Jamie,

You say:

“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.”

An ultimate of anything has to be definitive, therefore singly so, otherwise it wouldn’t have an ultimate status. It would still be in question. For you to say of this: “I'm afraid this is why further communication is not impossible, at least unbearably impeded” makes no sense. 

You say:

“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.”

I was only attempting to draw out from you what you meant when you said, “Interpretations are not absolute but they can be more or less persuasive”. As I said earlier, your use of the word “persuasive” seems to be shoring up the idea that interpretations can be absolute. If interpretations are not absolute, “persuasion” wouldn’t be necessary, as there would be no absolute interpretation that would need to be persuasive. It is unfortunate that you think this line of discussion is insulting to you. 

You say:

“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’m sorry if I missed the levity that you now ascribe to it. It was your use of the word “evidence”, and your saying that any reader will have the “right to say I’m completely off my trolley” that gave me the impression you were in favour of an approved meaning for the Frost poem. I just found it curious that you automatically assumed other people should have the right to disapprove of a particular interpretation of a poem, given that you said, “interpretations are not absolute”. But I appreciate now that that statement is a qualified one, given that you now say, “my argument has nothing to do with fear of public disapproval, but it does concern notions of plausibility and evidence”. This is precisely what I have been trying to draw out from you in this discussion.

You say:

“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.”

Again, you have misunderstood what I have been saying, ignored it or are misrepresenting it. This particular matter was addressed in an earlier part of the disunion, in the following exchange:

You said:

“it leaves me perplexed as to why you should bother to write any critical essays or articles. Presumably if all of your readers held the same immobility of response, they would remain obdurately unconvinced by anything you argue unless it coincided exactly with their own established view. The whole activity would be futile.”

I replied:

“I don’t know why you say this, as I had already said in answer to your question (“Have you never had your personal response to a poem (or novel or film etc.) changed by contact with another person’s opinion or argument? For the present discussion, let’s say by a critical essay. If so, what has happened to this “problematical” meeting of text and reader?”), that other people’s views on novels, films, essays etc., can change me. So I would hope that my essays could do the same for them.”

You say:

“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.”

Life experiences, for me, are the significant experiences we go through in life, the ups and downs, the pains and losses, joys and sadness etc. It is not about listening and debating with people about poetry and coming to consensus opinions regarding “correct” or “incorrect”  interpretations. 

You say:

“I can't be bothered to go over the confusions that you bring to the last part of the email.”

If you do not wish to address the last part of my email, which I have again reproduced below, that is your privilege. I fail to see why, though, it is salient to most of what you have said

Last part of my email:

“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 wasting my time pointing out to you your various inconsistencies and misapprehensions of my position.”