The Identity of Meaning - 02

We begin this series with the early essay which gives its name to this column - written in 1959.    (Second of six sections)

An Epitome of Meaning

     Human creativity, in all its man-made diversity, is perhaps more precisely qualified to provide insight into the nature of meaning than any object or condition which exists in a final, complete, and irrevocable state. For, what men think or make grows from shapeless nonexistence and vague notions to develop an integrity exclusively its own, by which it ripens into meaning. This meaning is the property of the thing so made and, if through the years it be wholly forgotten and engage in no relative activity, then the forgetting characterizes those who forget, but the integrity of a thing richly conceived and well-made is inviolate and therefore meaningful in itself. And so, to make myself more adequately clear, I am offering the invention of the following narrative.
 
 
     A lone traveler on a mule is riding slowly over a gray, barren land. Dusk is approaching and the jackass is weary, tottering ahead step by tortured step. As the two reach a muddy waterhole fringed with grass and clusters of sparse shrubs, the rider dismounts, his hand grips the bridle, and together they approach the edge of the pool.
 
     Man and animal drink side by side from the lukewarm and bitter water. Then the man unsaddles his mule and leaves it to graze. After gathering small pieces of dead wood, he lights a fire and cooks his indifferent meal. He eats slowly and, when the food is gone, he broods, buried in the thoughts of his mind.
 
     Stirred by something in his meditation, he takes a stubby pencil and a little paper from his saddlebag and, in the uncertain light of his low fire, begins to write. At one time he methodically whittles the point of his pencil, and at frequent intervals he crosses out what he has written and begins again.
 
      In the end, when he has crossed and rewritten for the last time, he turns to his animal and says, “Listen, Jackass, listen to what your master has written!” So, he reads his poem to an audience of none and a mule – a poem that is a small treasure of truth and humor, five or six lines wonderfully made.
 
     The man is sleepy now and the fire barely glowing, so he unfolds a blanket, wraps himself in it, and falls asleep. At sunrise he will wash, and boil his coffee, and ride away. Poem, poet, and jackass –  nobody knowing what may become of them –  will pass from sight.
 
 
     My little story may serve to illuminate the theme of absolute meaning by its particular insistence on isolating the integrity of the poem from all opportunity to communicate its content. I maintain that it was a meaningful poem nevertheless, a poem in a very complete and entire sense. For it was thoroughly and well done – all done – hence, all poem. And its identity and meaning rested in the strength it contained, not in the knowledge that a select group of people might have had of its existence, if it had been issued by a publishing house.
 
     Also, no significance may be attributed to the poem for another wrong reason, namely, that it must have related meaningfully to its author, as a kind of reciprocal gift in return for the love he so generously lavished in its making. We are bound by reality to accept the insight that, upon completion of a work, its dependence on the maker has also ended. Its existence is sovereign and can survive its author without reduction in meaning.
 
     Additionally, we must conclude that, for all the individuals who may know a given work, there must be a host of others who are entirely uninformed about its very existence. Thus, if we refuse to accept meaning in a definitive sense, we arrive at the nonsensical speculation whether the work has been rendered meaningful because of those, the author included, who know about it, or meaningless because of the others who do not.
 
     Moreover, meaningless work of poor quality in all fields is abundantly produced and displayed. Who could think in earnest that it has become meaningful because it has been made accessible to the public? So our lone traveler’s poem achieved meaning because it had been written, as the identity of its condition as a poem of whatever kind demanded to be written.
 
     A work, once its nature and intent are determined, requires, by dint of its emerging identity, treatment fitted to its own character, thereby in a sense insisting on making itself, as precisely and thoroughly as at all possible, so that nothing may either be taken from it or added. In this manner we are assured that the poem became in essence all of what it was and nothing that was not included in the particular nature and character to which it was committed.