Re: 'discarded like calendars'

--- James Rovira <jrovira@drew.edu> wrote:
>
> It's
> quite possible that the author's contemporaries will
> read the author's
> work something like the author does, but there's no
> guarantee. Critics
> reflect (at least partially) the range of
> understandings a culture
> applies to a work. Later or different cultures
> apply different
> understandings, thus they think previous
> understandings were wrong, and
> are in turn thought wrong by their future readers.
> Authors have their
> own readings of their own work, which later readers
> will, of course,
> think wrong since it's not theirs.

jarrell also writes in the essay i'm reading ('poets,
critics and readers' [1959]); and i believe from an
earlier context he is referring to the contemporary
criticism of a contemporary writer:

"Critics disagree about almost every quality of a
writer's work; and when some agree about a quality,
they disagree about whether it is to be praised or
blamed, nurtured or rooted out. After enough
criticism the writer is covered with lipstick and
bruises, and the two are surprisingly evenly
distributed. There is *nothing* so plain about a
writer's books, to some critics, that its opposite
isn't plain to others."

i find it hard to imagine a culture's consensus on a
work of art. the spectrum of understanding you refer
to makes more sense.

no doubt the artist must enjoy the fact (hope?) that
his work will be even considered (even if interpreted
'wrongly' to his own ideas re his work) 50 years
hence. only fools or dead-sure geniuses would multiply
that figure by ten.

kim

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Received on Wed Dec 18 14:40:10 2002