Subject: Finding Meaning [was RE: Daumier-Smith and Empathy]
From: Cecilia Baader (ceciliabaader@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Jul 30 2001 - 18:23:19 GMT
--- Andy Norris <AndyNorris@tireswing.net> wrote:
>
> I've written stories and poems and had teachers and other students
> (years ago) come back in the critique session and be spot on with
> what they found that I had no idea was there.
That's an experience that I've had too. Someone reads something that
you wrote and makes a statement that you didn't even know was true, but
when you thought about it, really thought about it, you understood that
yes, that is what you meant.
Something that concerns you, that is always in the back of your mind, is
bound to emerge in your writing, however sideways it may be. A writer
may not be consciously inserting a theme into his or her work but it
comes out all the same. That doesn't mean that it's not a theme, or a
symbol; that only means that it is absolutely a valid reading of the
work. (Perhaps our resident psychiatrist can comment upon this and tell
me if it's all bunk.)
Anyway. I've heard this observation made by more than one writer -- I
want to say that this was explained most clearly in Anne Lamott's BIRD
BY BIRD but I'm not sure -- and there are those who will deny it. Those
who deny it, I think, are those who would say that meaning is entirely
in the author's hands. But is it? Or is it, as Aquinas posits, "pulcra
sunt quae visa placent." Perhaps most of the meaning is in the hands of
the reader.
Perhaps.
Regards,
Cecilia.
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