A.Sklyarenko:...
the word dobro ("good") has sexual
connotations (see note 7 to my piece), the first line of Kunyaev's
poem, Dobro dolzhno byt’ s kulakami, has a third meaning yet (for the
second meaning see note 3)...
JM:
During a college admission exam in São Paulo, the candidates were invited to
intepret a line of a poem and state what the author had had in mind. One of
the participants answered: "nothing" and failed the answer. His
complaint was not accepted, even after he informed that he (Oswaldo
Montenegro) was the author of the line in question and
he knew what he had had in mind ( ie: nothing).
Nevertheless from
this day onward every college changed its rules
concerning interpretation of a text, so as to avoid
applying examples from live authors. After all, the meaning that is
read into a work of art doesn't depend on what the author claims he intended to
express and, besides, as Kinbote remarks: To this statement my dear poet would probably not have subscribed,
but, for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last
word.
I
tried to imagine what would VN have said concerning our insistent
conjectures in scholarly articles and also here, in the List. I
suppose he'd have
invited us to find ever more fitting answers by his typically baffling
comments. Perhaps instead of "eternity", he reserved "infinity" for his
readers...