I don't normally like dark-mode versions of things, but this one is pretty darn cute :)
wow... i really messed up... tempted to delete your comment and edit it but that would be dishonorable...
You're right: the idea that an author holds a secret which we try to guess is simplistic. I used to write sample pieces for students as part of creative writing to demonstrate this (because they had the "author" in the classroom, so we could overcome that part of the issue)
Students invariably interpreted my writing in ways I didn't expect. It was great
that piece was inspired by a similar experience - someone read something i wrote and had an interpretation i hadn't thought of at all, but that struck me as equally valid
Fascinating article and conversation! I've had similar experiences. Funnily enough, interpretation of spiritual texts (i.e.: the field of "hermeneutics") actually discourages people from reading their own meaning into passages ("eisegesis") versus trying to understand what the author was attempting to convey specifically ("exegesis").
Where it gets really interesting is when considering how personal approach and social application relate. Is it a story with layer upon layer of metaphor or is it intended to be a legal framework that people live by? What if it is both simultaneously? These questions are not always easily answered.
The interplay between author's intention and the reader's personal experience is such a fascinating topic, and it always seems like there's something new to be said about it. Two ideas that come to mind from a literary theory course I took are (1) Foucault's author function, where he replaces the author with something more abstract,
and (2) wolfgang iser's theory that the world in the readers mind comes into existence precisely when there are gaps in the author's text. I.e. the power of fiction is completely derived from its subjectivity and openness to interpretation.
References for anyone interested: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Foucault_Author.pdf https://www.jstor.org/stable/468316
I find the foucault essay kind of hard to follow, but it was very influential. Iser's perspective was very memorable to me and has been a big influence on how I think about both reading and writing
if i recall correctly i was inspired by something i read in the "polemical introduction" of frye's "anatomy of criticism" while on 3 cups of coffee. can't promise anyone else will be able to find what i did in it, though. still have to go back and finish the rest sometime too.
Think I've found it - from Frye: "The absurd quantum formula of criticism, the assertion that the critic should confine himself to 'getting out' of a poem exactly what the poet may vaguely be assumed to have been aware of 'putting in', is one of the many slovenly illiteracies that the absence of systematic criticism has allowed to grow up . . .
". . . That is, the critic is assumed to have no conceptual framework: it is simply his job to make a poem into which a poet has diligently stuffed a specific number of beauties or effects, and complacently extract them one by one, like his prototype Little Jack Horner."
Japanese was too tough for me, and I'm coming up on 5 years in Japan. Kudos to anyone who can keep up with the rough grind.
Lots of good general insights about language learning here. One thing I find strange about Japanese learning is how "communal" it seems to be. There are thousands of little groups on the internet devoted to Japanese, and every day someone new pops in to announce they started learning it, asking questions that have been asked a million times, like "what manga are good for beginning Japanese learners?"
I guess it sounds like I’m mocking people by phrasing it this way. It’s just so different from how I learned Chinese, which was quite a solitary experience. Even now, whenever I want to talk in English about Chinese stuff that I find fascinating, I always feel like the only other people who care are a handful of Chinese Americans. Other sorts of people who I feel should be interested aren’t at all.
This ends up being unhealthy for me, because my contrarian inclinations cause me to go from just talking about Chinese stuff I like to becoming a full on China apologist, which is of course a completely fruitless endeavor from every perspective imaginable.
i think getting too involved in the "communities" is another potential pitfall... you might find yourself spending all your time chatting in english about learning japanese in some discord server instead of actually learning it