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The Interplay between Creation and InterpretationAuthor(s): Wolfgang IserSource: New Literary History, Vol. 15, No. 2, Interrelation of Interpretation and Creation(Winter, 1984), pp. 387-395Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468862
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Discussion
The Interplay between Creation
and Interpretation
WolfgangIser
AT ACKLING the interrelationship between creation and interpre-tation turned out to be such a formidable task that it appears
inappropriate to criticize the ideas advanced in these articles.
There is a general trend to be observed in the current critical dis-
cussion-at least in the humanities-toward concentrating on
showing up the shortcomings of positions put forward by the oppo-nent, implying one has the answer which he, however, refrains from
divulging. Instead of voicing disagreement with what has been sug-
gested in these articles, I might more profitably trace the underlyingtrends concerning creation and interpretation and find out why it
proves so hard to conceptualize the issue. What actually did these
articles zero in on, and how do we account for the diversity of the
conclusions provided? Are there common features to be discerned
and, if so, what do they indicate?
None of the participants actually advocated a strict separation be-
tween creation and interpretation. The intertwining of these two ac-
tivities was more or less upheld by all of them, even at times to the
degree of eliminating the distinction altogether. Yet whenever this
happened, new distinctions began to emerge, irrespective of an all-
pervading reluctance to pinpoint the resulting difference. Rather,creation was cast as an interpretive endeavor, and interpretation at
times elevated to a creative act. This very interchange of attributes,
however, could become meaningful only if some notion persisted as
to what might distinguish the two concepts from one another. And
yet, natural though this may seem, the very distinction either eluded
or defied conceptualization.Norman Holland was inclined to make the distinction collapse in
favor of what he calls the identity-feedback picture which appears to
govern both interpretation and creation. As the two are so alike, he
maintains we could use the same words for them. Still, he bases his
umbrella concept on findings in Frost, who set up the world in paired
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THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN CREATION AND INTERPRETATION
God's word; a hermeneutics of the implicit meaning, focusing on the
interplay between the covert and the overt inscribed in language it-
self; a hermeneutics of the fusion of horizons, telescoping past and
present into each other; and finally a hermeneutics of suspicion, un-
covering the suppressed. If the inaccessible is to be made available,it can never be equated with any one of these interpretive techniques.What they have in common, though, is a duality which both shows
up the problem of interpretation and provides the stimulus for its
resolution. The resolution itself, however, requires in each instance
an informed guess, which at the most is prestructured by the respec-tive framework without being generated by it. What turns this typeof interpretation into an art is the way in which it carves out struc-
tured blanks in the frameworks concerned in order to kindle a guidedintuition. This does not mean, however, that the blanks give a free
play to divination; instead, they provide a conscious control for a leapof the imagination required whenever the unbridgeable has to be
bridged.There are a few inferences to be drawn from the discussion thus
far. Interpretation is basically a cognitive act designed to tackle some-
thing noncognitivein nature. Hence a difference has to be overcome.
If it is erased, new dualities, even duplicities, begin to surface; if it is
upheld, areas of indeterminacy are marked off, the delineation of
which depends on the presuppositions each interpretive framework
has brought to bear. Indeterminacies signify that which escapes the
cognitive act; although shaped by the latter, they indicate somethingunfathomable in terms of cognition. Simultaneously, they function as
a propellant for their removal, and whenever this happens, interpre-tation is transmuted into creation. The vacancy, then, existing within
thecognitive
act is filledby
a concretevision,
which in turn loses all
the credentials cognition is able to provide and can appeal only
through its forcefulness to spontaneous acceptance. In this respect
interpretation is always on the verge of becoming creative, yet the
creation brought about is not ex nihilo but conditioned by cognition,
although paradoxically intended to repair what cognition fails to
achieve. And it is this very "failure" which becomes productive insofar
as it imprints itself on the creation arising out of the limits of cognitivediscourse. This is, then, further evidence for Hilary Putnam's state-
ment: not everything goes, as everything which can be brought aboutis conditioned by something else.
So far we have considered only one-though prominent-type of
the interrelationship between creation and interpretation. Just as in-
terpretation necessarily extends into the creative act, the relationshipmay also work the other way round, as can be seen in Richard Shiffs
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NEW LITERARY HISTORY
paper. Creation in the pictorial arts cannot be conceived in terms of
pure innovation, as novelty for its own sake does not seem to work.
Originality in any artist will succeed only if it can be represented; thisrequires conventions, the deformation of which results in "cor-
recting" them according to the artist's vision. Correction, however,inscribed into shared conventions or even time-honored traditions,defies conceptualization, as it breaks established bounds and thus
transmits itself as an experience-an event exceeding referentiality.Events of this kind release an impulse that aims at understandingwhat has happened. The ensuing interpretation cannot immediatelybe qualified as a cognitive act; it is first and foremost a reception of
the experience provided by the painting. Only after reception hastaken place does interpretation get under way, a processing of the
very experience. This is then related to frameworks which incorpo-rate it into what is familiar or determine why defamiliarization has
occurred. Whatever the case may be, interpretation turns out to be a
cognitive appropriation of an experience generated by a creative act.
Given these conditions, creation and interpretation are fairly sepa-rated from one another, though interlinked by the attempt to trans-
late art into cognition.
This separation, however, entails one important caveat strictly tobe observed in the interpretive endeavor: never to interpolate the
product of interpretation into the artwork in a manner that tacitlyassumes it is an integral property of that work itself. Interpretationis only a way of coping with experience, the appropriation of which
marks it off from creation. The latter "corrects" the very conventions
to which interpretation as a form of processing an art experienceremains committed.
At this juncture Hilary Putnam's remarks become pertinent. By
outlining interpretation as both "context sensitive" and "interest rel-ative," he implies in effect that the interrelation between creation and
interpretation is basically genre-bound. Genre has to be taken in the
broadest sense of the term: it is related to the different types of
discourse which try to tackle the problem from a literary critic's, phi-
losopher's, or art historian's point of view. Hence the interconnection
between creation and interpretation changes shape in each of the
types of discourse, in consequence of which the interconnection turns
out to be not a preordained given-as our tacit knowledge may lead
us to surmise-but rather something to be constituted in as manydifferent ways as there are intents prevailing in the various dis-courses. This holds equally true for the features attributed to bothcreation and interpretation; for distinguishing markers are depen-dent on the respective presuppositions governing the cognitive im-
pulse of the generically different discourses.
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If distinctions arrived at so far are molded by genre, this clearlyindicates that there is no transcendental stance allowing us to come
up with an umbrella concept of either creation or interpretation. Still,there is no need to sound a note of despair, for the genre-conditioned
interrelationship highlights a great many possibilities through which
creation and interpretation interlock, and these possibilities would be
severely reduced if any monolithic definition were to prevail.This is indirectly borne out by Umberto Eco's article on metaphor,
which can be conceived as an illustration of how important it is for
the relationship at issue to be kept open-ended. Although Eco did
not address himself to the topic of creation and interpretation, the
process of unlimited semiosis which he describes as the hallmark ofmetaphor might serve to spotlight a peculiar interlinkage between
the two. To view metaphor as a pulling together of dictionary and
encyclopedia entails their mutual encroachment. The resulting con-
densation and displacement of either lexical denotations or cultural
references bring about an interplay between presence and absence.
The encyclopedia eclipses lexical meaning, which, though displaced,remains in view and simultaneously reflects back on the encyclopedia,
uncovering the covert motivation operative in the creation of the
metaphor. This makes metaphor, if not exactly open-ended, at leastopen to inferences to be drawn by its potential recipient who maynow begin to understand his or her own encyclopedia by having been
given a viewpoint outside that in which he or she is otherwise en-
closed. Furthermore, though metaphor is structured by encyclopedia,it also restructures the encyclopedia by opening up hitherto unfor-
seeable modes of similarities and dissimilarities. Thus metaphor, aris-
ing out of a condensation of dictionary and encyclopedia, tends to
reshuffle both of them. It is the encyclopedia which spurs the imag-
ination into action through which the dictionary gets reinterpreted,allowing for new inferences to be made regarding the encyclopedia.
This conception of metaphor epitomizes the interlocking of two
different activities: the disruption of established conventions and the
reintegration of the disrupted, thereby providing a pattern of changefor both the dictionary and the encyclopedia. Although united by
metaphor, the two activities can be distinguished from one another:
disruption is a creative act; patterning a reinterpretation. In this re-
spect, metaphor combines the uncombinable or, to phrase it differ-
ently, this very combination can only be metaphorically represented,
just as each discourse discussed can only figure the interrelation in
terms of genre.Now the question arises whether the whole issue is actually on the
verge of lapsing into relativism. Although it may look like it, it doesnot seem to be the case, as we have only reached the limits of the
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epistemological argument. Yet we know, as Hilary Putnam puts it,human nature is simply not surveyable, and cognition as a route to
incommensurability appears to lead to a dead end. This impasse alertsus to the fact that creation and interpretation are perhaps not so
much epistemological as anthropological issues, which retroactively
explains why genre turned out to be an adequate framework for
scrutinizing the interrelationship in question. The differences in
genre reflect different human needs, just as metaphor reflects the
paradoxical wish to pattern change itself while simultaneously fa-
voring breaks in continuities. The moment the anthropological issue
moves into focus, creation itself can be
stripped
of the
many
inter-
pretations it was accorded in our culture, not least by the Romantics,who magnified creation as a divine inspiration, the fruits of which
promised an improved and intensified life.
Yet creation is, as can be inferred from Rene Girard's position,
something in the nature of a scandal because it disrupts conventions
and infringes boundaries. How powerful these acts of transgressionare can be gauged from the attempts to attenuate their destructive-
ness by ritualizing them, turning violence into frozen images of scape-
goatingand
victimage.Desire
is, accordingto
Girard,the
drivingforce powering what he considers our mimetic longing. And as there
is no preordained object of desire, human beings are prone to scan-
dalize one another the more they turn into stumbling blocks for each
other, thereby frustrating this innate drive. Thus whatever is in the
nature of an obstacle turns into a scandal and is bound to unleash
incontrollable force. This idea restores to creation its archaic dimen-
sion, revealing its insoluble ambivalence by showing that the act of
generation itself entails destruction.
Now we can ask where we have arrived and what it possibly means.Creation emerged basically as an act of transgression, ranging from
defamiliarization through pattern breaking to scandal, simulta-
neously divesting creation of its various cultural notions as the
crowning activity of man. In its scandalizing violence it exposes ar-
chaic features of the human creator. Interpretation, on the other
hand, proved to be an attempt at translating events brought about
by creation into existing frameworks for both their comprehensionand manageability. Its cognitive operations are designed to control
the incontrollable.Yet as two basic human activities creation and interpretation are
not just opposed to each other but are in constant interplay. Creation
is never pure creation but always dependent on given contexts within
which it occurs and by which it is conditioned. Although creation
exceeds existing limitations and even scandalizes hallowed conven-
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THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN CREATION AND INTERPRETATION
tions, it nevertheless is unable to free itself totally from what it out-
strips. In this respect creation is a negative interpretation. Interpre-tation, in turn, is never pure cognition. Translating something which
may range from the unfamiliar to the unavailable into given frame-
works requires an imaginative leap at some point. In this respect,
interpretation as a cognitive appropriation of the inaccessible is a
guided creation. Yet guided creation isjust as different from creation
conceived in terms of pattern breaking as negative interpretation is
from the cognitive intent of interpretation. What may, at a superficial
glance, have looked like an interchange of attributes now turns out
to be a new difference inscribed into both creation and interpretation,the very interlocking of which will not lead to a final collapse of the
distinction but rather issue into an unfolding of further differences.
But if, in the final analysis, difference persists, how then do we ac-
count for the interplay of these two activities which basically point in
diametrically opposed directions: creation is transgression and inter-
pretation refamiliarization?
Again, the answer cannot be attempted in terms of epistemology
any longer, as there is no transcendental stance allowing for a con-
ceptualizationof the
split.It has rather to be
approached throughanthropology, as the interplay in question reflects something inherent
in the human situation. For brevity's sake, I put forward two as-
sumptions. The human being, as Arnold Gehlen maintains, is inferior
to the animal, since its instinctual system is defunct, in consequenceof which there is a pressing need to repair this deficiency. Hence we
build institutions designed to substitute for what we have lost in our
biological makeup, thereby enabling us to cope with a world not tai-
lored to our needs.
In this respect, myth can be conceived as one of the first "institu-tions" man has "invented" in order to counterbalance the over-
whelming pressure exercised by pure contingency-a view held byHans Blumenberg, who considers myth a basic effort to humanize an
otherwise unmanageable world. Consequently, myth is not so much
an explanation of origins-as frequently assumed-but a counter-
vailing attempt to lay primeval terror. To make the world habitable
is to overlay it with pictures which are bound to change when our
need for sense-making changes. Myth, therefore, is constantly recast,
as borne out by the history of mythologies as well as by the unendingreappropriation of mythical patterns in historic situations. The veryfact that even myth usually considered to be of an archetypal na-
ture-is subjected to an incessant remolding testifies to its functionof providing stability and comprehension in the face of threats and
overpowering forces. Thus myth appears to be one of the very many
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"institutions" we have concocted for safeguarding our situation and
for repairing our deficiencies. Yet institutions are, in the final anal-
ysis, nothing but pragmatic solutions to problems we find ourselvesconfronted with, and as we cannot help building institutions, they, in
turn, reflect our pragmatic needs.
Institutions are just one of the products of interpretation by means
of which we situate ourselves in our world. As an attempt at either
shoring up our existence or appropriating that which extends beyondour immediate grasp, interpretation nevertheless turns out to be am-
bivalent in nature. Propelled by the impulse to familiarize the unfa-
miliar, it imposes cognitive frameworks on what appears to be incom-
mensurable, thus naturalizing an otherwise unmanageable experi-ence. The more successful, however, these attempts prove to be, the
more we tend to equate our interpretations with the state of affairs
to be interpreted. Reification then becomes the new danger looming
large in every successful interpretation. We are prone to forget its
basically pragmatic nature; whenever this lapse occurs, we are on the
verge of imprisoning ourselves within our interpretive frameworks.
Thus situations are bound to arise in which a dismantling not onlyof what
interpretationhas
broughtabout but also of what
governsthe respective interpretation becomes necessary if we are to escapefrom our self-imprisonment.
In these instances, a disruptive force of a revolutionary character
is required to open the floodgates of our fantasies, engulfing the
cognitive frameworks through which we have accommodated our
needs. Creation, then, is an annihilation of our cherished securities,and it tends to become scandalous the more entrenched our stabilities
are. For a long time we have entertained the lofty notion that creation
is the hallmark of humanexcellence, indicating
that we are able to
produce a world more beautiful, more gratifying, and more sane than
the one existing prior to creative acts which, in the final analysis,reflect only our desire to emulate the divine creator. Creation maybe much more destructive and yet more liberating than the traditional
idea of man as a demiurge has ever led us to believe. It manifests
itself in various ways, ranging from defamiliarization through pattern
breaking to scandal, depending on the resisting forces to be over-
come. Creation is basically "decomposition," as Beckett worded it,
because we live in an interpreted world which stands in need of con-stant rearrangement in order to prevent it from lapsing into dead-
ening immobility. Yet what is brought about by the decomposing act
of creation can never be anticipated, let alone conceptualized, in
terms of what has been destroyed. Hence we start interpreting it in
order to find out what happened when our self-produced prison walls
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THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN CREATION AND INTERPRETATION
crumbled. Interpretation, then, becomes an endeavor to reap the
fruits of this liberation; yet, in processing them, we tend to make new
arrangements of our world.
Thus creation and interpretation are neatly geared to each other.
If creation is an unforseeable yet necessary inroad into our organizedworld, interpretation is an ordering impulse accommodating the
breakup in a repatterned world.
Although creation defies cognition, it nevertheless is conditioned
by the context to be decomposed, which links it to the form of inter-
pretation it is meant to disrupt. Interpretation, in turn, though bas-
icallya
cognitive operation,has to
bridgea
gulfbetween
cognitionand the incommensurable, which requires an imaginative leap, cre-
ative in nature. There is a cognitive conditioning operative in the
creative act as well as an imaginary force in interpretation, thougheach of these qualities is differently proportioned according to the
purpose it is meant to fulfill.
Interpretation indicates the dominance of the conscious over the
imaginary, and creation swamps the conscious by the imaginary. As
these two activities interlink, they testify to something in the human
makeup,which in the words of Anton
Ehrenzweigcould be called
the ego-rhythm of structured focusing and oceanic dedifferentiation.
At this juncture, the interplay between creation and interpretationcould be conceived as a vantage point for opening up a perspectiveon the as yet widely unexplored territory of cultural anthropology.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,
IRVINE
395
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