On Interpretation

 Norman O. Brown riffin' on what is interpretation, why we need it, what it does for us.

I found it in a collection of essays titled "Evolution of Consciousness: Studies in Polarity", essays by various people, all dedicated to Owen Barfield.
I've owned the book for a decade at least, and I've read it at least a couple of times, but never had read Brown's contribution.

As I did, I yelped quietly when I got to the line about Husserl. I wasn't expecting to come across Husserl's name in the book, and I've just recently outlined an essay on Barfield's 'final participation', which will include a dedicated section on Husserl.

The last stanzas from Norman O. Brown's "On Interpretation", presented to Owen Barfield in the collection of essays Evolution of Consciousness: Studies in Polarity.

A language of listening rather than assertion
discovering another meaning
(there is always another meaning)
discovering another's meaning
Just being an interpreter
Surrendering a bit of the asserting ego
Listening to the voice of the other
obedient--

This listening is the philosophy of Husserl the epoche:
A suspension, a pause
A suspension of hostilities,
Which is also an epoch, the beginning of a new era.
Stop, look, and listen.

Waiting,

waiting for--

Thinking is writing

expectation

The psalmist says expectans expectori

I have waited waitingly.

Heidegger says Thinking is in every instance a letting
be said of that which shows itself, and accordingly an answer
to that which shows itself.
Let it speak, let it show itself
The Freud id instead of the Freudian ego
The impersonal id
The collective unconscious
The over-soul
The language: let it speak to us.
Thinking is not a statement but an answer

an interpretation
saying it again another way
an echo; amen, even--

A response
Poetry call us to respond

or correspond

Till all the woods do answer and their echo ring,
The chorus

or choir

invisible

O may I join the choir invisible.