Well I do recall that Mark Twain, I believe, said that all the symbolism
that was being found in his books was not really there, yet the people
kept
finding it. It raises an interesting question: who is correct, the author
or the interpreter.
*********************************
I encountered a situation that throws light on the situation. An author
worked on a secular poem. On completion, it had clear theological
overtones, a fact which greatly surprised the author, who was the one
discovering it. Who was right, the writer at work or the one reading the
completed poem? Would the discovery made by an interpreter rather than
the author have changed the situation?
On the other hand, there are many "interpretations" which are read into
innocent works by those who have an ax to grind. I recall a book may
years ago consisting of a series of "reviews" of Milne's _Winnie the
Pooh_, written from Freudian, Jungian, Marxist, etc., viewpoints--a
delightful tour de force by a single author whose name I cannot recall.
C. S. Lewis once complained that he was regularly receiving inquiries
from earnest students writing their theses inquiring whether he did not
mean so-and-so when, he said, he had been at pains precisely to deny that
point. My analysis of the situation is that the students believed,
"Anyone as bright as Lewis must agree with my [correct] views."
With deliberate deception, self-deception and discovery complexly tangled
in the human situation, untangling matters is so difficult that we
usually solve the problem with Alexander's approach to the Gordian knot.
Of course, my whack rightly divides the word of truth. ;-)
Dave