[lit-ideas] Re: Interpretation and Elision
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, "lit-ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 23:20:15 -0500
> [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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