Comments on: ‘Dissolution’ – an unidentified literary object

By: Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Suzanne Conboy-Hill — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 13:18:28 +0000

Just before I disappear off the bottom right – ooh …

By: Irena Pasvinter

Irena Pasvinter — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 12:44:43 +0000

I agree about the danger of over interpreting, especially when the analysis concentrates on the author’s subconscious motives and not on the story itself.

By: Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Suzanne Conboy-Hill — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 12:41:03 +0000

I think that’s true, although some stories wear their messages more prominently than others so there’s not so much room to dig. I think too, there can be a danger of over-interpreting and unconscious projection. Psychotherapy has suffered from that in the past (and maybe still), but the danger there is that the therapist is always right and the patient who disagrees is in denial. Nothing so alarming here!

By: Irena Pasvinter

Irena Pasvinter — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 12:34:35 +0000

You wrote it, so you can claim anything that goes with it.:) It is amazing how even seemingly straightforward writing is perceived differently by different readers. It provides a bottomless well for literary theory diggers to ponder over interpretation, author and reader relationship etc.:) Of course, we all project our experience and our subjective associations on the stories we read.

By: Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Suzanne Conboy-Hill — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 12:28:56 +0000

Fascinating! I wonder if its undirected nature is what makes it difficult to tag – it means what it means to the person who reads it. Wish I could claim to have intended that!

By: Irena Pasvinter

Irena Pasvinter — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 12:12:26 +0000

Actually I saw it as a life circle of the dualistic scientist /artist. There were a couple of places where I thought about encroaching dementia : “She can no longer remember or fully comprehend what he was, what child was, but the ache of hollowed out nothingness where he had been, coils and uncoils, rails against its dissolution, then gives in and drifts, insensate, into the collective void”.

By: Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Suzanne Conboy-Hill — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 10:58:44 +0000

Spot on – they are indeed the same person or representative. The trigger was a discussion of the Big Bang/rebound theory, now discredited. I wondered how that would be experienced by universal life to be drawn back to the beginning of things. Someone else who read it saw it as the last thoughts of an individual who is dying. I’m happy with that too – and its hybrid identity!

By: Irena Pasvinter

Irena Pasvinter — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 10:47:41 +0000

Interesting but not easy to digest. I thought the scientist and the artist were the same person, as in real life.:) Definitely a prose/poetry hybrid.