16
In a common view, the scientific enterprise has three distinct parts or branches: the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences.1 For some purposes, this is a useful way of carving up the field of science, but for other purposes a rigid distinction may prevent cross-fertilization. In this chapter I argue that the humanities and the social sciences have more in common than is usually assumed. (In Chapter 11, I argued that the relevance of natural sciences for the study of society, while not nil, is more limited.) In particular, I shall try to show that interpretation of works of art and explanation are closely related enterprises. In one sense, this seems to me to be self-evident. The production of a work of art is an action, or a series of actions. Like any other action, it is in principle susceptible to explanation in terms of the antecedent mental states of the agent, be they conscious or unconscious. This view of interpretation has the advantage that there is a fact of the matter by virtue of which the interpretation is right if it is right, and wrong if it is wrong. By contrast, interpretations that focus only on “the work itself” have no such external criteria of adequacy. Our proneness to autosuggestion (see Introduction to Part II) and our propensity to search for objective teleology and analogy (Chapter 9) may combine to yield arbitrary interpretations.
A successful work of art is one that can be given a rational-choice explanation, in the sense that the author's choice of means is adequate for his ends. Once again, this seems to be a self-evident proposition. In practice, however, we may not be able to verify this adequacy, except negatively. We may be able to identify a jarring note, but not to explain the choice between several aesthetically plausible options. Even identifying jarring notes – irrational choices – may be impossible if the jarring character itself is sought as an aesthetic effect.2 For this reason, I shall limit myself to works of art where the criteria are relatively unambiguous: classical (pre-1850) novels and plays defined by the tacit convention that the events and characters that are described could have been real.3
Consider first rationality as a motive of the characters in fiction or plays. A classical problem in literary criticism is why Hamlet delays taking revenge for his father's death. Many explanations have been offered. Some of them appeal to irrationality, in terms of weakness of will or clinical depression. There is, however, also a simple rational-choice account. Although Hamlet initially believes what his father's ghost told him about Claudius, he later decides to gather more information by staging a play to “catch the conscience of the king.” Once the reactions of the king have confirmed his belief, however, he lacks an opportunity to realize his desire, which is to make Claudius burn in hell forever. Although he has an opportunity to kill Claudius while he is praying, doing so would, according to contemporary theology, ensure Claudius salvation rather than damnation. Later, he kills Polonius behind a curtain, wrongly but not irrationally believing him to be the king. Given the information he had, his belief that it was the king hiding behind the curtain was rational. Moreover, he had no reason to gather more information, since he could reasonably assume that someone hiding behind the curtain in the queen's presence would be the king.
I do not claim that this is the right interpretation (in fact I have not yet said what it means for an interpretation to be “right”). My point is simply that the three episodes I have mentioned are prima facie consistent with the idea that Hamlet is rationally pursuing the goal of avenging his father's murder. Another question is whether the idea is consistent with Hamlet's repeated self-accusations for lacking the resolve to take revenge. Many commentators interpret these famous monologues as a sign of weakness of will and view the two first episodes as based on self-deceptive excuses for inaction. (The third episode is harder to square with this view.) Now, although weakness of will and self-deception violate the canons of rationality, they are perfectly intelligible (Chapter 3). When dealing with the internal development of the work of art, intelligibility rather than rationality is the most useful idea for the task of interpretation.
In contrast to the internal point of view, we may take the external point of view of the author. To the question “Why does Hamlet delay his revenge until the fifth act?” we might answer, “The death of the king must take place at the end of the play.”4 This is a matter of dramaturgical construction, not of psychology. By itself, this answer would not be satisfactory. If Shakespeare had dragged out the revenge by a series of arbitrary events or ad hoc coincidences, simply for the purpose of having it occur at the end of the play, we would have deemed it an authorial failure. More pointedly, it would have been a case of authorial irrationality.
Authorial rationality is like the rationality imputed to God. Like God, the author is setting in motion a process in which each event can be explained twice over, first causally and then teleologically. I take this idea from Leibniz, who wrote that there are
two kingdoms, one of efficient causes, the other of final, each of which separately suffices in detail to give a reason for the whole, as if the other did not exist. But neither is adequate without the other when we consider their origin, for they emanate from one source in which the power that makes efficient causes, and the wisdom which rules final causes, are found united.
God's aim is to create the best of all possible worlds. Specified to include the temporal dimension, the idea can be understood as the best of all possible sequences. Although the transition from one state of the universe to the next occurs by ordinary physical causality, the initial state and the laws of causality have been chosen so as to maximize the overall perfection of the sequence.
If we limit ourselves to the classical drama or the classical novel, the author's task is to develop the plot through what the characters say and do, often in response to one another. The aim is to do so in a way that maximizes aesthetic value. Thus each action or statement by a character can be explained twice over, both as a reaction to previous actions and statements (or external events) and as a generator of surprise, tension, and ultimately tension resolution in the reader. Here is an example offered by a literary theorist: “Suppose we want to know ‘why’ in the early part of Dickens's Great Expectations … the six- or seven-year old Pip aids the runaway convict. Two different kinds of answer are possible: (1) according to the logic of verisimilitude (made prominent, in fact, by the text): the child was frightened into submission; (2) according to the structural needs of the plot: this act is necessary for Magwitch to be grateful to Pip so as to wish to repay him; without it the plot would not be the kind of plot it is.”5
The fact that authors (and other artists) often make many drafts before they are satisfied, or before they lay down their pens or brushes, is irrefutable evidence that they are engaged in a process of choice and that they possess explicit or implicit criteria for betterness. Proust wrote sixteen drafts of the opening chapter of À la recherche du temps perdu. Picasso filled sixteen sketchbooks with drawings in preparation for “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.” The fact that these drafts typically involve small variations suggests that they are aiming at a local maximum of whatever form of betterness they are striving for. However, the difference between an author and someone who is merely climbing along a gradient is that the former's creativity goes beyond mere choice (Chapter 13). The reason why the creation of a work of literature cannot be reduced to rational choice is that the number of meaningful word sequences is too large for one person to scan them all and select “the best.” Although a “rational creator” may try to make the problem more tractable by deliberately excluding some sequences (as noted in Chapter 10, this is one of the functions of meter and rhyme in verse), too many options will usually remain for choice to be a feasible selection mechanism. Instead, the author will have to rely on his or her unconscious associative machinery.
Rational creation is therefore largely about getting the second decimal right or, to shift the metaphor, about climbing to the top of the nearest hill. The task of finding a hill that towers over the others is not within the scope of rationality. Yet even reduced to the task of fine-tuning, authorial rationality matters. As suggested by the phrase “a minor masterpiece,” it may be better to find the top of a low hill than to remain on the slopes of a taller one. Without implying any comparative judgment, Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Look Homeward, Angel can serve to illustrate the two possibilities.
Let me enumerate and then discuss some demands that rationality imposes on the author. First, the acts and utterances of the characters have to be intelligible. Second, the author has to meet the twin requirements of fullness and parsimony. Third, the work has to flow downhill, in the sense of minimizing the appeal to accidents and coincidences. Fourth, it has to offer a psychologically gratifying pattern of the buildup and resolution of tension.
Intelligibility can be absolute or relative, and if relative, global or local. The question of absolute intelligibility is whether any human being could behave in this way. The question of relative global intelligibility is whether the behavior of a fictional person is consistent with his or her overall character as displayed earlier in the work. The question of relative local intelligibility is whether the behavior of a fictional person is consistent with his or her behavior in similar situations earlier in the work. Whereas the requirements of absolute and of relative local intelligibility are crucial constraints on authorial rationality, that of relative global intelligibility is not. If anything, the respect for the latter constraint may be seen as an aesthetic flaw.
In some cases, absolute intelligibility may be violated by excess of rationality. Consider again Euripides’ Medea or Racine's Phèdre, both equally lucid about their self-destructive passions. They are portrayed as being subject to weakness of will in the strict sense, knowing that what they are doing is contrary to the all-things-considered judgment they hold at the very moment of acting. Although passion causes them to deviate from that judgment, it does not affect it. Racine's Hermione is a more credible character. Because her judgment is clouded by her emotions, she is self-deceptive rather than weak willed. My suggestion – it is nothing more than that – is that the simultaneous presence of extreme emotion and full cognitive lucidity goes against what we know about human nature.
Whereas too much rationality can be unintelligible, irrationality can be perfectly intelligible. What can be more intelligible than the reaction of M. de Rênal in Stendhal's Le rouge et le noir when, in the face of strong signs that his wife is having an affair with Julien Sorel, he chooses to believe in her fidelity? The wish is the father of the thought. More paradoxical are cases in which the desire that one's wife be faithful causes the belief that she is not, against the evidence. In Othello, “Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmation strong as proofs from holy writ.” The first is a case of short-circuiting, the second one of wire crossing (Chapter 3).
Relative intelligibility, which is violated by a person in a play or a novel who acts “out of character,” raises different problems. First, we must take account of arguments by psychologists that character traits tend to be local rather than global (Chapter 12). Whereas many authors (Hamsun mentions Zola) subscribe to the folk psychology that assumes cross-situational consistency, good authors (he mentions Dostoyevsky) do not. The latter may disappoint readers who expect characters to behave “in character,” but these are not the intended audience of the work. As we shall see shortly, even good authors may be constrained by the flawed psychology of their readers, but the belief in global traits is not one they should respect. Readers have a right, however, to expect local consistency. If the author paints himself into a corner, so that the only way to develop the plot as planned is to allow for a character to act in a locally inconsistent manner, he is violating his implicit contract with the readers. A plot should develop as water seeks its natural downhill course, not by the author's forcing it to run uphill.
Let me illustrate this idea by some of Stendhal's marginal comments in the manuscript of his unfinished and posthumously published novel Lucien Leuwen. Stendhal has the eponymous hero fall in love with a young widow, Mme de Chasteller. His feelings are reciprocated, but he does not dare to reach out to her. The very delicacy of mind that makes him superior to “the most accomplished Don Juan” and hence capable of inspiring love also makes him inferior to any “less well-bred young Parisian” who would instantly know how to handle the situation. To move the plot forward, Stendhal needs to bring them together but does not quite know how to do it. He writes in the margin: “Upon which the chronicler says: one cannot expect a virtuous woman to give herself absolutely; she has to be taken. The best hunting dog can do no more than bring the game within gunshot. If the hunter doesn't shoot, the dog is helpless. The novelist is like the dog of his hero.” The comment strikingly illustrates the need for the behavior of characters in a novel to be “in character.”
Stendhal does eventually manage to engineer a situation in which the love of Lucien and Mme de Chasteller for each other can be shown and understood, and yet not be declared. But his difficulties do not end there. Stendhal's plan for the novel followed the dialectical Hollywood recipe: boy meets girl, boy and girl break up, boy and girl reunite. As we just saw, he had problems getting the thesis established. To produce the antithesis, Stendhal uses the ridiculous and manifestly teleological device of making Lucien believe that Mme de Chasteller, whom he has seen daily at close quarters, has suddenly given birth to a child. But what really stumped him was the synthesis. Although we do not know why he never got around to writing the third part in which the lovers would be reunited, one conjecture is that their union would not be plausible. In the second part of the novel, after the breakup, Lucien turns into a bit of a cynical rake, fundamentally honest by the lax standards of the July Monarchy but certainly very different from the awkwardly delicate person with whom Mme de Chasteller had fallen in love. Stendhal may have decided that having her love the transformed Lucien would violate relative intelligibility.
Aristotle wrote that “the story … must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposition or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoint and dislocate the whole. For that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no real part of the whole.” We may read this passage as expressing the two aesthetic ideals of fullness and parsimony. The reader is entitled to think that the author has presented her with all the information she needs to understand the development of the plot.6 Conversely, she is entitled to expect that if the author tells her that it was raining when a character left his house, it is because the premise of rain will be needed later on, and entitled to believe that a speech attributed to a character is intended to tell us something about the person or to serve as a premise for the action of other characters.7
Earlier, I referred to the “downhill” character of a good plot, using acting “in character” as an example. More generally, good plots should not turn on unlikely events, accidents, and coincidences. In Middlemarch, the encounter between Raffles and Mr. Bulstrode – a crucial element in the development of the story – is so contrived that it detracts from the otherwise seamless progression of the novel. Accidents may, to be sure, have their place in a novel. The accidental death of a parent may trigger or shape the unfolding of a plot, as may the death of both parents in the same accident. But if the plot requires their deaths in two separate accidents, credulity is strained. The convenient death of a spouse that allows the hero or heroine to marry his or her real love is also a sign of blamable authorial laziness. The introduction of twins in a detective novel when the author has painted himself into a corner is an even more blatant failure.
The psychology of readers is not, however, finely attuned to probability theory. Suppose the author has the choice between getting from A to B in a plot in two steps or in six steps. For specificity, suppose that the two steps require events that will occur with likelihood 0.9 and 0.2, respectively, whereas each of the six events will occur with likelihood 0.75. Assuming the events in each sequence to be independent of each other, the two-step sequence is more likely to occur (0.18 versus 0.178), yet only the six-step sequence will be seen as having the desirable downhill property. The overall plausibility of a scenario depends much more on the plausibility of its weakest links than on the number of links. I believe the author should respect this particular quirk of the readers, since it prevents him from resorting to facile but unlikely coincidences.
Even a downhill stream may have many twists and turns before it winds somewhere safe to sea. If it did not, observing its course would not provide much of an experience. The author is obliged, therefore, to provide the necessary surprises for readers and viewers, and obstacles for the characters, to keep audience interest alive. The repertoire of stratagems is huge, too huge to be surveyed or even to be classified. Some of them are closely linked with the genre. Within the theater, comedy, drama, and tragedy have different means at their disposal. Whereas comedy often relies on misunderstandings to generate tensions, drama and even more so tragedy may rely on ignorance. As misunderstandings are dissipated, felicity ensues; as ignorance is lifted, disaster occurs. Novelists can add their own voices to those of the characters to generate uncertainty, as long as they do not deliberately mislead the readers.
I am now in a position to say what I mean by the “right interpretation” of a text. As I stated at the outset, this is a question of explanation. Since all explanations are causal (including those that cite intentions as causes) and since a cause must precede its effect, it follows that actual audience perceptions of the work are strictly irrelevant. Intended perceptions, by contrast, can be part of the explanation. Among the antecedent causes of the work, the authorial intention is not all that matters. The unconscious attitudes of the author may also influence it. Thus Jules Verne's L’île mystérieuse may have been shaped by his anti-racist intentions as well as by his racist prejudices. For the sake of brevity, however, I shall limit myself to conscious intentions.
An interpretation of a work of literature, then, is a claim that important features of the work can be traced back to decisions that the author made for the purpose of enhancing the aesthetic value of the experience that some specific audience could be expected to derive from the work. To make a claim of this kind, literary critics must proceed just as other scholars do. They can appeal to drafts, when they exist, and to statements by the author about the work, Stendhal's marginalia, for example. They can appeal to other works by the same author, to see whether a similar pattern of choices is observed. They can refer to contemporary works, to distinguish the conventions that frame choices from the choices themselves. They can draw on other contemporary sources to determine the audience expectations that may have constrained the author.
In doing all this, their method is in no way different from that of other historians. As other historians do, they face the problem that the data are essentially finite, because the past is not amenable to experiments. And as other historians do, they can try to minimize the temptations of “data mining” by triangulating old sources, looking for new sources, and drawing out novel implications of their interpretation to be tested against evidence (Chapter 3). They may differ from other historians in that their interpretation more often, although not invariably, goes together with value judgments. Did the author succeed, or approach closer to succeeding than to failing, in his or her aim of creating a local maximum of aesthetic value? Some writers, to be sure, do not have this aim. They may only be concerned with making money or writing propaganda, goals that have different rationality requirements. But if one can make out a plausible case for the hypothesis that the author had mainly aesthetic pretensions, it make sense to ask, as with any other aim, how well they were realized.
Earlier, I said that authorial failures may be intelligible. Authors, I have argued, are under a double pressure: they need to make the plot move on, and to do so through intelligible actions and statements by the characters. We may blame them if they sacrifice the latter goal to the former – that is, if they sacrifice causality to teleology – but we can still understand why they do so. Even if causally implausible, Hamlet's procrastination could be made to seem teleologically intelligible in the light of Shakespeare's need to delay his vengeance until the end of the play. This, too, would be a piece of interpretation. Although obviously very different from an interpretation of the delay in terms of Hamlet's psychology and circumstances, it does answer the same question: why the delay? Although in a good work of literature everything can be explained twice over, imperfect works may only allow for one interpretation.
Imputation of motives
In Chapter 4, I discussed how we sometimes impute motives to another agent by the hermeneutics of suspicion, assuming the worst of the motives that are compatible with the observed behavior. Literary critics, too, sometimes deploy this strategy. I shall discuss two examples: Paul Valéry's attempt at debunking Pascal and Stendhal, and some recent interpretations of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.
Paul Valéry addressed one of the most famous sentences in the French language, Pascal's “Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie” (“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread”). In one comment, Valéry writes that “Every speech has several meanings, among which the most remarkable is surely the very cause of its being made … To say: the eternal silence etc., is to state very clearly: I want to terrify you by my profundity and astonish you by my style.” Elsewhere, he claims that “A distress that writes so well is not so complete that it hasn't salvaged some freedom of mind from the shipwreck, some sense of harmony, some show of logic or imagination, in contradiction to what the words themselves say … If you want to attract or impress me, take care that I do not see your hand more distinctly than what it writes. I see Pascal's hand all too clearly.” These statements undermine the very idea of literary or philosophical value, since any impressive achievement would serve as proof of an intention to impress.8
Valéry was seduced, against his will, by Stendhal's Lucien Leuwen. Rereading it, he says that “I was amazed to be [so deeply moved], because I could not and still can scarcely abide being deluded by a literary work to the point where I can no longer distinguish clearly between my own feelings and those suggested by the author's artifice. I see the pen and the person who is holding it. I do not care for, I have no need of, his emotions. I only ask him to let me into the secret of how it's done. But Lucien Leuwen brought about in me this miracle of a confusion which I abhor.”
Valéry then engages in backward reasoning, from his feeling of being seduced to an intention to seduce. “I detect [in him] an element of calculation, a tendency to gamble on the reader of the future, a marked determination to attract by carelessness and apparent improvisation – which imply and suggest a ‘just between you and me’ relationship between the author and the unknown reader who is to be won over.” He imputes to Stendhal the following recipe: “avoid the poetic style like the plague, and let the reader know you are avoiding it.” He finds Stendhal's “accent three or four times too sincere; I sense a determination to be himself, to be genuine to the point of falsity.” He repeats the charge he made against Pascal, that distortions are inevitable:
How can we avoid selecting what is best out of the true we are working on? How can we avoid underlining, rounding off, touching up, adding color, trying to make it clearer, stronger, more disturbing, more intimate, more brutal than the model? In literature the true is inconceivable. Sometimes by simplicity, sometimes by oddity, sometimes by an exactness carried too far, sometimes by carelessness, sometimes by the confession of things that are more or less shameful, but always selected – as carefully selected as possible – always, and by every means in the author's power, whether he is Pascal, Diderot, Rousseau, or [Stendhal] … We know very well that people only expose themselves for an effect.
Again, the fallacy is evident. Stendhal was a great admirer of Pascal, for reasons well expressed by another critic, who compared the maxims of Stendhal's On Love to those of La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère “The arrows of our great moralists are more beautiful, and equally sound, but already stuck in their target; Stendhal's are seen in full flight. It is an impression that only Pascal conveys with greater force.” Stendhal's novels, too, have a minimalist directness that helps to focus the reader's attention. Valéry's truism about the need for selection does not prove that Stendhal was writing to achieve an effect. Other writers – perhaps Rousseau is indeed an example – do illustrate the temptation to write well. As Pascal observed, “Those who construct antitheses by forcing the use of words are like those who put in false windows for the sake of symmetry.” Stendhal's constant effort was to resist this temptation, to make the reader focus on the work, not on him, Stendhal.
Let me conclude by citing some recent examples of how interpretation may violate or ignore the demands of explanation. Several writers have claimed that Fanny Price in Mansfield Park is scheming and strategic, and that her seeming modesty is merely a stratagem deployed to win Edmund Bertram. They also argue, moreover, that her very name suggests “sex for money.” These claims fail two tests of intentionality. First, there is no evidence in the novel for imputing scheming intentions to Fanny Price. Although her modesty is in fact rewarded, that consequence of her behavior cannot explain it. Also, the hypothesis of a mercenary Fanny Price is refuted by her rejection of a marriage proposal from the better-situated Henry Crawford. Second, there is no evidence for imputing to Jane Austen an intention to make readers view Fanny Price as a semi-prostitute. Although the text may cause these associations to be produced in some modern readers, the writers in question offer no evidence that Austen intended her readers to associate “Fanny” with the heroine of the pornographic novel Fanny Hill or “Price” with payment for sex. These “interpretations by consequences” have much in common with functional explanations in the social sciences. They rely on arbitrary methods that are constrained not by facts but only by the limits of ingenuity of the scholars who propose them.
Bibliographical note
The general approach I take in this chapter is often accused of embodying an “intentional fallacy.” I agree with the responses of N. Carroll to this criticism, notably in “Art, intention and conversation,” in G. Iseminger (ed.), Intention and Interpretation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), and in “The intentional fallacy: defending myself,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55 (1997), 305–9. In “Hermeneutics and the hypothetico-deductive method,” in M. Martin and L McIntyre (eds.), Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), D. Føllesdal offers an interpretation of Peer Gynt along similar lines, except that this play is not constrained by the convention that the events and characters that are described could have been real. I owe the observation that Hamlet's delay may have been due to dramaturgical concerns to E. Wagenknecht, “The perfect revenge – Hamlet's delay: a reconsideration,” College English 10 (1949), 188–95. The comment on Great Expectations is from S. Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction (London: Methuen, 1983). The comment on God making Man in his own image is from a quirky and penetrating exploration of the analogy between divine and authorial rationality, D. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker (London: Methuen, 1941). I discuss the idea of works of art as local maxima in Chapter 3 of Ulysses Unbound (Cambridge University Press, 2000). That chapter also includes a fuller discussion of Lucien Leuwen. The idea of downhill versus uphill plots is inspired by D. Kahneman and A. Tversky, “The simulation heuristics,” in D. Kahneman, P. Slovic, and A. Tversky (eds.), Judgment Under Uncertainty (Cambridge University Press, 1982). Paul Valéry's comments on Pascal and Stendhal are in his Œuvres, vol. I (Paris: Pléiade, 1957), pp. 458–71 and 553–82. Other relevant texts are cited in A. Rodriguez, Paul Valéry et Pascal (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Debresse, 1977). A penetrating criticism of Valéry's criticism of Pascal and Stendhal is J. Paulhan, Paul Valéry, ou la littérature considérée comme un faux (Paris: Gallimard, 1987). The comparison between Pascal and Stendhal is in J. Prévost, La création chez Stendhal (Paris: Mercure de France, 1971). The interpretations of Mansfield Park that I criticize are those of J. Heydt-Stevenson, “‘Slipping into the ha-ha’: bawdy humor and body politics in Jane Austen's novels,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 55 (2000), 309–39, and of J. Davidson, Hypocrisy and the Politics of Politeness (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
1 Based on casual observations of a few elite academic institutions, I conjecture that in their prestige hierarchy natural scientists and mathematicians come first, next scholars in the humanities, with social scientists at the bottom. For members of the first group, who set the tone, members of the second display admirable qualities of erudition or eloquence, whereas members of the third are merely engaged in a poor imitation of what they do themselves.
2 As stated on the label of a denim jacket I bought in San Francisco some 40 years ago, “Any defect or fault in this garment is intentional and part of the design.”
3 An early example of a violation of this convention occurs toward the end of Ibsen's Peer Gynt (1867), when Peer is afraid of drowning and the “strange passenger” tells him that “one does not die in the middle of the fifth act.”
4 Unlike the words Ibsen puts in the mouth of “the strange passenger” (see previous note), Shakespeare could not have had Hamlet say, “I cannot kill the king until Act V.”
5 The passage is strikingly similar to Leibniz's assertion. According to a novelist who was also an accomplished theologian, the meaning of the biblical phrase that God created Man in his own image is that God created Man with the desire and ability to create.
6 To be sure, potentially relevant details may deliberately be left out to leave some room for the imagination of the reader. Rational creation is compatible with (and may even demand) some blanks to be filled out by the reader. (That may be one reason why the movie version of a novel is often less satisfactory than the book, and why seeing the movie first may detract from the pleasure of reading the novel.) If, however, the artist overestimates the imagination of her audience, her effort will be deemed a failure. Suppose a novelist tries to suggest the temperamental incompatibility of a hero and heroine by making the street numbers of the houses in which they live mutually prime, that is, having no common divisors. Barring special circumstances, she cannot reasonably count on the reader's being able to pick up that fact.
7 To be sure, redundancy is not always to be eschewed, since it can serve an aesthetic function. To convey boredom, redundancy may be more effective than a mere authorial statement. Yet even then, there would be a point when the repetition would bore the reader rather than evoking the boredom of the character.
8 Valéry's essay has been characterized as a “hostile philippic” of unusual virulence and malevolence. He asks whether Pascal “did not too deeply and bitterly resent the fame of Descartes,” and suggests that if Pascal had not stipulated an opposition between salvation and knowledge, he might have inaugurated the infinitesimal calculus or non-Euclidean geometry.