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Post by Oliveman on Nov 10, 2007 18:52:39 GMT -5
Recently, I've been looking into the meanings of some fairly ambiguous songs. For one song, "Stairway to Heaven", I came across numerous interpretations. The most interesting distinction between these meanings I found were those that looked into the history of the songwriter and those that looked purely at the words. This difference is present in critiques of artistic works pretty much universally.
So, I was wondering what the value is of looking at it from one perspective or the other. On the one hand, looking into what may have caused an artist to compose what they did, and the other, just looking at the art itself.
I tend to value the latter way. Just looking into the history of the song or poem or whatever seems like the cold act of deceiphering a puzzle. Obscure references, in my opinion, don't make a work of art- the art does.
On the other hand, though, I think knowing the history could be a means of understanding the piece, but it never reveals everything by itself.
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Post by dangerjane on Nov 12, 2007 12:59:11 GMT -5
I think both aspects are equally valuable. I was looking into the meaning of the song 3rd Planet by Modest Mouse the other day, and I'll tell you it's HEAVY stuff, it really has a lot going on, meaning-wise. And you can interpret it somewhat on itself, on just the words alone, but it means a lot more if you know a bit about the shit the band has gone through in years past.
Looking at a song or a poem or something in either way is looking at it one-dimensionally. People DO sneak in stuff about themselves and their lives. You have to take both into account.
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Post by Oliveman on Nov 12, 2007 15:28:16 GMT -5
Well sure, but I don't think the "meaning" of the song is that those events simply match up to the song. I the song gives insight into the meaning of the events, and also that the songwriter's attitude towards whatever event becomes more evident through the song.
Take "American Pie" - nearly every lyric in the song was found to be a reference to some band or some song. Does that mean the song is just about those bands or songs? I don't think so at all. In fact, I think this was the songwriter's way of commenting about things in life through both the meaning of the song itself and by connecting that meaning to all those real life things that happened. To me, the "day the music died" stands for something - it is a metaphor, not just a real date. Simply finding the date he talks about doesn't satisfy the need for the song's meaning. I think that stopping there detracts from it - one-sided, like you said
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Kyle
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~~~~~ Trust Beyond See ~~~~~ "One light will tear apart the night"
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Post by Kyle on Nov 12, 2007 19:25:52 GMT -5
This is a basic argument in communication studies: is the meaning of the message in the sender or the receiver? Although, it's silly for someone to say there's only significance in one side or the other.
Then again, I also hated the teachers in high school who insisted "This is the purpose of that author." Did you ask them? There are authors who simply write and then discover meaning afterward, meaning they didn't intend.
Then, there are authors who write just for the money.
Take J. K. Rowling, for example. "Well, if I thought everyone would have been so interested in Dumbledore being gay, I would have said so sooner." She's either ignorant or crafty. Either way, boo on her =P What's her intentions? What meaning should we take from that??
I tried to keep my rant on-topic =D
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Post by eliflauta on Nov 12, 2007 19:41:01 GMT -5
I think "American Pie" is supposed to be about the death of Buddy Holly. Secondly, how could you not suspect that Dumbledore was gay? Surely there was a reason an egotistical strapping lad like himself back in his teenage years never had a girlfriend. :-P Anyway, I believe that in order to interpret something, you have to know why it was written, especially in poems with high metaphorical content like Poe's Raven. I know that when I read poems that I've written, I have to think back to what I was reacting to or what I was thinking about when I wrote it, otherwise I look something like this: Poems and stories can still be enjoyed with the background knowledge, but they might be interpreted incorrectly without the background.
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Kyle
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~~~~~ Trust Beyond See ~~~~~ "One light will tear apart the night"
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Post by Kyle on Nov 12, 2007 19:53:51 GMT -5
Welcome back, eliflauta! I missed ya =)
I didn't suspect he was gay because I never read the books XD
If you're saying "Oh, Da Vinci must have meant _____," then you're opening yourself up to be incorrect, as you said.
However, if you're saying, "Oh, to me, the Last Supper means ____," that isn't wrong, per se--it's simply a meaning that Da Vinci may not have intended =)
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Post by dangerjane on Nov 13, 2007 1:02:44 GMT -5
In response to Oliver--
I never contradicted that the artist's experiences are just as valuable to interpreting meaning as the work itself...
I only argued that an interpretation isn't complete without both components. You're sort of creating a disagreement where there isn't one.
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Post by Oliveman on Nov 16, 2007 18:31:41 GMT -5
Oh, didn't mean to- only meant to not kill the thread. Not every thread has to be an argument, after all... (that being said, I will no start argue with Kyle over the many merits of Rowling...)
As far as background goes, I think that it can also obfuscate an otherwise clear meaning, especially if there are specifics from real life that are referenced in the art.
Three examples: Back to my American Pie example, I think that to just think the song is "about" the death of Buddy Holly is to ignore the power of the song... in my opinion it's using the subject matter of Buddy Holly to say a greater message. This is sort of correllary to how lyrics themselves may have meaning, but put it into a song - it takes on a whole new context and, oftentimes, meaning. The last example is if a poem is about a specific event, say, snowboarding, how often does such a poem really talk about snowboarding? It's really about the ideas revealed through the subject of snowboarding, not snowboarding itself.
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DamaNegra
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Angolera de cora?ao
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Post by DamaNegra on Nov 21, 2007 20:54:13 GMT -5
Then again, I also hated the teachers in high school who insisted "This is the purpose of that author." Did you ask them? There are authors who simply write and then discover meaning afterward, meaning they didn't intend. This reminds me of something that happened recently. We had a literary coloquim at our city, centered around the work of Vargas Llosa. Vargas Llosa himself showed up for the last day, just to say hi, maybe out of curiosity. One of the exponents had given a piece about the numerology that could be found in Vargas Llosa's work, and when she finished, she asked Vargas Llosa: "Isn't that right? Isn't that what you intended to show?" And he replied: "Well, all of that sounds really good and it's very logical. But what's numerology?" Sometimes, authors are not even aware of all the thigns that slip through their fingers while creating a work of art. It's not a matter of "what the author wanted to say". Sometimes is it, sometimes it's not. And, as Kyle has pointed out, unless you go back and ask the authors what they meant, you're certianly not going to ever find a correct answer to that question. Some theoretists have already adressed this problem, but I haven't read one who has come, for me, to a satisfactory conclussion. Some of them say that this leak is inevitable because, without a reference to a reality, a literary work could not exist (I think it was Searle). Rodríguez Fernández even went as far as saying that the text is only a part of the literary work, but the text is just one more element of it. This is also a commonly accepted view in russian structuralism. So, now we're faced with this new question: is the text all there is to a novel, or a song, or a short story, or a poem, or is the text only one more of the components? I think that answering this question would help us better Oliver's.
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