Interpretation as Feeling Settled. A few Thoughts about Reading (Poems)

Abstract

The Polish version of the article was published in “Roczniki Humanistyczne”, vol. 59 (2011), issue 1.

The article is a suggestion for an interpretation of Czesław Miłosz’s poem Biel (Whiteness) (from the volume Miasto bez imienia (City Without a Name). The accepted methodology of interpretation tries to find and define the zone of mediation between the ideal of comprehensive reading, striving after integrating and structuralizing the global meaning of the work, and the suggestions coming from post-structuralist philosophy of reading texts. The author’s own interpretation of the poem has been taken into consideration; a comparative reading of Biel has been suggested as well as of a Miłosz’s later poem Powrót do Krakowa w roku 1880 (Return to Krakow in 1880). This comparison is supposed to serve showing different strategies of creating texts and meanings used by the author of Nieobjęta ziemia (Unattainable Earth).

At the same time, at the background, a commentary to Miłosz’s poem becomes an opportunity to construct a meta-interpretative reflection. Looking at his own reading the author formulates remarks concerning the process of reading and comprehending, he introduces and analyzes the metaphor of “interpretation as feeling settled.”