CHAPTER XXVI

Judgment and Divergent Readings

_The Prime Minister_—The misunderstanding—in so far as it is a misunderstanding—is purely a misunderstanding. . . .

_The Leader of the Opposition_—With the utmost goodwill on this side, I find myself with far less grasp of the whole subject than I had. . . .—_The Times_, 8th July 1924.

Ambiguity in a poem, as with any other communication, may be the fault of the poet or of the reader. The ambiguities due to erratic reading are as important for criticism as others, and practically more troublesome. There are strong social incentives for overlooking them. Talking to one another we assume, in nine cases out of ten like the merest simpletons, that our readings agree, and that when we differ in our opinions it is something else, not our experiences but our judgments about them which are at variance. Most discussion about works of art is waste of time _as communication_ for this reason. It may, of course, have great value as a means by which people may severally develop their own reactions.

These assumptions which so densely obscure the issue raise innumerable practical difficulties both for criticism and for the construction of a theory of criticism. It is well worth while to analyse typical situations a little further.

The closing lines of the Fifth Sonnet of Wordsworth’s River Duddon series will afford a convenient instance:—

Sole listener, Duddon! to the breeze that played With thy clear voice, I caught the fitful sound Wafted o’er sullen moss and craggy mound, Unfruitful solitudes that seemed to upbraid The sun in heaven!—but now, to form a shade For thee, green alders have together wound Their foliage; ashes flung their arms around; And birch trees risen in silver colonnade. And thou hast also tempted here to rise, Mid sheltering pines, this cottage rude and grey; Whose ruddy children, by the mother’s eyes Carelessly watched, sport through the summer day, Thy pleased associates—light as endless May On infant bosoms lonely nature lies.

Two readers who found themselves, as they thought, in entire agreement as to the excellence of this sonnet, and especially as to the beauty of its close, were surprised shortly afterwards to discover that they had been reading quite different poems. By the one the last sentence was interpreted as saying that the gloom of lonely nature, of sullen moss and craggy ground, however it might seem later on in life, had no oppressive effect upon the children. By the other it was read as saying that however barren and gloomy might be the scene, actually lonely nature there in itself had no such character, but was, as it were, floating “light as endless May on infant bosoms”. The two readings, by throwing their effect back upon what had preceded and in addition completely altering the rhythm of the close, produced what it is no exaggeration to describe as two different poems. Neither would be uncharacteristic of Wordsworth, although doubtless the first reading is the one to be accepted.

This exemplifies what is perhaps the rarest case,[68] that in which agreement as to value covers an actual grave difference in the experiences valued. More usually there is some genuine source for the agreement, to be found in some common character of the experiences. What this common character is may be difficult to discover. It may be merely the rhythm, or the cadence of some phrase, or the form of a sequence of references. But sometimes, if it is a more obvious part, such as a description or metaphor, a discussion between critical readers, who are aware that their experiences differ, will bring it to light.

Another common case is exemplified by some famous discussions of _Hamlet_. It is curious that people with such different conceptions of the character of Hamlet himself and of the action of the play, have been able to agree none the less as to its value as a whole, apart, of course, from its incidental values. Much has to be discounted in estimating this agreement. On some interpretations praise of the play as a whole is certainly insincere. On the interpretation which makes Claudius the hero, whose tragic frailty lies in the fact that his long-suffering patience with the baseless suspicions of the crazy nuisance Hamlet breaks down in the end and brings the noble monarch to disaster, there would be little beyond the playwright’s subtlety which could honestly be commended. But with all allowances it seems certain that widely different interpretations have seemed to good critics to result in the same peculiar high value of tragedy. The explanation is that tragic value is a general not a specific character of responses. Just as a collision between motorcars and a collision between ships are equally collisions, so the impulses whose equilibrium produces the _catharsis_ of tragedy may be very varied, provided that their relations to one another are correct.

Very many of the values of the arts are of this general kind. Besides the experiences which result from the building up of connected attitudes, there are those produced by the breaking down of some attitude which is a clog and a bar to other activities. From Blake’s “Truly, my Satan, thou art but a dunce”,[69] to Voltaire’s “Bon père de famille est capable de tout”, such works can be found in all degrees. It matters little what the detail of the impulses which make up the obstructing attitude for different people in each case may be. This often varies, but when the attitude collapses the effect can be agreed upon. The great masters of irony—Rabelais and the Flaubert of _Bouvard et Pécuchet_—are the chief exponents of this kind of exorcism.

[68] For another instance see Browning, _Parting at Morning_.

[69] _The Keys of the Gates: To the Accuser who is the God of this World_.