I n t e r p r e t a t i o n1 3 7to peer behind a poem to see whether the poet really felt as he says
he did, unless he is declaring his passion for his secretary and you
happen to be his wife. The experience of a poem is not best
thought of as something ‘behind’ it, which the poet then struggles
to convey into language. What is the experience ‘behind’ the words
‘Thou still unravished bride of quietness’? And can we identify it
without simply repeating the words? Language in poetry is a reality
in itself, not simply a vehicle for something distinct from it. The
experience which matters is the experience of the poem itself.
The relevant feelings and ideas are those which are bound up with
the words themselves, not something separable from them. Bad
actors ruin good poetry by foisting their feelings upon it in lavish
emotional displays, not realising that the feelings are in some sense
present in the language itself.
Surely, though, an author must be sincere? Sincerity, as
it happens, is not a concept that makes much sense in critical
discussion. Nor does it sometimes make much sense in real life.
We do not justify Attila the Hun by pointing to the fact that he
was sincere in what he did. What would it mean to say that Jane
Austen was sincere in portraying the odious Mr Collins, or that
Alexander Pope was being sincere when he wrote ‘For fools rush in
where angels fear to tread’? We can speak of pieces of language as
being vacuous or visceral, bombastic or intensely moving, histri-
onic or shot through with loathing. But this is not the same as
talking about an author in these terms. A writer may strive to be
sincere yet end up producing a bogus- sounding piece of art. One
could not be burningly sincere in words which were absurd or
completely empty. I could not say ‘I love you as I love a cornflake
spinning on its nose in the armpit of an isosceles triangle’
and passionately mean it. There is nothing there to mean,