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kestrellApologies to those who have already read this, but I thought I would repost a comment I made earlier this week. The comment was a response to a post made by a friend on the modes of imposing specific meanings on literature in college courses.
I think such inclinations to control the outcome of interpretation
spring from the same sort of attitude,
shared across centuries, literary movements, and institutions of learning, which is to say,
Nno student should ever be entrusted with a poem, it isn't safe,
and thus the teacher is of godlike importance within the process of interpretation, otherwise one or the other, the student or the poem,
is likely to become excited and produce an irreversible explosive event,
though I can't say which is the spark and which the gunpowder,
but just imagine all those Guy Fawkes running amok amongst the Parliament of poetry--
it's no wonder professors put on their Inquisitor caps
and try to smother every glowing ember.
I think such inclinations to control the outcome of interpretation
spring from the same sort of attitude,
shared across centuries, literary movements, and institutions of learning, which is to say,
Nno student should ever be entrusted with a poem, it isn't safe,
and thus the teacher is of godlike importance within the process of interpretation, otherwise one or the other, the student or the poem,
is likely to become excited and produce an irreversible explosive event,
though I can't say which is the spark and which the gunpowder,
but just imagine all those Guy Fawkes running amok amongst the Parliament of poetry--
it's no wonder professors put on their Inquisitor caps
and try to smother every glowing ember.
