretation, a moment of
levity I should have realized would be taken by you with deadly seriousness.
Once again a false assumption of yours has made nonsense out of what I'm
arguing. I think anyone who reads this (apart from yourself) will
immediately understand what you've failed to: that my argument has nothing
to do with fear of public disapproval, but it does concern notions of
plausibility and evidence. I've never pretended that these are
straightforward issues, on the contrary they have to be argued for, not in
relation to "an ultimate meaning" but in relation to more or less plausible
and informed accounts of how the language in a poem works.
As to the immutability of your interpretations of a poem, it seems that you
have shifted ground. At first you said very categorically that you had never
had your opinion of a poem changed by any critical essay (which left me
bewildered as to why you should think other's opinions might be changed by
yours, and this is a mystery you've yet to explain). And yet now you are
saying in reply to Alison and to me, that "an individual’s response to a
poem, can, indeed, change for that individual over time, and new meanings
can replace older ones in relation to new information and life experiences.
I believe that a poem’s meanings are not set in stone but are mutable."
Well, welcome to the club. But to reconcile these two statements, for you
"life experiences" would then have to exclude contact with other people's
readings and interpretations, so I'm afraid we're back in the zone of
hermeneutical solipsism.
I can't be bothered to go over the confusions that you bring to the last
part of the email, only to say that once again you've attributed a position
to me (in this case "liberal humanism") which I neither claim nor refute.
And then you tell me that if I don't embrace value-based judgments, I "would
disappoint Matthew Arnold and F.R.Leavis". Nothing could be of less concern
to me than the disappointment of those two august figures.
Jamie
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeffrey Side
Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2013 12:45 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: "Multiple Registers, Intertextuality and Boundaries of
Interpretation in Veronica Forrest-Thompson"
Jamie,
You say:
“I’d like to apologize to the list for the tedium, and increasing
exasperation, of my last few posts. It would be convenient to blame Jeff for
his frustrating manner of stalling the discussion in what I see as
peripheral or irrelevant argument, but obviously I share some responsibility
for allowing myself to be de-railed.”
Thank you for this. It is appreciated.
Regarding, your last email to me, you say:
“You seem to have finally accepted that I have no commitment to any
“ultimate single meaning” and also to have accepted that my qualification is
not a contradiction.”
I’m sorry, but I still think you have a commitment to an ultimate meaning.
The reason I didn’t continue pursuing this in my last email was that I
wanted to move the discussion forward to ask you what criteria you would use
to decide that an interpretation of a poems was (to use your word)
“persuasive”. I asked you if you would use a textual basis only, seeing as
you said earlier you wouldn’t use extra-textual ones (rightly in my view) in
relation to Larkin. So can you now confirm that you would use only a
text-based approach?
You say:
“With the example of the tortoise and the wall I’ve tried to give an
indication of what an unconvincing reading would look like to me. I’m
touched to see you defend the integrity of that reading. And to find that
your posture before a poem is prayerful solipsism.”
Here is what you said:
“If I claim that in Frost’s ‘Mending Wall’ the opening line “Something there
is that doesn’t love a wall” refers to tortoises, and explain that I happen
to know that tortoises are particularly averse to walls, then, in the
absence of any evidence I can adduce from the poem, any reader will have a
right to say I’m completely off my trolley. You may well support me by
saying that it is my right to take anything I want from a poem, and I’m
grateful for your support, but I don’t think you should be encouraging me.”
I replied:
“Why would any reader have a right to say you are off your trolley? What
business is it of theirs anyway? For me reading is a private act, almost
like prayer. To be concerned with the adverse opinions of other private
readers would not make sense. If someone can see a link to frogs in the
Frost poem, why not let them have that privilege? Texts are never stable and
constantly shifting, therefore, single and authoritative meanings and
interpretations are difficult to argue for.”
Your response to this hasn’t really addressed my reply. For you to say, as
your response to this, that you find my attitude to poems a “prayerful
solipsism” misses the point, which was to compare my personal engagement and
response to a poem to yours, which you seem to be suggesting is based on
public approval, hence your fear that people might think you are “off your
trolley” if you interpret a poem “incorrectly”.
You say:
“Via Terence Hawkes, you’re now calling me a liberal humanist. Perhaps
labels such as these make you feel safe, but really as I’ve never argued
that either texts or readers are “stable and autonomous” I’m not sure why
you should wish to apply this one to me.”
I applied it to you in relation to the Hawkes quote, where he says, “that to
assume that texts and readers are stable and autonomous is to operate under
the “ideology of liberal humanism”. I then said “which is a value-laden
ideology (hence my comments regarding your value judgment statements, which
reminded me of a liberal humanist position)”. I didn’t call you a liberal
humanist in relation to texts being stable and autonomous, which I still
think you hold to. If you don’t think that liberal humanism is a value-based
theory, then you would disappoint Mathew Arnold and F. R. Leavis.
You say:
“You, on the other hand, have asserted the absolute autonomy of your
responses to poems and their immutable quality. So maybe this is a label you
should keep for yourself.”
I haven’t asserted that, and have responded to Alison (Croggon) who had a
similar misunderstanding, with:
“You must have misunderstood me. I’m saying that individual responses to a
poem should be accepted as valid responses, and that these responses should
not be regarded by others as exegetically inappropriate. I’m also saying
that an individual’s response to a poem, can, indeed, change for that
individual over time, and new meanings can replace older ones in relation to
new information and life experiences. I believe that a poem’s meanings are
not set in stone but are mutable.”
You say:
“Likewise, since you introduced the value laden judgment of elitism to the
conversation, you should be answering at the bar of Professor Hawkes. The
aridity of his phrasing (“products of the unconscious process of
signification”) and the vacuity of that concept should be punishment enough,
only I suspect that you’d enjoy it.”
In response to this, I can only reproduce the latter section of my previous
email to you that you have ignored, and which clears up this accusation of
yours (all of the following that is in double quotation marks are your
words):
‘In this you say:
“debating the problematic nature of poetic language” is not what I called
“dumbing-down” and “patronizing” - I called your use of the term “elitist”
potentially so”.
I’m afraid this is not accurate. What you said was:
“It’s arguable that pretending every interpretation is equally valid is not
just a dumbing-down of the art but also patronizing to those people whom the
person who cries ‘elitist’ is meant to be defending.”
Here, you say: “pretending every interpretation is equally valid is not just
a dumbing-down of the art but also patronizing”. In this, you are not
responding to my saying that to stop people being allowed to interpret poems
freely would be elitist, but to my saying that people should be allowed to
interpret poems freely, and your response is that to allow this would be a
“dumbing down” and “patronizing”. No doubt you will say this is also logic
chopping and misrepresenting your position.’
As can be seen here, the context of my use of the word “elitism” is very
different from the framework you have placed around it.
You say:
“But it makes clear to me that any definition of what might be a more valid
approach, even if I was capable of shaping a coherent one, would have to run
a gauntlet of misconstructions from you, and would take weeks of work
without much chance of being understood.”
I think it is you who is misconstruing things, rather than me, as the above
extract from my email to you demonstrates.
I realise, however, that I am perhaps waiting my time pointing out to you
your various inconsistencies and misapprehensions of my position.
|