semiotics

[Michael J. Hußmann]

John Doe (tristero69 at yahoo.com) wrote:

> I'm a bit confused; seems to me the
> claim of privileged INTENTION would be easily
> supportable by the explicit remarks of intention by
> the writer himself....If I write a novel, and then
> tell you personally that I intended, that I
> deliberately contrived, the name Howie Surd to sound
> like "how absurd!", then I have pre-determined a
> meaning

Well, you can do that, but there is no way you could impose that
interpretation on the reader -- even if you would bundle your novel with
a commentary explaining its meaning, so the reader would even know what
your intention was. The reader will still find his own interpretations.
As Umberto Eco once remarked, the author should die after completing his
work, so he cannot disturb the process of generating interpretations.
Sarcasm aside, there's some truth to this. The authors claim to a
privileged interpretation is quite hollow; after all, his subconscious
may have been playing tricks on him, and some seemingly absurd
interpretation by some reader may be nearer to the truth than the
official interpretation. Not that we (or even the author) would ever
know for sure. (When Pynchon did comment on his works, as in the
introduction to "Slow Learner", how many even cared? When his comments
supported their interpretations, readers chose to believe him, and if he
contradicted their beliefs, they explained his comments as tongue in cheek.)

Now even Eco, who once held that there was no such thing as a privileged
interpretation, added some qualifications in recent years -- partly
because of his experience with his own "Il nome della rosa", I suppose.
For example, someone suggested that "Hugo de Novocastrum" (Hugo of
Newcastle) was an allusion to Casanova -- even though "castrum" (castle)
isn't the same as "casa" (house), that Hugo of Newcastle is a historical
figure, and, most importantly, that both the real Hugo of Newcastle and
the one in the novel share no personality traits (or whatever) with
Casanova. There will always be interpretations that appear natural to
most, while there are others that most believe are absurd. But it is
still true that a text -- and especially a novel -- is (to borrow Eco's
term) a device for generating interpretations, where the interpretations
generated depend on the reader, his knowledge, his beliefs etc.. The
author cannot stop this, even if he wants to. A novel is not a device
for conveying specific interpretations, I'm afraid.

- Michael


Michael J. Hußmann

E-mail: michael at michael-hussmann.de
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