Truth is one of those indefinable, fickle words. We can say
it is honesty, but whose version of truth do we listen to? Different things in
our lives affect us differently so we each react to situation in individual ways;
it’s open to interpretation.
And so it seems with literature we can look into the life
and soul of an author and still know nothing about their writing.
Emily
Dickinson wrote all of her poetry in the first person but we cannot read every
single line as a personal truth of hers, we cannot understand to what degrees
she was being honest with her own feeling and what was influencing her at the
time.
It’s unavoidable for
writers to not project parts of themselves onto their writing, the same way an
artist cannot hide themselves with their paintings.
Friedrich Nietzsche said “There are no facts, only
interpretations.” The same applies to truths and so there is most definitely
truth to the stories we tell of our lives, but we choose the truths.
As for fiction it is all a case of interpretation and
endlessly trying to understand something that you will never find the answer
for …. So basically living life.
Here is an Intervention of Emily Dickinson’s
poem “My life had stood - a loaded gun” the way I interpret it:
“My life had stood – a loaded gun
But
for his eyes to see
In
corners –till a day
He
saw me waiting there
The
owner passed- identified
But
it was he that
Carried
me away”
Arrange and compose, your
audience is waiting…..
This is interesting Beth. How does this intervention reflect your own interpretation of the ED poem?
ReplyDeleteI read the poem as a train of thought that loses momentum in part or changes direction. I filled in the blank of what I thought you could read the poem as.
ReplyDeleteI think Emily Dickinson leaves a lot of room for interpretation and so you can read then in almost any way but her reasoning seems to be less of an elect decision more as a diary style freedom of thought, as we know she was know writing with the explicit intention of publishing, and so she had no audience to please. which perhaps creates a better more honest piece of work.