It is quite a difficult thing for a writer to appreciate and understand, that the reader is free. The reader reads and understands and interprets free from what the writer intended. It’s no good the writer getting annoyed or cross because the reader got the wrong end of the stick;that is the way it is. What is written is launched into the world and the reader comes upon it, reads it (or doesn’t) and understands it in his or her own way – which may be the way the writer intended or maybe in a way the writer never even imagined.
I love John Masefield’s poetry, especially his sonnets, but I daresay, a hundred years on from when he wrote them, I understand and interpret them completely differently from what he intended.
Beauty was with me once, but now, grown old,
I cannot hear nor see her: thus a king
In the high turret kept him from the cold
Over the fire with his magic ring
Which, as he wrought, made pictures come and go
Of men and times, past, present, and to be,
Now like a smoke, now flame-like, now a glow,
Now dead, now bright, but always fantasy.
While, on the stair without, a faithful slave
Stabbed to the death, crawled bleeding, whispering
“Sir,They come to kill you, fly: I come to save;
O you great gods, have pity, let him hear.”
Then, with his last strength tapped and muttered,”Sire,”
While the king smiled and drowsed above the fire.
Lois Elsden 