Excuse me for the next series of moments as I try to display what exactly it is that needs to be said. This will be an expose of a few of the more major points involved in the reading of Shakespeare and with that name also entails the reading of any form of Literature.
I have very little faith into the depths that analytics can go. When looking at a text it is nearly impossible to form a concise argument of what the cumulative words are saying based solely on the words. Two major problems arise; the first being that the writer may not know even what he is writing about and therefore his style may not include all the steps needed for an analytical deduction.
The second is a far bigger problem and a greater grasp of the functions of words and symbols will be useful in its elucidation. Alphabets are merely symbols. Symbols arranged in a coherent pattern that our brains have been programmed through education to understand. The Nazi swastika for example is a symbol. Yet since it is often conceived of commonly as picturesque we view it synthetically, that is it opens our minds to a spectrum of everything "Nazi" entails. We say a picture can paint a thousand words (which is a synthetical viewpoint) and that a storyteller paints a picture. Yet instead of viewing the storytellers painted picture as yet another picture that melts into a thousand more words, common thought believes that we have all we need in the story for its picture and need only deal with the material inside said story. This viewpoint is analytical, saying that the only deduction need be made when in fact a closer look shows that (just as words fall apart into symbols, and symbols fall back into shape of words) this analytical deduction leads to a bottom in which the only way to continue, the only way for a true revelation of what the text is saying, is an induction.
Intuition is a form of induction. To know what is being said before it can be "proven" (proof, which in today's society, in the literary criticism entails that analytical deduction is the only certain, only definitive "truth") is often looked down upon. "How can you know that?" "What proof can you show me from the text?". The creative process, the aesthetics of an author (horribly incomplete in definition), does not serve only its analytical side, therefore we should not think that looking at a text in such a way will ever, ever give us a full understanding of its meaning. This is in fact part of the ailing wound in popular literary criticism today; it has forgotten how to look. It has subjected itself to the popularized scientific method and applied it therein. It has reasoned itself into a box of ill-formed ideals about how things are in literature and in doing so has dragged literature kicking and screaming into its box. In its effect literature has fallen off.
No "one" (one being the majority) reads literature anymore.The critics and reviewers no longer are being equipped with the needful intellectual tools to understand and elucidate the wisdom in our words.Those who have these tools are looked down upon by the literary "elite" (being self-claimed) critics. These critics who have become so enraptured by their own misunderstanding of literature that they, being considered literary sovereigns over what need be read, cannot even grasp the straws of what is being said in the novel. Whether it be from sheer ignorance created by their impractical education or their own arrogance to admit they cannot grasp the text, they claim it is "junk", "the novel of a self-involved sociopath", "little importance to today's society" and other meaningless definitions that upon a closer inspection show us that they know nothing; that they have yet to even discuss what it is that is junk, that has 'little importance to today's society" because they never grasped anything from the novel and so they blamed the novel! By doing this they create a vortex in which the lack of reading is blamed not upon themselves but upon the artists.
This lack of reading should not be blamed on the artist who does not "connect" with the reader, but instead on the misinformed critics of our era that, are in turn, misinforming the public readers. The reason grocery markets are stuffed with literary smut is because our literary "elite", our critics and reviewers can only grasp what is being said, when nothing at all is really being said. This writing that is based upon intellects developed solely in analytics provides the reader with the minutest details that allow the reader never, ever, ever, to think synthetically. In fact why would a reader expound on an idea when the writer never inspires it through his own style? And more broadly why would a literary critic or reviewer think anything other than analytically about a novel when that is all he has been trained to do by his schooling? Mark Twain had it right, never let your schooling get in the way of your education.
Oh but anyone in this mindset will probably miss my point entirely. They'll complain of form, or mistakes in spelling, words that aren't words, that the paragraphs were too long, or that this was certainly not needed. They'll think all of these and never take a step back to meditate on what was being said because they are to involved with how things "should" be in their "box".
Thank you to everyone that thinks this way for ruining literature and dragging us back into this dark age. You think that you are a part of literature. That you are part of its reviving, but really you are dragging it kicking and screaming into an abyss.
And for anyone asking how this is about Shakespeare, I would point out that in order to have mind babies we need to first get rid of our erectile dysfunctions.
I would add as a postscript that I am not referring to any of the secondary texts that Dr. Sexson has subscribed. In fact I do believe that, thought I have not read all of them, they subscribe to a mode of intelligence looked down upon in today's society (and in doing so, contain vaster knowledge). In regards to the editorial notes of the Pelican, I would advise noting Robin Williams' role in the play The Dead Poet's Society.
No comments:
Post a Comment