RE: The True Meaning of "The Raven" and the Magic of Poetry
I remember being aggressively opposed to the interpretation and analysis of my teachers in both primary school and Gymnasium (a bit like High School). Now that I have been an artist myself for many years I guess that I have also learned quite a lot from my school education in literature, music and pictorial art and the most important point being that art is almost generally equivocal, combining many different layers of aesthetic and meaning in one formation. Many teachers believe that they have understood what the art is all about, and that this understanding is what they need to pass on to the students. (That was the thing I revolted against.) But art is in reality to complex for a single interpretation. Rime, metric, imagery, syncopes, symbolism, repetition, tone, historical reference, social comment, existential thought - all this is analogue tracks that run seamlessly and elegant side by side, but without any real or only minimal overlap. Making this work so nobody questions the whole - the ouevre - is what art is all about.
I have had teachers, especially my Gymnasium Latin and Greek teacher, that not only understood this, but managed to reveal the art of Horace, Catul, Pindar and Sappho to us - and I am forever grateful for that. But my best teachers in art has been artists themselves.
So thank God I can say about School:
Thank you for such a fantastic answer! Yes I would agree. The interpretation of art is a very subjective matter and I think that you bring up a fantastic point on how we may object to having other's interpretation thrust upon us at school. One of the problems with schooling and the way tests work is that there is often one particular interpretation that is given more validity for reasons of tests and marking. This is not satisfactory from an artistic standpoint.
No, and the artistic standpoint is the way into art. Predefined interpretations are the way into social shaping... :)
Yes.