CONTENTS

HENRY JAMES, The Figure in the Carpet, IN PLACE OF AN INTRODUCTION

HENRY JAMES published The Figure in the Carpet in 1896; in retrospect, this short story can be considered as a prognosis for a branch of learning which at the time was barely in its infancy, but which in a relatively short period has fallen increasingly into disrepute. The reference is to that form of interpretation which is concerned first and foremost with the meaning of a literary work. We may assume that Henry James's object was not to make a forecast about the future of literary criticism, and so it follows that in taking the search for meaning as his subject matter, he was dealing with something that was relevant for the reading public of his own time. For, in general, literary texts constitute a reaction to contemporary situations, bringing attention to problems that are conditioned though not resolved by contemporary norms. James's choice of subject shows that conventional means of access to literature must have had their reverse side, and the revelation of this reverse side clearly sheds doubt on the means of access. The implication here is that the search for meaning, which at first may appear so natural and so unconditioned, is in fact considerably influenced by historical norms, even though this influence is quite unconscious. The hypostasis of historical norms, however, has always shown the extent of their inadequacies, and it is this fact that has hastened the demise of this form of literary interpretation. James's short story directly anticipates this demise.

In order to get a more detailed understanding of the problems involved, let us take a closer look at the situation that James deals with in his story. The focal point of The Figure in the Carpet is the meaning of Vereker's last novel. There are two diverging views of this focal point: that of the first-person narrator, and that of his friend Corvick. Whatever we learn from Corvick's discoveries breaks down against the statements of the

first-person narrator. But as Corvick has evidently found what the narrator has been searching for in vain, the reader is bound to resist the orientation of the narrator's perspective. In doing so he will find that the narrator's search for meaning increasingly assumes the proportions of a theme in itself, and finally becomes the object of his, the reader's own, critical attention. This, then, is the situation and the technique.

At the very beginning of the story, the narrator-whom we shall call the critic-boasts that in his review he has revealed the hidden meaning of Vereker's latest novel, and he now wonders how the writer will react to the "loss of his mystery."¹ If interpretation consists in forcing the hidden meaning from a text, then it is only logical to construe the process as resulting in a loss for the author. Now this gives rise to two consequences which permeate the whole story.

First, in discovering the hidden meaning, the critic has, as it were, solved a puzzle, and there is nothing left for him to do but to congratulate himself on this achievement.² After all, what can one do with a meaning that has been formulated and put on display, having been stripped of all its mystery? So long as it was a mystery, one could search for it, but now there is nothing to arouse interest except for the skill of the searcher. To this the critic would like to draw the attention of his public, which includes Vereker.³ It is little wonder that he strikes us as a Phihstine.

However, this consequence is of minor significance when set beside the second. If the function of interpretation is to extract the hidden meaning from a literary text, this involves certain rather peculiar presuppositions: "If this were so the author, for the sake of future consumption, would disguise a clear meaning which, however, he would keep to himself-and there would also be the following presumption: with the arrival of the critic would come the hour of truth, for he claims to disclose the original meaning together with the reason for its disguise."⁴ This brings us to the first guiding ( and suspect ) norm: If the critic's revelation of the meaning is a loss to the author-as stated at the beginning of the book-then meaning must be a thing which can be subtracted from the work. And if this meaning, as the very heart of the work, can be lifted out of the text, the work is then used up-through interpretation, literature is turned into an item for consumption. This is fatal not only for the text but also for literary

criticism, for what can be the function of interpretation if its sole achievement is to extract the meaning and leave behind an empty shell? The parasitic nature of such criticism is all too obvious, which may perhaps give extra force to Vereker's dismissal of the critic's review as the ”usual twaddle.”⁵

With this judgment Vereker denounces both the archaeological (‘digging for meaning’) approach and the assumption that meaning is a thing which - as is made explicit in the text -embodies a treasure⁶ that can be excavated through interpretation. Such a rebuff - uttered by Vereker in the presence of the critic⁷ - must inevitably lead to an exposure of the norms that govern interpretation. And here there can be no mistaking their historical nature. The critic defends his initial smugness with the claim that he is searching for truth,⁸ and as the truth of the text is a ‘thing’ which is borne out by the fact that it exists independently of the text-he asks whether Vereker's novel does not contain an esoteric message (which is what he has always supposed in any case), a particular philosophy, basic views of life, or some “extraordinary ‘general intention’,”⁹ or at the very least some stylistic figure impregnated with meaning.¹⁰ Here we have a repertoire of norms that are characteristic of the nineteenth-century concept of literature. For the critic, meaning is to be equated with such norms, and if they are to be extracted from the text as things in themselves, then, clearly, meaning is not something produced by the text. The critic takes this state of affairs so much for granted that one may presume that his expectations must have been shared by most readers of literary works. It seems only natural to the critic that meaning, as a buried secret, should be accessible to and reducible by the tools of referential analysis.

Such analysis sets the meaning in two sorts of a given framework. First, there is the subjective disposition of the critic, i.e., his personal perception, observation, and judgment. He wants to explain the meaning he has discovered. Pontalis, in his discussion of James's short story, has said: "Everything the critics touch goes flat. They want nothing less than to integrate into the general, authorized, established usage a language whose very impetus consists in the fact that it neither could nor would coincide with that usage but must find a style of its own. The critic's modest-seeming explanations as regards his intentions change nothing as regards his procedure; the fact is that he explains, compares, and interprets. These words can drive one mad."¹¹ Not the least cause of this irritation is the fact that even now literary criticism so frequently proceeds to reduce texts to a referential meaning, despite the fact that this approach has already been persistently questioned, even at the end of the last century.

Nevertheless, there must have been a basic need for the explanation of the meaning of literary works-a need which the critic could fulfill. In the nineteenth century, he had the important function of mediating between work and public in so far as he interpreted the meaning as an orientation for life. This exalted position of the critic and the inlaid link between literature and criticism was explicitly formulated by Carlyle in 1840, with his lectures on Hero-Worship; the critic and the man of letters took their places in the Pantheon of the immortals, with the following eulogy: "Men of letters are a perpetual Priesthood, from age to age, teaching all men that a God is still present in their life; that all `Appearance,' whatsoever we see in the world, is but a vesture for the `Divine Idea of the World,' for `that which lies at the bottom of Appearance.' In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world's Priest: - guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time.”¹²

This emotional paean, endowing the world with the attributes of God, outlines a principle which for James, just fifty years later, has already become a historic and invalid norm. The critic who reaches behind `Appearance' is, for James, a man reaching into the void. In James's view, appearances are no longer the veil concealing the substance of a meaning; now they are the means to bring into the world something which has never existed at any other time or place before. But so long as the critic's mind is fixed on the hidden meaning, he is incapable-as Vereker tells him - of seeing anything; it is scarcely surprising that ultimately the critic considers the novelist's work to be totally worthless,<sup>13</sup> for it cannot be reduced to the pattern of explanation whose validity the critic never questions. What the reader then has to decide is whether this `worthlessness' applies to Vereker's novel or to the critic's approach.

We may now turn to the second frame of reference that orients the critic. In the nineteenth century, the critic was a man of importance largely because literature promised solutions to problems that could not be solved by the religious, social, or scientific systems of the day. Literature in the nineteenth century, then, was deemed to be of functional importance, for it balanced the deficiencies resulting from systems which all claimed universal validity. In contrast to previous eras, when there had been a more or less stable hierarchy of thought systems, the nineteenth century was lacking in any such stability, owing to the increasing complexity and number of such systems and the resultant clashes between them. These conflicting systems, ranging from theological to

scientific, continually encroached on one another's claims to validity, and the importance of fiction as a counterbalance grew in proportion to the deficiencies arising from such conflicts. Literature was able to encompass all existing theories and explanations to an extent that would have been impossible in the previous century, and it was able to offer its solutions wherever these systems reached the limits of their own effectiveness. It was only natural, then, for readers to seek messages in literature, for fiction could offer them precisely the orientation they felt they needed in view of the problems left behind by the various systems of the age. Carlyle's view that "Literature, as far as it is Literature, is an ‘apocalypse of Nature,’ a revealing of the ‘open secret’”¹⁴ was in no way out of the ordinary. The critic in James's novel is also in search of the ‘open secret’, and for him it can only be the message that will ratify the claim or the book to be a work of art.

However, the critic fails - the work does not offer him a detachable message; meaning cannot be reduced to a ‘thing’. The plausible norms of the nineteenth century can no longer function, and the fictional text refuses to be sucked dry and thrown on the rubbish heap.

Now this negation of historical norms is countered by the opposing perspective of Corvick. He seems to have found the ‘secret’, and when he grasps it the effect is so powerful that he cannot find words to express the experience; instead he finds that this experience begins to change his life: "It was immense, but it was simple-it was simple, but it was immense, and the final knowledge of it was an experience quite apart."¹⁵ A series of coincidences prevents the critic from meeting Corvick and learning the reasons for this transformation.¹⁶ And when at last it does seem that they might meet, Corvick falls victim to an accident.¹⁷ Then, like some philological detective, the critic begins to pump Mrs. Corvick and her literary works and, after her death, her second husband Drayton Deane - in a ceaseless effort to find what he thinks to be the ‘open secret’. But when he finally learns nothing and has to assume that Deane does not know the decoded message of Vereker's novel, he can only console himself by vengefully indicating to Deane that the latter's dead wife must obviously have kept the most important thing from him.¹⁸ The truth-seeker can satisfy his unfulfilled longings by an act of revenge!

But Corvick's discovery is also withheld from the reader, as he is oriented by the perspective of the critic. The result of this is a tension that can only be relieved by the reader's detaching himself from the

orientation offered him. This detachment is remarkable, in that normally the reader of fiction accepts the lines laid down for him by the narrator in the course of his “willing suspension of disbelief.” Here he must reject such a convention, for this is the only way he can begin to construe the meaning of the novel. Reading, as it were, against the grain is far from easy, for the presumptions of the critic - i.e., that meaning is a message or a philosophy of life - seem so natural that they are still adhered to even today. Indeed, the reaction to modern art is still that same old question: “What's it supposed to mean?” Now if the reader is to reject the perspective of the critic, the implication is that he must read against his own prejudices, but the readiness to do so can only be brought about by making the critic's perspective responsible for withholding what the reader wishes to know. The process then consists of the reader gradually realizing the inadequacy of the perspective offered him, turning his attention more and more to that which he had up to now been taking for granted, and finally becoming aware of his own prejudices. The “willing suspension of disbelief” will then apply, not to the narrative framework set up by the author, but to those ideas that had hitherto oriented the reader himself. Ridding oneself of such prejudices - even if only temporarily - is no simple task.

The large-scale withholding of information about the secret uncovered by Corvick sharpens the reader's perception to the extent that he cannot avoid noting the signals that permeate the vain search for meaning. The most important one is given the critic by Vereker himself, although unlike Corvick he fails to understand it: "For himself, beyond doubt, the thing we were all so blank about was vividly there. It was something, I guessed, in the primal plan, something like a complex figure in a Persian carpet. He highly approved of this image when I used it, and he used another himself. `It's the very string,' he said, `that my pearls are strung on'!"¹⁹ Instead of being able to grasp meaning like an object, the critic is confronted by an empty space. And this emptiness cannot be filled by a single referential meaning, and any attempt to reduce it in this way leads to nonsense. The critic himself gives the key to this different quality of meaning, which James also underlines by calling his story The Figure in the Carpet, and which Vereker confirms in the presence of the critic: meaning is imagistic in character. This was the direction Corvick had taken right from the start. He tells the critic, ". . . there was more in Vereker than met the eye,"²⁰ to which the critic can only reply: "When I remarked that the eye seemed what the printed page

had been expressly invented to meet he immediately accused me of being spiteful because I had been foiled: '²¹

The critic, working with unstinting philological pains, never gives up his attempt to find a meaning that is precisely formulated on the printed page. And so he sees nothing but blanks which withhold from him what he is seeking in vain on that printed page. But the formulated text, as Vereker and Corvick understand it, represents a pattern, a structured indicator to guide the imagination of the reader; and so the meaning can only be grasped as an image. The image provides the filling for what the textual pattern structures but leaves out. Such a ‘filling’ represents a basic condition of communication, but although Vereker actually names this mode of communication, the allusion has no effect on the critic, because for him meaning can only become meaning if it can be grasped within a frame of reference. The image cannot be related to any such frame, for it does not represent something that exists; on the contrary, it brings into existence something that is to be found neither outside the book nor on its printed pages. However, the critic cannot follow this thought through, and if he did accept what Vereker says, in respect of meaning being revealed in an imaginary picture, it would be because at best he envisaged such a picture as the image of a given reality, which must exist independently before any such process can get under way.

But it is absurd to imagine something with which one is already confronted. The critic, however, cannot see this, and so he remains blind to the difference between image and discourse as two independent concepts that cannot be reduced to one. His approach is characterized by the division between subject and object which always applies to the acquisition of knowledge; here the meaning is the object, which the subject attempts to define in relation to a particular frame of reference. The fact that this frame is (apparently) independent of the subject is what constitutes the criterion for the truthfulness of the definition. However, if meaning is imagistic in character, then inevitably there must be a different relationship between text and reader from that which the critic seeks to create through his referential approach. Such a meaning must clearly be the product of an interaction between the textual signals and the reader's acts of comprehension. And, equally clearly, the reader cannot detach himself from such an interaction; on the contrary, the activity stimulated in him will link him to the text and induce him to create the conditions necessary for the effectiveness of that text. As text and reader thus merge into a single situation, the

division between subject and object no longer applies, and it therefore follows that meaning is no longer an object to be defined, but is an effect to be experienced.

This is the situation which James thematizes through the perspective of Corvick. After he has experienced the meaning of Vereker's novel, his life is changed. But all he can do is report this extraordinary change - he cannot explain or convey the meaning as the critic seeks to do. This change also affects Mrs. Corvick, who after her husband's death embarks on a new literary venture which disappoints the critic in so far as he cannot work out the influences that might enable him to discover the hidden meaning of Vereker's novel.²²

It may be that James has exaggerated the effect of the literary work, but whatever one's opinions may be in this respect, there can be no doubt that he has given a very clear account of two totally different approaches to the fictional text. Meaning as effect is a perplexing phenomenon, and such perplexity cannot be removed by explanations - on the contrary, it invalidates them. The effectiveness of the work depends on the participation of the reader, but explanations arise from (and also lead to) detachment; they will therefore dull the effect, for they relate the given text to a given frame of reference, thus flattening out the new reality brought into being by the fictional text. In view of the irreconcilability of effect and explanation, the traditional expository style of interpretation has clearly had its day.
 

THE LINGERING OF THE CLASSICAL NORM OF INTERPRETATION

It would not be unfair to say that, at least since the advent of `modern art,' the referential reduction of fictional texts to a single `hidden' meaning represents a phase of interpretation that belongs to the past. This is becoming increasingly obvious in present-day literary criticism; titles such as Against Interpretation²³ or Validity in Interpretation²⁴ show that both the attackers and the apologists realize that techniques of interpretation can no longer be practiced without due consideration of the presuppositions underlying them. Susan Sontag's essay "Against Interpretation" is an unequivocal attack on the traditional exegesis of works of art:

The old style of interpretation was insistent, but respectful; it erected another meaning on top of the literal one. The modern style of interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs ‘behind’ the text, to find a sub-

text which is the true one. . . . To understand is to interpret. And to interpret is to restate the phenomenon, in effect to find an equivalent for it. Thus, interpretation is not (as most people assume) an absolute value, a gesture of mind situated in some timeless realm of capabilities. Interpretation must itself be evaluated, within a historical view of human consciousness.²⁵

It would appear that modern art and literature are themselves beginning to react against the traditional form of interpretation: to uncover a hidden meaning. If so, this bears out an observation applicable since the era of Romanticism, that art and literature react against the norms of prevailing aesthetic theory in a manner that is often ruinous to that theory. An outstanding example that makes play with the `what does it mean' approach to art is pop art. Susan Sontag describes this as a total rejection of interpretation: "Abstract painting is the attempt to have, in the ordinary sense, no content; since there is no content, there can be no interpretation. Pop Art works by the opposite means to the same result; using a content so blatant, so `what it is,' it, too, ends by being uninterpretable."²⁶ But in what sense is pop art uninterpretable? It appears simply to copy objects and so fulfills precisely those expectations with which most people view a work of art. But pop art makes this `aim' so utterly blatant that the theme which emerges from it is the rejection of representation through art. By thus making an exhibit out of the representational intention of art, pop art thrusts the `meaning' under the nose of the interpreter, whose sole concern was to translate the work into that meaning. What emerges is a quality integral to art, namely, that it resists translation into referential meaning. But what pop art does is to confirm what the interpreter seeks in art, only to confirm it so prematurely that the observer is left with nothing to do if he insists on clinging to his conventional norms of interpretation. The strategic effect of this technique is to give a shock to the observer who wants to bring into play his tried and trusted methods of viewing art.

Now there are two important implications to be drawn from this situation. First, pop art thematizes its own interaction with, the expected disposition of its observer: in other words, by explicitly refusing even to contain a hidden meaning, it directs attention to the origins of the very idea of hidden meanings, i.e., the historically conditioned expectations of the observer. The second implication is that whenever art uses exaggerated effects of affirmation, such effects serve a strategic purpose and do not constitute a theme in themselves. Their function is, in fact, to negate what they are apparently affirming. Thus pop art follows a maxim already formulated as long ago as the sixteenth century by Sir

Philip Sidney, in his Defence o f Poesie: ". . . the Poet, he nothing affirmeth."²⁷ If the poet appears deliberately to `affirm', his goal is in fact to induce his reader or observer to reject.

The split between present-day art and traditional norms of interpretation has a historical reason which often manages to escape the attention of modern critics. The continued application of a norm that involves scrutinizing a work of art for its hidden meaning, shows that the work is still regarded as a vehicle through which truth can assume its perfect form. Now, historically the absolutist claims of art have tended to dwindle, while the expository claims of interpretation have become more and more universal.

"It is well known that Hegel considered art to have come to its end, and it is not unknown that by this he meant art could no longer be viewed as the characteristic appearance of truth. No work of art was now - as Schelling would have had it - the medium through which the spirit could come to itself and, sunk in self-contemplation, attain knowledge of its own essence . . . even the Christian world could only incorporate art in the more comprehensive context of faith: The very diversity of modern life makes it quite impossible for any work of art to represent a totality."²⁸ But if a modern work of art is to succeed in communicating even a partial reality, it must still carry with it all the old connotations of form, such as order, balance, harmony, integration, etc., and yet at the same time constantly invalidate these connotations. For without this process there would be the illusion of a false totality such as the ideological art of today is once more trying to bring about; and yet without the connotations of form it would be impossible to communicate anything.

This structure reveals the awareness that art as the representation of the whole truth has become a thing of the past. It is therefore all the more surprising to note the continuing application of a norm of interpretation which seeks to restore the universal claims which art has in fact abandoned. Is there more to this than just a historical hangover? What has happened now is that a kind of twisted dialectic has sprung up, through which a norm of interpretation arising from the classical ideal of art closes its eyes to the historical break manifested by modern art. As a result, interpretation itself takes on a universal character; it is as if the old claims of art have been handed down to interpretation,

and now interpretation has taken over those claims which are no longer applicable to art. Interpretation seems to be trying to compensate for what art has lost. The situation becomes less of a mystery when one sees the norms of interpretation actually applied to modern art itself. The resultant `meaning' of modern works generally turns out to be something very abstruse; but as these norms demand a clear representation, modern art is frequently described as decadent. For in the light of these norms modern art falls behind what has already been achieved. We are thus confronted by the curious situation in which an interpretation originally subservient to art now uses its claims to universal validity to take up superior position to art itself. We can see here precisely what happens when the traditional norm of interpretation ignores the changes in art's conception of itself, resolutely refusing to acknowledge the limitations of the norms that orient it. In its application to present-day art it begins to interpret itself instead of interpreting the art.

The interpretative norm that sought for the hidden meaning pinned the work down by means of the prevailing systems of the time, whose validity seemed to be embodied in the work concerned. And so literary texts were construed as a testimony to the spirit of the age, to social conditions, to the neuroses of their authors, and so forth; they were reduced to the level of documents, and thus robbed of that very dimension that sets them apart from the document, namely, the opportunity they offer us to experience for ourselves the spirit of the age, social conditions, the author's neuroses, etc. It is a vital feature of literary texts that they do not lose their ability to communicate; indeed, many of them can still speak even when their message has long since passed into history and their meaning no longer seems to be of importance. This ability cannot, however, be deduced from a paradigm that regards the work of art as representing particular, prevailing thought systems or social systems.

This paradigm took it for granted that art, as the loftiest mode of knowledge, was the representation of a whole, if not the actual form of truth itself. Modern art has shown us that art can no longer be regarded as the representative image of such totalities, but that one of its basic functions is to reveal and perhaps even balance the deficiencies resulting from prevailing systems. It cannot, therefore, be an expression of those systems; and so the style of interpretation developed during the nineteenth century has the effect today of seeming to degrade the work as the reflection of prevailing values, and this impression is a natural consequence of the fact that such norms sought to interpret the work in the Hegelian sense as the "sensual appearance of the idea.” In this respect, too, the art of our own times has created a new situation: in place of the Platonic correspondence between idea and appearance, the

focal point now is the interaction between the text and, on the one hand, the social and historical norms of its environment and, on the other, the potential disposition of the reader.

And yet the fact remains that the nineteenth-century style of interpretation has continued right up until the present, and if modern art has still failed to bring about any basic change in it, there must be some deep-seated reason for our holding onto these traditional norms. Georg Simmel has given an indication as to what these reasons might be:

The most elementary stage of the aesthetic impulse expresses itself in the construction of a system which sets the objects in a symmetrical picture . . . once they had been yoked to the system, the mind could grasp them at the maximum of speed and, so to speak, with the minimum of resistance. The form of the system breaks down as soon as one has inwardly become equal to the significance of the object and does not need first to derive it from a context of other objects; this stage also marks the fading of the aesthetic charms of the symmetry with which one first arranged the elements. . . . Aesthetically, symmetry means the dependence of the individual element on its interactions with others, and it also denotes the closedness of the relevant circle; whereas asymmetrical forms give each element a more individual right, and allow more room for free and far-reaching connections.²⁹

Symmetry here is understood with its classical connotations of balance, order, and completeness. Simmel has laid bare the motivation underlying the effort to harmonize existing elements. Symmetry relieves one from the pressure of the unfamiliar by controlling it within a closed and balanced system. If one recognizes the fact that harmonization is an attempt to grapple with the unknown, then one can more easily understand why classical aesthetics have continued to exercise such influence on the interpretation of art. As classical norms offered a frame of reference that guaranteed a high degree of assurance, their value extended far beyond their historical origins. Simmel makes it perfectly plain that symmetry and the construction of systems result from a strategic intention and do not have any ontological character whatsoever. But as art in the post-classical period became increasingly nonrepresentational, so the link between work and interpretation became more and more tenuous and the classical frame of reference more and more indispensable, as it appeared to be the only means to form a judgment on an art that was continually disintegrating into an ever greater degree of disorder.

A revealing example of this development is to be seen in New Criticism. This marks a turning-point in literary interpretation to the extent that it rejects the vital elements of the classical norm, namely, that the work is an object containing the hidden meaning of a prevailing truth. New Criticism has called off the search for meaning - known as the "extrinsic approach." Its concern is with the elements of the work and their interaction. And yet, even in this newly opened territory, the old values still manage to come creeping through. The value of the work is measured by the harmony of its elements; in modern terms this means that the more disparate those elements are at first, and the harder they are to relate to one another, the greater will be the aesthetic value of the work when, at the end, all its parts are joined together in a harmonious whole. The harmonization and eventual removal of ambiguities - this is the unacknowledged debt of New Criticism to the classical norm of interpretation. But in this case harmony takes on a value of its own, whereas in the past it was subservient to the appearance of truth. Thus New Criticism has separated artistic technique from its pragmatic functions and has made it into an end in itself - in this way both setting and reaching its own limits.

New Criticism has changed the direction of literary perception in so far as it has turned attention away from representative meanings and onto the functions operating within the work. In this respect it has shown itself to be in keeping with its time; where it has fallen down is in its attempt to define these functions through the same norms of interpretation that were used in uncovering representative meanings. A function is not a meaning - it brings about an effect, and this effect cannot be

measured by the same criteria as are used in evaluating the appearance of truth.

Now the fact that this traditional norm has survived the changes in both art and criticism requires further explanations. One of the chief reasons for its longevity is that the establishment of consistency is essential to all comprehension. Large-scale texts such as novels or epics cannot be continually `present' to the reader with an identical degree of intensity. Eighteenth-century writers were already aware of this fact and actually discussed possible reading structures in their novels. A typical instance of this is the metaphor used by Fielding,³⁰ Scott,³¹ and others, whereby the reader is likened to a traveler in a stagecoach, who has to make the often difficult journey through the novel, gazing out from his moving viewpoint. Naturally, he combines all that he sees within his memory and establishes a pattern of consistency, the nature and reliability of which will depend partly on the degree of attention he has paid during each phase of the journey. At no time, however, can he have a total view of that journey.

In a survey of recent Milton criticism, with special reference to Paradise Lost, Philip Hobsbaum uses the concept of "availability" in describing the diverse interpretations:

It is a commonplace, indeed, to say that the longer the work the less chance there is of its being flawless. But there is a tendency among critics to patch up flaws, to make connections which may not be there for other readers; and this is, no doubt, a result of the very exigency of criticism and the paradox contained within it. . . . The problem, as I see it, is that, in order to keep the work in his mind as anything more than detached fragments, the critic has to make some effort at interpretation, no matter how private, how personal, the result may be. The temptation then is to pass on that result in toto to the reading public, expressing indignation, as often as not, at the disagreement such a proceeding will inevitably arouse. Surely it is more graceful, as well as more honest, to concede that, however unified a work may be in intention, it is sadly fragmented in effect? . . . This is what I have called the concept of availability: just as all of his experience is not available even to the most gifted creative writer, so all of the writer's work is not available to even the most interested reader.³²

The lack of availability of the whole work during the act of comprehension, which is brought about by means of the `moving viewpoint', is the condition that necessitates consistency-building on the part of the reader

- a process which we shall be discussing in detail later on.³³ What concerns us here is that this process apparently has recourse to such classical norms as the totality, harmony, and symmetry of the parts with which the particular interpretation is dealing. The question is whether the consistency-building arises out of these norms, or whether the norms merely we to legitimize the consistency that has been produced.

If we take Paradise Lost as our example, the less available - for whatever reason - the whole epic is to the critic, the more stringent will be the consistency he establishes. Any elements of the work that do not fit in with this blanket concept are simply covered over. Now this means that the lack of availability is compensated for by the interpolation of habitual and extraneous standards, which ultimately characterize the critic more than they do the work itself. If the availability of the text is increased and the reader is confronted with experiences that render his habitual orientations uninteresting or even irrelevant, then he is obliged to modify these orientations; but a lack of availability serves to heighten the degree to which he will project his own standards. And this confirms the suspicion that the uniform meaning of the text - which is not formulated by the text - is the reader's projection rather than the hidden content. The many different consistencies that have been established would seem to prove that the interpretations have not arisen from classical norms, but use these norms as a justification, for all these consistencies serve to make the epic available as a whole, even, or indeed especially, where apparent inconsistencies resist the process of harmonization.

This brings us to a further implication of Hobsbaum's observations. The lack of availability conditions consistency-building throughout both the writing and the reading process. In this respect the critic is the same as any other reader, for through the consistencies that he establishes he tries to grasp the work as a single unit. The moment the critic offers his interpretation he is himself open to criticism, because the structure of the work can be assembled in many different ways. A hostile reaction to his interpretation will indicate that he has not been sufficiently aware of the habitual norms that have oriented his consistency-building. The hostile reader, however, will be in the same position, for his reaction is liable to the dictated by standards that are equally habitual. The difference between the two is that the critic must then seek to explain why his own consistency-building is appropriate to the work in question. If he then has recourse to classical norms of interpretation, there will still be the suspicion that he is using aesthetic norms in order to justify his own private acts of comprehension. For it must not be forgotten that the classical norms of interpretation were based on the assumption that each work

represented the appearance of truth, which demanded harmony between all the different elements in order for it to be acceptable.

Consistency-building is quite a different matter. As a structure of comprehension it depends on the reader and not on the work, and as such it is inextricably bound up with subjective factors and, above all, the habitual orientations of the reader. This is why modern literary works are so full of apparent inconsistencies - not because they are badly constructed, but because such breaks act as hindrances to comprehension, and so force us to reject our habitual orientations as inadequate. If one tries to ignore such breaks, or to condemn them as faults in accordance with classical norms, one is in fact attempting to rob them of their function. The frequency with which such attempts are made can be gauged merely from the number of interpretations bearing the title: A Reader's Guide to....

Herein lies one of the main reasons for the continued application of classical norms of interpretation. They can be used not only in judging the value of the work but also in establishing the consistency of ‘available’ sections of the text; the many different, subjective decisions that the reader takes in the process of consistency-building can thus be made to appear as if they were all regulated by one and the same norm. In addition, it can be said that the symmetry postulated by these norms guarantees a frame of reference that makes the unfamiliar accessible if not controllable. Clearly, then, the fact that these norms have survived so long after the period of their inception is due to these factors. A reference that seems to apply equally to acts of comprehension and to the structure of the work, that offers standards for assessing the hitherto unfamiliar, and that also appears to be present in the work as one assembles its consistency, must inevitably seem like a gift of nature.

If interpretation has set itself the task of conveying the meaning of a literary text, obviously the text itself cannot have already formulated that meaning. How can the meaning possibly be experienced if - as is always assumed by the classical norm of interpretation - it is already there, merely waiting for a referential exposition? As meaning arises out of the process of actualization, the interpreter should perhaps pay more attention to the process than to the product. His object should therefore be, not to explain a work, but to reveal the conditions that bring about its various possible effects. If he clarifies the potential of a text, he will no longer fall into the fatal trap of trying to impose one meaning on his reader, as if that were the right, or at least the best, interpretation. The "critic," says T. S. Eliot, "must not coerce, and he must not make judgments of worse or better. He must simply elucidate: the reader will form

the correct judgment for himself."³⁴ As is evident from the variety of responses to modern art, or to literary works down through the ages, an interpreter can no longer claim to teach the reader the meaning of the text, for without a subjective contribution and a context there is no such thing. Far more instructive will be an analysis of what actually happens when one is reading a text, for that is when the text begins to unfold its potential; it is in the reader that the text comes to life, and this is true even when the ‘meaning’ has become so historical that it is no longer relevant to us. In reading we are able to experience things that no longer exist and to understand things that are totally unfamiliar to us; and it is this astonishing process that now needs to be investigated.

Notes
1. Henry James, The Figure in the Carpet (The Complete Tales IX), Leon Edel, ed. (Philadelphia and New York, 1964), p. 276.
2. Ibid., p. 276, when the critic meets Vereker, with whom he wishes to discuss his review, he says: ". . . he should not remain in ignorance of the peculiar justice I had done him."
3. Ibid., pp. 276 ff.
4. This is how J.-B. Pontalis, Nach Freud, transl. by Peter Assion et al. (Frankfort, 1968), p. 297, describes the problem in the section devoted to James's The Figure in the Carpet.
5. James, The Figure in the Carpet, p. 279.
6. Ibid., p. 285.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 281.
9. Ibid., pp. 283f., 285.
10. Ibid., p. 284.
11. Pontalis, Nach Freud, p. 297.
12. Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (Everyman's Library; London, 1948), p. 385.
13. James, The Figure in the Carpet, p. 307.
14. Carlyle, On Heroes, p. 391.
15. James, The Figure in the Carpet, p. 300.
16. Ibid., pp. 301ff.
17. Ibid., p. 304.
18. Ibid., pp. 314ff.
19. Ibid., p. 289.
20. Ibid., p. 287.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., p. 308.
23. Susan Sontag, Against Interpretntion and other Essays (New York, 1966).
24. E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven, 1967).
25. Sontag, Against Interpretation, pp. 6f.
26. Ibid., p. 10.
27. Sir Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesie (The Prose Works III), Albert Feuillerat, ed. (Cambridge, 1962), p. 29.
28. Dieter Henrich, "Kunst und Kunstphilosophie der Gegenwart (Überlegungen mit Rücksicht auf Hegel)," in Immanente Asthetik-Asthetische Reflexion (Poetik und Hermeneutik II), W. Iser, ed. (Munich, 1966), p. 15.
29. Georg Simmel, Brucke und Tur, Michael Landmann, ed. (Stuttgart, 1957), pp. 200f., 205. E. H. Gombrich, Norm and Form ( London, 1966 ), has clearly shown the degree to which classical norms have dominated art history right through to the present day. "That procession of styles and periods known to every beginner-Classic, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Mannerist, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classical and Romantic-represents only a series of masks for two categories, the classical and the non-classical" (p. 83) . Consequently, all descriptions of nonclassical styles are in "terms of exclusion" (p. 89). This, however, leads to problems as regards the interpretation of works of art: "For exclusion implies intention, and such an intention cannot be directly perceived in a family of forms" (p. 90). But so long as these forms constituted a yardstick for evaluation, nonclassical forms could only be described "as a catalogue of sins to be avoided" (p. 89).
Here we see the structure of the classical mode of interpretation, whose frame of reference and evaluation consisted in the norms of "regola, ordine, misura, disegno e maniera" (p. 84). This classical mode of interpretation is therefore referential, in so far as it measures all works of art against a catalogue of established norms. Such a referential model, with all its normative definitions, reveals its obvious commitment to a certain historical conception of art, thus betraying its inherent historicity. The moment a work of art needs to be examined in terms of its individuality or its functions, the referential model must be replaced by an operational one. This is more appropriate anyway in the study of modern art, but it also enables us to gain access to works of the past by laying bare their functions and the conditions governing their reception. It goes without saying that all modes of interpretation have their limitations. The borders of classical norms became evident when their claim to universal validity was tested against the challenge of modern art. It suddenly became apparent that the classical aesthetics of contemplation no longer found anything to contemplate, though this `exhaustion' had not exhausted the function of art.
30. See Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, XVIII, 1 (Everyman's Library; London, 1957), p. 364.
31. See Walter Scott, Waverley ( The Nelson Classics; Edinburgh, no date ), p. 44.
32. Philip Hobsbaum, A Theory of Communication (London, 1970), pp. 47f.
33. See Part III, Chap. 5, pp. 118-25.
34. T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood (University Paperbacks; London, 1960), p. 11. Eliot's remark is to be found in the essay "The Perfect Critic," originally published in 1928.
 

2. The Rudiments of a Theory of Aesthetic Response