Chapter XXVI · Judgment and Divergent Readings
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CHAPTER XXVI Judgment and Divergent Readings
The Prime Minister—The misunderstanding—in so far as it is a misunderstanding—is purely a misunderstanding. . . .
The Leader of the Opposition—With the utmost goodwill on this side, I find myself with far less grasp of the whole subject than I had. . . .—The Times, 8th July 1924.
Ambiguity in a poem, as with any other communication, may be the fault of the poet or of the reader. The ambiguities due to erratic reading are as important for criticism as others, and practically more troublesome. There are strong social incentives for overlooking them. Talking to one another we assume, in nine cases out of ten like the merest simpletons, that our readings agree, and that when we differ in our opinions it is something else, not our experiences but our judgments about them which are at variance. Most discussion about works of art is waste of time as communication for this reason. It may, of course, have great value as a means by which people may severally develop their own reactions.
These assumptions which so densely obscure the issue raise innumerable practical difficulties both for criticism and for the construction of a theory of criticism. It is well worth while to analyse typical situations a little further.
The closing lines of the Fifth Sonnet of Wordsworth’s River Duddon series will afford a convenient instance:—
Sole listener, Duddon! to the breeze that played With thy clear voice, I caught the fitful sound Wafted o’er sullen moss and craggy mound, Unfruitful solitudes that seemed to upbraid The sun in heaven!—but now, to form a shade For thee, green alders have together wound Their foliage; ashes flung their arms around; And birch trees risen in silver colonnade. And thou hast also tempted here to rise, Mid sheltering pines, this cottage rude and grey; Whose ruddy children, by the mother’s eyes Carelessly watched, sport through the summer day, Thy pleased associates—light as endless May On infant bosoms lonely nature lies.
Two readers who found themselves, as they thought, in entire agreement as to the excellence of this sonnet, and especially as to the beauty of its close, were surprised shortly afterwards to discover that they had been reading quite different poems. By the one the last sentence was interpreted as saying that the gloom of lonely nature, of sullen moss and craggy ground, however it might seem later on in life, had no oppressive effect upon the children. By the other it was read as saying that however barren and gloomy might be the scene, actually lonely nature there in itself had no such character, but was, as it were, floating “light as endless May on infant bosoms”. The two readings, by throwing their effect back upon what had preceded and in addition completely altering the rhythm of the close, produced what it is no exaggeration to describe as two different poems. Neither would be uncharacteristic of Wordsworth, although doubtless the first reading is the one to be accepted.
Another common case is exemplified by some famous discussions of Hamlet. It is curious that people with such different conceptions of the character of Hamlet himself and of the action of the play, have been able to agree none the less as to its value as a whole, apart, of course, from its incidental values. Much has to be discounted in estimating this agreement. On some interpretations praise of the play as a whole is certainly insincere. On the interpretation which makes Claudius the hero, whose tragic frailty lies in the fact that his long-suffering patience with the baseless suspicions of the crazy nuisance Hamlet breaks down in the end and brings the noble monarch to disaster, there would be little beyond the playwright’s subtlety which could honestly be commended. But with all allowances it seems certain that widely different interpretations have seemed to good critics to result in the same peculiar high value of tragedy. The explanation is that tragic value is a general not a specific character of responses. Just as a collision between motorcars and a collision between ships are equally collisions, so the impulses whose equilibrium produces the catharsis of tragedy may be very varied, provided that their relations to one another are correct.