Vol. 43 No. 1 1976 - page 147

LETTERS
Systems Analysis
PR:
I would like to comment on
Frank Kermode's recent essay in
PR
"Hawthorne's Modernity" be–
cause the brilliance of Professor
Kermode's analysis of Hawthorne's
novels in that essay clarifies how
mistaken is his theoretical point.
He illustrates Hawthorne's com–
plex awareness of the hermeneutic
problems involved in constructing
a univocal moral allegory in order
to
demonstrate the more general
claim that, since "the old contracts
between the signifier and the signi–
fied, between the authoritative
maker and the reader certain that
there is a right interpretation, are
badly broken" in modern writing,
"we must interpret the book ac–
cording
to
the order and disorder
of our own imaginations. "
It
is ironic that the one state–
ment of Hawthorne's Kermode
takes as unequivocally authorita–
tive is his formu laic insistence that
"the reader may choose among
these theories" for interpreting an
action. Hawthorne could not have
written his tales had he taken his
own advice, for their power lies not
in eliciting single interpretations
but in rendering the complex ques–
tions any self-respecting interpreter
must take into account if he is to
understand a dramatic situation.
Indeed we can be grateful that Pro–
fessor Kermode does not really take
Hawthorne's advice either. His
147
essay does not gain its power as a
subjective attempt to propose an
interpretation ofa story; it describes
complex patterns and self-conscious
historical dimensions in texts and
allows the texts to take on their full
meaning through the interplay of
these patterns. He does not pro–
pose a meaning, but like most
good critics points out objective
dimensions of the text not noticed
by other readers and necessary to
its full realization .
Let
me
suggest two abstract
problems in Professor Kermode 's
theory. First he simplifies the ac–
tion of a literary text. Texts often
complement the dramatic actions
narrated by foregrounding as part
of their objective texture the im–
plicit author's attempt to come to
terms with the problems involved
in determining their meanings. To
take an extreme example, very few
of us would
feel
that someone pro–
posing a single thematic reading of
a Kafka novel had read the novel
very well. Second , his theory allows
no middle ground between single
objective interpretations and sub–
jective recreations of a text. It ig–
nores the fact that what matters in
a good literary text is not the mean–
ing it proposes for experience but
the quality and consistency of the
questions it leads the reader
to
entertain about the possible ways
of constructing significance for a
dramatized action . Like many
modern critics , Kermode falls into
the trap of taking seriously as liter–
ary dilemmas the problems in
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