In the sixty-one years since my two semesters in Comparative
Literature ended in disbelief and despair, the notions which
governed those efforts have withered, and from their roots there
has sprung a contrarian's understanding of literature.

The clarity and definition that appeared to make words inherently
unambiguous has dissipated.  Certainty and reliability of meaning
have proved to be consequences of an inapparent but indispensable
process of negotiation, accommodation and compromise among
speakers.  Dictionaries do not stand alone.  Preserving their
meanings requires ongoing discipline and pedagogy.  All language
is in flux, and over time, comes into being, flourishes, fades
and ultimately perishes corresponding to the needs of its users.

The literature which we compare has no unconditional validity.
It is an artifact of cultural politics, an accident of history.
The quality that makes a work classical or timeless is an
illusion.  It has endured not because it is timeless; it appears
timeless on account of its accidental endurance.

Because the societal acceptance of our sentences is essential, we
subject our writing to stringent critical standards.  Given,
however, that we read in utter privacy and isolation, the quality
of our reading is inaccessible to evaluation.  Nor is the
understanding which reading engenders subject to scrutiny. Yet
understanding is the key to meaning which remains by and large a
mystery.

The prototypical genus of literature is the poem onto whose words
and phrases the reader projects a meaning extracted and distilled
from his own existence.  For the accomplished reader the
projection of meaning onto the text becomes deliberate and
conscious; apparently factual, independent, objective meanings of
terms vanish, and all texts become subject to interpretation in
the same way as poems.  The potential poetic quality of
fictitious prose such as novels is obvious.  Scrutinized with
sufficient sensitivity and rigor, texts of purported history also
display the qualities of fiction, and are ultimately intelligible
only as poetry.  The same turns out to be true of all narrative,
of all knowledge that is clothed in speech.

The aggregate of narrative knowledge constitutes the conceptual
world, the intellectual, logical, verbal universe that
comprehends both the individual and the society of which he is
part.  Language is the bridge between private and public
knowledge.

The function of language changes as the individual matures.
Because of the paucity of other experience, language takes
possession of the mind of the child, and comes to constitute its
universe.  The mind of the adolescent is dominated by ideals,
ideas and words.  With age, the compulsion of language is
supplemented and modified by the individual's own experience, by
the impressions of the events on a lengthy life.

Understanding the process of reading is a key to understanding
ones world and oneself.  Comparative literature is an appropriate
point of beginning, starting from which there's a long way to go.