Once upon a Time: Interpretation in Literature and Medicine

Abstract

Bridges linking literature and medicine are rooted in the bedrock of two profoundly human propensities. First, to be human is to encounter life through events, to know our existence as a sequence of occasions. Second, existence is a never-ending opportunity and demand for inter- pretation. When we examine the seismic rumblings that Karl Jaspers described as boundary situations (joy, despair, anxiety, guilt, grief), these two essential aspects of humanity stand out. These cardinal human dimensions, historic and hermeneutic, define the lives and work of au- thors or critics and those who suffer or care for the suffering. An un- derstanding of the distinctively human foundation jointly supporting both medicine and literature emerges from a closer consideration of these two facets of daily life. Childhood stories rightly begin with the phrase Once upon a The words characterize the way that all human beings experience, not only fairy tales or the broader range of narrative, but also life itself. Daily life (when experienced as sane or normal) is not felt to be an oblong blur. We know it in discrete occasions, lived integers. Things happen concretely, uniquely, once upon a specific time. Our very sense of time is a placing of ourselves in the stream of living. The Greek word for measured time, chronos, defines a series of self-orientations, each with a definite past, present, and future. Every tick of the clock marks a birth and a perishing in our existence. Those deeds, however, are rudimentarily and inevitably interpre- tive. Even the young child moves rapidly beyond random movements, translating actions into meanings. We are incurably historic beings, em- bedded in nature but transcending it by recognizing the significance of our acts or endowing them with meaning. This is only the beginning of the interpretive burden and joy, the