I'm a big fan of artistic intent. This is not to say that I believe all art even requires intent. Some art happens accidentally, but you know it must be art because of the way it makes you feel. Then you're left with audience interpretation, which is exponentially rich and glorious...blah, blah, blah. I personally want to know what Shelley was thinking about when he wrote "Adonais" (Keats, presumably), or what Rossetti had in mind when he drew all those sketches of Lizzie Siddal (Lizzie Siddal, presumably).
In school, this was a highly unpopular method of study. I missed the deconstruction train, and I didn't care what psychological theory had to offer. I loved the good ol' fashioned close reading. I wanted to be right there, at the moment of artistic conception, looking on through the muslin drapes, a time-traveling voyeur. I'd bring a hot beverage in a thermos, too. Just to keep warm.
Anyway, last week's New Yorker featured a short story by Jeffrey Eugenides, "Early Music," mainly about regret, but tangentially about artistic intent.
The thing about early music was: nobody knew quite what it sounded like. Disputes about how to tune a harpsichord or clavichord constituted a good part of the discipline. The question was "How had Bach tuned his harpsichord?" And nobody knew. People argued about what Johann Sebastian had meant by "wohltemperirt." They tuned their instruments in a historically likely manner and studied the hand-drawn schematics on the title pages of various of Bach's compositions. Rodney had intended to settle this question in his dissertation. He was going to figure out, once and for all, exactly how Bach had tuned his harpischord, how his music had sounded at the time, and, therefore, how it should be played now.
Later on, I read this article in the NYT about a Beethoven manuscript found last week on the bottom shelf of some forgotten volumes in a seminary in Pennsylvania. "Grosse Fugue," the piece contained within the manuscript, was
composed, and published, as the finale of his Op. 130 String Quartet, a member of the colossal series of late quartets. But it was astonishingly complex. After the premiere on March 21, 1826, a reviewer called the music "incomprehensible, like Chinese" and suggested that Beethoven's deafness was at fault. Beethoven wrote another finale, lighter and more pastoral, and agreed to have the "Grosse Fugue" published separately. Debate has raged over the Op. 130 quartet's proper finale. One camp says that since Beethoven himself made the decision, the substitute finale should be played. The other says that he was effectively pressured into the change by his friends and publisher, and that therefore the "Grosse Fugue" should remain.
Do you just take the man's word for it? Or do you start at the moment of intent, the moment of creation, and work outward from there?
I guess that's where the search for artistic intent breaks down. The fact is, it's a risky proposition, stepping outside your own reactions only to learn that what art means to you has little or nothing to do with what it meant to the artist. That bothers me and I don't know why. Maybe I can't reconcile wanting to get the answer right with the reality that there is no question.
Or maybe I'm just overcompensating for not blogging in two weeks. Care to divine my intentions?
You can find more of the interesting word usements I structure on Apple.com.
Read my article, Better Writing Through Design, on No. 242 of A List Apart.