‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[Aiwendil]

So I'm like a cold shower. I like that - it works well as an epithet: Aiwendil the Cold Shower.

I just thought I should add (in case it wasn't obvious) that this has been one of my favorite threads ever as well. Perhaps this is because it incorporated so many slightly different debates, and ranged over such a wide array of topics. Most were things that had been discussed before in other contexts, but here it seemed to me we were engaged in a real synthesis of those discussions - even if one that is ultimately futile.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

but here it seemed to me we were engaged in a real synthesis of those discussions - even if one that is ultimately futile.

Well, I think futile is maybe too strong a word - it depends what we wanted to achieve. If anything this has been one of the most productive threads on the Downs.

(though I can see how you, Bethberry & SpM would feel you were 'fighting the long defeat' )

[Bêthberry]

Well now, how can I come here with something light-hearted and elegiac when I wish to clarify a few points davem made on the previous page? I feel like I have walked into one of those long good-byes, where everyone knows it is over and yet they linger just a little bit longer and one person is rather foolishly carrying on as if it weren't over. Be that as it may, I do wish to offer some observations.

davem posted
Its just I find the alternative position too close to 'deconstructionism' - which has always screamed Emperor's New Clothes!!! to me. Simply, I hold to the position that we are obliged, in so far as that is possible to give prime importance & weight to the author's views. I see the art as a manifestation of the artist's will & desire, & as his or her attempt to communicate an experience of the trancendent. As far as Middle earth is concerned the author is 'God'.

I suppose some of my statement hav
e sounded close to deconstruction. Yet my osition does not derive from those hep-cat French radicals with their fans and followers but from a more traditional scholar, the polymath George Steiner, particularly his book After Babel. Steiner has never evoked a hit parade yet he has been to my mind a faithful voice for the humanities in a century of barbarism and mockery. It is to him I owe my idea that interpretation involves a kind of translating over or through time, a life-giving performance which overcomes the barriet between source and receptor. He once called the lectures he famously delivered in Geneva for over thirty years as the closest he has come to a kind of secular Pentecost. It is that sense of the partaking of the ineffable and the transcendent which is included in this idea that the reader, any reader, must be, to use the French word, an interprèt.

davem again!
SpM I'm saying, as far as possible we must empty our minds, listen to that author as carefully as possible, take in what he/she has to say to the best of our ability, understand as far as we can theirwhole message, what they want to communicate to us, & then make a judgement on it, 'infect' it with our own baggage, etc. We must begin from a position that the author is smarter than we are & has something important to teach us (& whether you, or Aiwendil or Bethberry realise it, that's the position I adopt in regard to your posts on this thread )

I don't understand why the reader must become a tabula rasa for this to happen. What is there in this confrontation with the Artist which demands that we must prostrate ourselves and empty our minds, to be filled newly with his ideas? This is no model of communication to me but a totalitarian takeover. Why, if you are valuing the human identity in your reading so much, must readers deny themselves and wipe out their identity?

guess who!

But surely the other person's 'voice' is the only thing worth concentrating on in the conversation, as its the only new thing, the only unknown , so the only thing worth paying attention to - all the other things you mention may be present, but they are obstacles, & should be (as far as possible) transcended, & only accepted as impediments to communication.

How will we know the uniqueness of this other voice if we forget the language we know? Rather than being obstacles, those features of language which I named function in a dynamic process to give contrast, identity, chiaroscuro to the new ideas. It is through the difference that I can begin to perceive the new meaning.

davem still

I still hold to the view that all art is a 'conversation' between two individual, 'living' minds - because the art was the product of a living mind when it came into being, & feel that this is an idea Tolkien gave a lot of weight to - both the Lost Road & Notion Club Papers are about this very thing - individuals alive at one point in time communicating with other individuals in 'their' past or future. The idea of a work of art as a a 'static', fixed thing, set down without any intentional meaning (or any intentional meaning which we should take into account) seems strange to me, & I can't understand it, or relate to it in any way. The Art for me is a 'packet' of meaning - deliberate & intentional, an attempt by the artist to communicate across time & space.

Perhaps it all comes down to where we place this sense of the static. You accord to the Artist a complete control of intention and will. I am more hesitant about the nature of artistic creation, othe artist's mind to know completely what goes on in the cauldron of writing. As I quoted elsewhere today, Steiner said "The heart can be manifold, even self-contradictory." For that reason, it is not that I deny intentional meaning, but rather see it as always and ever being limited by the human condition of babel, the confusion of tongues. You seem to want to include the Artist in the Art. He is there, along with many other personas, but to think that he would be knowable or discernable with absolute certainty is I think as difficult as to know intimately the minds of all those around us. When we can so easily misunderstand the living, how much greater is our possible confusion over the dead?

Thus, for me, this place where interpretation occurs, the reader as [i]interprète[i], is the space between the text and the reader--not either one in a hierarchy over the other, but in equilibrium. It is not a static , carved in stone commandement, but the process of making meaning, and it works both ways. It is not an imposition of the reader's solipcism or egotism upon the text (althought it can be that, and when such happens, such interpretations do not stand the test of time), but a dialogue out of which new meaning occurs. And sometimes the new meanings will include the possibility of things which the Artist did not intend or realise but was held there in the text, in plenitude, waiting for fulfillment. And that fulfillment is ever-ongoing, ever-not yet completed.

So, all in all, I think I agree with Aiwendil that we are differing over matters of definition rather than substance.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bethberry

I don't understand why the reader must become a tabula rasa for this to happen. What is there in this confrontation with the Artist which demands that we must prostrate ourselves and empty our minds, to be filled newly with his ideas? This is no model of communication to me but a totalitarian takeover. Why, if you are valuing the human identity in your reading so much, must readers deny themselves and wipe out their identity?

Only temporarily, until we have taken in & assimilated what the other has to say to us - the more baggage we bring with us, the harder it will be to hear what the other is saying. It is the admission of profound ignorance which enables us to learn anything new. Once we have learned we must analyse & judge. But that analysis & judgement must be made based on what the other has taught us. The more baggage we hold onto the less objective we are.

How will we know the uniqueness of this other voice if we forget the language we know? Rather than being obstacles, those features of language which I named function in a dynamic process to give contrast, identity, chiaroscuro to the new ideas. It is through the difference that I can begin to perceive the new meaning.

Of coourse, but those are the tools by which we perform our analysis, not the means by which we listen.

Perhaps it all comes down to where we place this sense of the static. You accord to the Artist a complete control of intention and will. I am more hesitant about the nature of artistic creation, othe artist's mind to know completely what goes on in the cauldron of writing. As I quoted elsewhere today, Steiner said "The heart can be manifold, even self-contradictory." For that reason, it is not that I deny intentional meaning, but rather see it as always and ever being limited by the human condition of babel, the confusion of tongues. You seem to want to include the Artist in the Art. He is there, along with many other personas, but to think that he would be knowable or discernable with absolute certainty is I think as difficult as to know intimately the minds of all those around us. When we can so easily misunderstand the living, how much greater is our possible confusion over the dead?

This is our struggle, but one worth making, to my mind. The artist exists in the work, & is therefore knowable, & if we don't make the effort to know the artist, how can we ever truly know the art? It is not in the certainty, but in the attempt - we honour the artist & validate his work by that attempt. To give up & dismiss the attempt as impossible is an aknowledgement of failure before we even begin.

Thus, for me, this place where interpretation occurs, the reader as [i]interprète[i], is the space between the text and the reader--not either one in a hierarchy over the other, but in equilibrium. It is not a static , carved in stone commandement, but the process of making meaning, and it works both ways. It is not an imposition of the reader's solipcism or egotism upon the text (althought it can be that, and when such happens, such interpretations do not stand the test of time), but a dialogue out of which new meaning occurs.

But doesn't dialogue require a clear (or as clear as possible) distinction between self & other? If we don't, as far as possible, shed our baggage, then to a great extent our 'dialogue' is only with our own past selves. It is an inner, not an outer dialogue, & we end up only talking to ourselves, & hearing our own voices, & 'learning' only what we already knew.

As to 'making meaning' - this implies that there is no 'objective' meaning, only imposed meaning. Meaning, or Truth, or Reality may simply exist - & it hasn't been disproved yet. It seems to me that its only from the point of view that there is no 'meaning' beyond what we ourselve impose that leads us to deny the 'living' presence of the artist in the art, & leads us to value our familiar baggage over the new & unknown. If we won't put aside (as far as we are able) what we've brought with us, how can we judge anything at all - we can only judge ourselves, what we think - the 'new' merely throws us back on ourselves, into self analysis. The art is glass - but is it a window, or only a mirror?

[Bêthberry]

Once again, I think, you express a dichotomy too starkly and too rigidly. It is neither window nor mirror. We see through a glass, darkly, davem.

This has been for me as for you others, one of my favourite threads even if at times we just went around in circles. Until the next thread ...

[davem]

We see through a glass, darkly, davem.

Oh, but this is it - the whole thing, the unanswerable question:

Do we see in the glass or through it?

[Bêthberry]

Given all our thoughts on this thread about Who is the Author, and Authorial Intentions, and Truth, and Where to Find the Author, I think it would not be inappropriate to offer this comment from one of Tolkien's Letter. It is Letter # 229 and Tolkien has been writing in despair about the introduction to the Swedish translation of LotR. Many thanks to Estelyn for bringing this comment to my my attention.

Why should I be made an object of fiction while still alive?