[lit-ideas] Re: Interpretation and Elision

 
<<  I can't imagine a
complex work that is entirely  graspable, including real people and life in
general.   >>
 
And yet we seem to be built with a compulsive and  obsessive drive to try to 
grasp.  To understand.  To make sense of the  incomprehensible. 
Why don't we just shrug our shoulders and make a pie? 
Julie Krueger



========Original  Message========     Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: Interpretation 
and Elision  Date: 12/6/05 10:20:18 PM Central Standard Time  From: 
_aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)   To: 
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) , _lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
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> [Original Message]
> From: Eric Yost  <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: Lit-Ideas  <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 12/6/2005 6:37:04 PM
>  Subject: [lit-ideas] Interpretation and Elision
>
> Was thinking  about the relationship between elision and 
>  interpretation.
>
> If I say, "Brahms is too serious for my taste,"  I'm stating an 
> opinion that is in part an *elision* of Brahms, omitting  
> compositions like the Hungarian Dances, the waltzes, the string  
> serenades.  Or if I say, "Chris Rock's comedy is racist," I'm  
> stating an opinion that elides all the nonracist Chris Rock 
>  comedy. To be even more extreme, if I say the second George 
> Herbert  poem, "Love" is about love, then I'm eliding all the 
> other parts of the  poem, for example, the fire symbolism.
>
> Can you really interpret  anything without eliding part of it?
>

There's no way to assume or  see the whole of anything so I would say it's
impossible to interpret  anything without omitting part(s) of it.  I
recently read three stories  by Hemingway.  In all three stories, plus one I
know of, the protagonist  dies.  Obviously death was on Hemingway's mind,
given his suicide.   Even so, the deaths of the protagonists (of himself)
are only a part of what  Hemingway was working out.  I can't imagine a
complex work that is  entirely graspable, including real people and life in
general.   




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