Meaning and context

When we relate to any element of reality, our natural and most automatic expectation is to find meaning. However, meaning does not always emerge automatically in our consciousness, very often we have to make an effort to understand, to interpret what we encounter, be it a natural phenomenon or a text. The way we understand a piece of reality, a sign, or a text always depends on the context in which we receive it, since the codes we employ also depend on our context, on our social, cultural positionality. This is what we are going to demonstrate here with the following exercise.

We are now going to discuss how the process of understanding a text unfolds.

What are we going to make of these signs, this text? The way we (try to) understand this sign will significantly depend on the context in which we encounter it. Let’s imagine different possible environments where we might see such a sign. We will realize that our attitude to the sign will vary and it will depend on the context.

1. Context A: we find this sign on a piece of paper blown by the wind in the street. We probably do not even make an attempt to attribute meaning to it. We will suppose it is the result of technology malfunction: somebody wanted to print something, and the computer got jammed up. In the strictest semiotic sense, this is of course not even a sign: it is just signifiers, a text for which we have no code.

2. Context B: we find this text (signifiers) sprayed on the wall of a New York metro station. We might come to the conclusion that it is the emblem of some group or sect, or a sketch made by a street artist representing two bananas hanging in opposite directions, but the idea of literature will not even occur to us.

3. Context C: the instructor brings this text into a literature class and asks the students to consider it. Since we are in a special environment, we will probably make an attempt to establish a relationship between the sign and the idea of literature. This attempt will most probably fail.

4. Context D: The instructor tells us that this sign is originally situated on a page in a book of poetry, with a title and a page number. We will make an even stronger attempt to relate to the sign as if it had to do something with literature because we are asked to do so, and because we have been taught to think that signs with a title, page number, book layout, etc. usually belong to “the realm of literature,” especially if they are used in a literature class. We start to meditate about potential titles for the “text.”

5. Context E: The instructor tells us that the title of the “text” is: “Handles of a burial urn from the private collection of E.E. Cummings.” We start examining the interrelationship between the sign and the title, and the text, which is more complex now, might begin to become more interesting to us.

6. Context F: The instructor tells us this is a very important piece of the Hungarian literary canon, it is a poem written by Dezső Tandori, and it is often considered to be one of the best Hungarian poems (original title: “Halottas urna két füle E. E. Cummings magángyűjteményéből”). Hearing all this “authoritative” information, we might try real hard to understand the “poem,” and we may come to interesting solutions.

Let’s list some of the possible ways in which we might understand the text:

1. The two semi-circles show a circle broken into two, which, in relation to the title which suggests death, represents symbolically the idea of mortality. Conclusion: the text represents the idea of the loss of Eden, decay, human fallibility.

2. The semi-circles are handles on a burial urn, so they are originally supposed to contain the urn, which is supposed to contain ashes, the symbol of death. But the handles do not work, since they are turned inside out, so they cannot contain death. Conclusion: the poem represents the idea that death cannot be contained, cannot be comprehended or controlled.

3. We realize that the semi-circles are actually parentheses, so they are elements of the material of language, poetic language. This supposition is supported by the fact that the urn is from the collection of E. E. Cummings, who was a very important American experimental, avant-garde poet (remember the poem about grasshopper!). If the handles are symbols of language, and the ashes are symbols of death, and the handles cannot contain ashes, this might mean “on a more abstract level of meaning” that the language of poetry cannot contain, or should not try to contain or comprehend or represent death. Conclusion: the poem suggests that poetry should refuse to represent death.

4. When we consider that in this way the text becomes a poem for us which is about the limitations or borderlines of poetic language, we might even argue that this poem is a kind of an ars poetica by an experimental poet.