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16: Painting Borges
- State University of New York Press
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Painting Borges / 207 16 Painting Borges In Chapter 14, I argued that works of art, philosophy, and literature are different in significant ways. Works of visual art include not just the pictures and visual images that compose them, but also the actual physical artefacts in which they are embodied. Works of philosophy do not include the texts, let alone the scripts or the artifacts that express them in the conditions of their identity. And works of literature include their texts, only very seldom the scripts, and never the artifacts. In Chapter 15 I argued that there are two main types of interpretations: understanding and instrumental. Hence, artistic interpretations of literature are either artistic understandings of literature or artworks that function as instruments to cause artistic understandings of literature. And philosophical interpretations of art and literature are either philosophical understandings of art and literature or philosophical works that function as instruments to cause philosophical understandings of art and literature. In this chapter I address the problem of how these diverse interpretations function, considering the significant differences that separate visual art, philosophy, and literature. The main focus is the artistic interpretation of literature in visual art, that is, on “painting Borges’s stories.” I also discuss, to a lesser extent, the philosophical interpretation of visual art and literature insofar as this is a book of philosophy concerned with them, and the relation between visual art and philosophy on one hand, and literature, on the other, shed light on the relation between visual art and literature. I begin by posing the problems of interpretation in general and more specifically in the context of the artistic interpretation of literature. Then I turn to the 208 / Painting Borges core issue, which is the identification and discussion of the various interpretive strategies used by the artists in the interpretation of Borges’s stories. Problems of Interpretation The differences between visual art, philosophy, and literature create various problems for the artistic interpretation of literature as well as the philosophical interpretation of literature and art. We may begin by considering a general difficulty common to all understanding. It has to do with the apparent gap, and how to bridge it, between an object of understanding and the acts of the interpreter that constitute the understanding of it. In our case, for example, one may question how it is possible to bridge the gap between an interpretandum and an interpreter when an interpretation, considered as understanding, is so different from the interpretandum. In one case we have, say, the text of a story by Borges and the mental acts either in an interpreter or in an audience of the instrumental interpretation. In another case we have a painting that interprets one of Borges’s stories and the acts of understanding of the painter and her audience. This problem applies not just to interpretation, but generally to all situations in which we have something known and a knower, when what is known is a different kind of thing from the means used by the knower to know it. Philosophers have grappled with this problem in various ways, but they often try to reduce both the object of understanding and the acts of understanding to the same metaphysical kind in order to bridge the gap between them. Thus, for example, materialists address this problem by conceiving both the objects of understanding and the acts of understanding to be material. And idealists do it by reducing both the objects of understanding and the acts of understanding to ideas. My concern here is with the more specific situation of interpretation and the particular problems that arise from it, so I have put aside the general problem and choose to focus rather on problems that arise particularly in the context of hermeneutics. In the specific case of the gap between interpretandum and interpretation, a common strategy is to think of an interpretation as an understanding by an interpreter and identify a similar kind of object of interpretation, which usually is taken to be the understanding of the interpretandum by the historical author or the historical audience. In this way, metaphysical homogeneity is established and one can compare the interpretation to something of its same [18.118.217.242] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 19:09 GMT) Painting Borges / 209 kind: understanding to understanding. This makes it possible to judge the legitimacy of an interpretation more easily. If the understanding of the interpreter...