Artistic interpretation

1. Interpretation and description

Based on the fact that there is often more conflict among interpretations than among non-interpretive descriptions of works, many philosophers claim that interpretation is always on weaker epistemic ground than description. They claim that interpreters cannot know, or cannot know that they know, that their interpretations are correct. This epistemic weakness is supposed in itself to mark the distinction between interpretation and description of art works. But examples doom this attempt at distinguishing interpretation. Lady Macbeth can be known to be ambitious and manipulative, and this is an interpretation, albeit an obvious one, of her character. The distinction instead lies in the fact that interpretations are inferred, as explanations for what can be described without being interpreted. We non-interpretively describe what we directly perceive (as opposed to infer) in works; and such descriptions elicit universal agreement from audiences knowledgeable about the media in question, while interpretations need not elicit such agreement.

All artistic media present us with elements that can be described without being interpreted. Such elements constrain acceptable interpretations of the works that contain them, in that interpreters must explain why those elements exist as they do in the works. In painting and music the existence of such elements is obvious. Included among them are coloured shapes or notes and their formal relations. These make up the data or evidence for acceptable interpretations, which cannot be incompatible with their agreed descriptions. The counterparts in literature are not simply physical marks on paper, but words and sentences with their standard meanings. We do not perceive ink marks and infer that they are there to represent meaningful words. Instead, we directly perceive words and sentences, and, if we understand the language being used, agree on their standard meanings. Such elements make up texts, which should be defined in terms of standard lexical meanings at the times the texts are written. Even when we interpret such elements as metaphor or irony, we infer such interpretations as the best explanations for words with those standard or literal meanings being placed in those contexts. We make such inferences when doing so makes for more interesting readings or valuable literary experiences.

Some contemporary theorists of literary criticism deny that texts constrain acceptable interpretations. They see readers or critics as joining in the production of texts through their interpretive readings. To see pre-existing texts as constraints is, according to these theorists, to underestimate the degree of freedom that critics have in specifying their meanings and significance. Poetry is so notoriously open to radically different readings that it is empty to claim that poetic texts, as opposed to critical communities, constrain what is acceptable as interpretation. But these theorists exaggerate. Even a poem such as William Blake’s The Tyger, which is notorious for eliciting diverse interpretations, shows otherwise. For acceptable interpretations, no matter how divergent, must explain, for example, why Blake centrally used a term that ordinarily refers to tigers.

Others deny the distinction between description and interpretation by pointing out that what we take to be fictional facts in a work can depend on our interpretation of it. There are ghosts in The Turn of the Screw only if we interpret it as a ghost story. There is an egg in Piero della Francesca’s Brera altarpiece only if we interpret a certain mysterious object in that way. But whenever interpretations are needed to determine what is (fictionally) true in a work, there remains a level of description of painted shapes or words used that cannot be placed in doubt. We may similarly grant that interpretations guide what we attend to or perceive in a work. The painted shapes to which we attend on a canvas will be those we take to contribute to the artistic value of the painting, and this will vary according to whether we interpret it as an allegory, a formal structure, and so on. But the shapes can nevertheless be described without being interpreted.

Finally, we may admit that the line between interpretation and description must sometimes be drawn finely, while maintaining that the distinction is crucial for understanding the constraints on acceptable interpretations. To point out, for example, that a musical passage leads back to the tonic key is to describe it non-interpretively, but to explain it simply as a bridge passage is to interpret it, however obviously.