Interpretation and Undecidability

Abstract

INTERPRETATION is always hoping to prove its validity by recovering the author's intention. A vain hope, since we can find out intent only by exploring the text itself, and the text is perceivable only through the grids of preconception and assumption that the reader brings with him to the reading process. A valid interpretation, then, must arrive at a stable picture of the text.1 This stability (the equivalent, in the reading act, of the immovable monumentality we expect in a work of art) is the impress left upon the reader's mind by constants observed again and again as he and others keep returning to the text. For a constant to be detected, the textual components it affects must be repeatedly and unavoidably perceived. Such constants are what the reader may ultimately rationalize as the author's intent, but whether or not he does so rationalize, they provide the proper interpretation, since there will necessarily be only one: only one because it must encompass all constants, and conversely, no recurrence will prove stable unless our reading is complete and wholly submissive to the letter of the text. If it is neither, our reading will be subject to change and easily shaken by any textual components overlooked before. Thus the only real obstacle to interpretation, to our perception of constants and our consistent decipherment of them, is an incomplete reading. But barring mere absentmindedness, an incomplete reading of a poetic text, with its narrow compass, can have only two causes: failure to recognize a verbal sign for what it is and/or improper identification of its referent.