On Reading

The philosopher Paul Ricoeur compared reading a text to the execution of a musical score, an analogy that highlights the plurality of possible readings while keeping those readings situated in the text. Just as each musical performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto differs from all others, even those others performed by the same musician, while still remaining true (or false) to the score, so too will each reading of Moby-Dick differ and realize new semantic possibilities of Melville’s novel. Each reading of a text and each execution of a score involves interpretation; each interpretation brings forth more than the intended and inherent meanings of the text and sheet. What the author and composer write functions more as a guide for interpretation than a dictator of meaning. Nevertheless, the reader has no more liberty to make the text mean anything he wants it to mean than the musician has the liberty to play impromptu melodies when performing Chopin. Reading is an exercise of pluralism, not relativism. It gives birth to a surplus of meaning, not its absence.