Inevitably Message Arrives Too Late

Abstract

This study investigates the way the authorial message becomes discernible, as well as the way it is decoded and put into coherent order by the hermeneut. The analysis starts from the ascertainment of the total freedom of the hermeneut. His only duty is to understand. The interpreter is forced to understand the message conveyed by the text, the image, the signs. Consequently, the only limit of interpretation derives from the comprehension of the message. The text and the text’s author can communicate different things. The main problem of the hermeneut derives from the fact that the interpretation starts together with the text, whereas the text’s message (of the image) takes shape at the end of the text. Any interpreter is eager to interpret the message: he does not wait for the message; he initiates the interpretative process as soon as he makes in contact with the text, texture, image and signs. More precisely, the interpretation starts before the message: the message arrives too late to be the element that initiates and determines the meaning of interpretation. Consequently, the interpretation catches the message only as a late lecture of the text. The message arrives too late, almost always. To understand the text as a text, the image as an image, to catch the real meaning of the text, the hermeneut must reread the text. Thus, a correct interpretation is a reinterpretation.