What
do you mean?
A crackle of papers was heard as students hurriedly
searched for the prescribed text of the poetry.
“Ok. Let us begin today” the teacher addressed the class
and continued,
“Page number 11; Topic - Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening”. The teacher introduced the poet named Robert Frost.
The teacher
started reading,
“Whose
woods these are I think I know.
His
house is in the village though;”
Watching the students’ reaction the teacher asked, “How
many of you understood who is the owner of the woods?”
“May be some villager sir.” A very few voices came out,
but an air of thrill and enthusiasm prevailed.
“But I have another idea. The owner is the god.”
“How?”
“This is what we call as problem of interpretation” the
teacher explained.
Take the word “rod” and consider what it means to a land
surveyor and what it means to a gangster, both presumable speaking English. Words
do have a variety of sometimes unrelated meanings, and these are not inherent
in the words themselves but in their usage. Usage depends on the
experiences associated with the use of words. The various meanings of a
word may overlap in spots. But it is no less important to know that other areas
of their meanings may be far apart.
The first stanza of the poem is
“Whose
woods are these? I think I know
His house
is in the village, though
He will
not see me stopping here
To watch
his woods fill up with snow.”
The surface analysis is that Frost is stopping in some
woods that belong to a person, or near a person’s cabin or house, so the woods
belong to somebody else. Frost is saying that the person isn’t there and that
he’s at his house in the village.
The deeper analysis is that Frost is walking through some
woods when they are filled with snow. He really knows that they are God’s woods
and that God can see them. However, Frost is not concerned with being in God’s
woods other than enjoying them and the house in the village represents God in
heaven. (courtesy : Bridget Ilene Delaney from Yahoo Voices)
Problems in interpretation
Let me illustrate by presenting a problem in
interpretation. This is an untitled poem by Emily Dickinson:
Where
ships of purple gently toss
On seas
of daffodil,
Fantastic
sailors mingle,
And then-the
wharf is still.
When I gave this poem to interpret, almost universally students
read the poem as being descriptive of a scene in a garden or meadow. A consensus
of their interpretations runs as follows:
Tall purple flowers stand above the daffodils
and are tossed in the breeze. Bees and butterflies (“fantastic sailors”) mingle
with the flowers. The wind stops, and then the garden is still.
-
Let us call this “garden”
reading
Besides this let me place the interpretation which I hope
to prove the correct one:
The poem is a description of a sunset. The “ships
of purple” are clouds. The “sea of daffodil” are skies coloured golden by the
setting sun. The “fantastic sailors” are the shifting colours of the sunset,
like old-fashioned seamen dressed in gorgeous garments of many colours brought
from exotic lands. The sun sinks and the wharf (the earth where the sun set –
the scene of this colourful activity) is still.
-
Let us call this “sunset”
reading
How do we demonstrate the “sunset” reading to be correct
and the “garden” reading to be incorrect? By some such arguments as this:
v “Ships
of purple” is a more apt metaphor for clouds than for flowers, both as to size
and to motion (we often speak of clouds as “sailing).
v “Daffodil”
would normally be in the plural if it referred to flowers rather than to
colour: why would not the poet say “On a sea of daffodils?”
v “Mingle”
fits better the intertwining colours of the sunset than it does the behaviour of
bees, which mingle with flowers perhaps but not, except in the hive, with each
other (and the flowers here are “seas”).
v The “garden”
reading provides no literal meaning for “wharf”. The “garden” reading, to
explain why the wharf becomes “still”, demands the additional assumption that
the wind stops (why should it? And would the bees and butterflies stop their
activity if it did?) ; the disappearance of the sun, in contrast, is inevitable
and implicit in the sunset image.
v Finally,
the luxuriance of imagination manifested in the poem is the more natural consequence
of looking at clouds and sunset sky than at flowers. We look at clouds and see
all sorts of things – ships, castles, animals, landscapes – but it takes some
straining to conjure up a scene such as this one from a garden.
The “garden” reading is therefore incorrect because it
fails to account for some details in the poem (the wharf) because it is
contradicted by some details (the singular use of “daffodil”), because it
explains some details less satisfactorily than the “sunset” reading (“ships of
purple”, “mingle”), and finally because it rests on assumptions not grounded in
the poem itself (the wind stops). The “sunset” reading explains all these
details satisfactorily.
At last this is from my side:
According to me a poem is an ink blot in a Rorschach
personality test. There are no correct or incorrect readings: there are only
readings which differ more or less widely from a statistical norm.
Very importantly no poet, however, likes to be caught in
the predicament of having to explain his own poems. He cannot say, “What I really
meant was …….” without admitting failure, or without saying something different
than what his poem said.
Happy reading.
Be your own boss atleast when you are reading.
