What breaks the enchantment?

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

:
Originally Posted by Bb:
Originally Posted by davem

There will inevitably be some unconscious baggage which the reader brings to their experience of the art, but it should not be dwelt on, because it gets in the way. [end quote from davem]

I think there is a logical inconsistency here which sidesteps my question [end Bb quote]


Let me clarify. It is a fact that there will be some unconscious baggage which the reader brings to their experience of the art, but we should not dwell on that fact because it gets in the way of what we're talking about here. What is inevitable, what we can't change, we may as well put on one side as we can't do anything about it. I should have re read the post & amended that sentence to read 'but that should not be dwelt on.'

Quote:
At best, one can demonstrate and act upon a willingness, a desire to listen, to learn, to understand,


That's all we are capable of doing, & its enough (ie it shows sufficient respect to the artist) if we make the best effort we can to do just that.

Quote:
but the very unique and individual terms and nature of the submission will in fact be part of how the experience is informed.


Has art anything to teach us? Can we learn anything from it that we didn't already know? If we can, then I would say it is that 'unknown thing' (rather than what we already know - our 'baggage') that is important, & the thing we should make an effort to take in.

Time to make several observations.

First of all, it is, I think, an error to claim that we should ignore the unconscious baggage because it gets in the way of the discussion here or because we can't do anything about it. In fact, such a proceeding represents a willful blindness to the main point. There is as much a problem with your model being squewed as the other model suggested here, but you would simply ignore that problem as if it doesn't exist.

Second, to chastise the 'reader' model (for want of a better word) as being disrespectful of the original author's intent is to characterise this position incorrectly. The issue is not a deliberate, self-centred idea that only the reader knows best. The issue is that very often the complete and full intentions of the author cannot be fully revealed in any one reading. This is particularly so in the case of an author such as Tolkien whose credo was to make many things implicit rather than explicit: he wanted actively participating readers, for in action lies moral achievement. Nor does this reader model assume that the reader has nothing to learn or refuses to learn, but merely rehashes his or her own prior knowledge.

The model you propose is based on logical and psychological impossibilties. It is impossible for the reader to completely wipe out his or her identity and be acted upon solely by a text. Saul on the road to Damascus may have been blinded and become Paul, but did not eradicate all of Saul's nature. There is no going back to Eden, where experience is immediately apprehended innocently and purely. We live not only with the Fall, but with Babel.

Thus, any understanding of how a text works with the reader must explain how translation happens rather than ignore the basic need for it, for even speaking the same language requires translation. It requires all the resources which make us human and a willingness to consider the unknown. That does not mean that in reading for pleasure we wipe out all previous experience. There can be no return to an always virginal first reading. All previous reading pleasures come with the reader when he or she embarks upon a new text. Readers might want to put out of mind bad past heartbreaks, and often they do try hard, but short of losing memory that previous experience is always part of the reader. (And even losing memory is no guarantee that the experience will not have some effect.) And they might even be desirous of experiencing past happy love affairs again--that too, with either good or bad possibilties.

Why do we reread Tolkien so much? To return to that first experience? Or to see things there we didn't 'see' the first time? One of the paradoxes of reading is that both are probably true, and any explanation of what happens when we enter subcreation has to account for all possible experiences, and not presume one only.

I think SaucepanMan hit it right when he said that there is no one right way to legislate reading pleasure. It is not serial monogamy.

A last note: many have contributed here but time and length makes it difficult to address everyone. My thoughts do develop from reading everyone's posts even if I don't mention all and even if I tend to focus on just one or two perspectives.