Ambiguity

In Jorge Luis Borges' story 'Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote,' an imaginary writer has copied out the entirety of Don Quixote, word by word. Borges, in his typical playful manner, ascertains that 'The text of Cervantes and that of Menard are verbally identical, but the second is almost infinitely richer. (More ambiguous, his detractors will say; but ambiguity is richness.)'  Pierre Menard's version of Quixote surpasses Cervantes', Borges says, because the passing of time has improved it and the work has acquired more meaning. In this post I will consider what makes ambiguity so rich and so special.

Ambiguity can pertain to many things. In the public domain, eloquence and clarity are, for many, optimal. (One of the reasons why no-one really pays attention to the current Labour party, who are leading the polls pretty much by default, is that they are overly theoretical and their speeches are densely layered with information.) Yet, in any public discourse, ambiguity is also richness. The monothematic (possibly a neologism of mine) and the monosemantic (possibly another one) preoccupy themselves with one idea to the detriment of others. These simple ideas generally make a greater impact on the cultural consciousness. They are reducible to the 140 character count on Twitter. Plato's conception of the afterlife, for example, was too complex to make a public impact. Christianity, with its rhetoric of salvation, was far easier to grasp and therefore far easier to indoctrinate. Similarly, today's politicians generally do not win seats in parliament because their policies are correct. They generally win seats by employing the correct rhetoric (which is short on ambiguity). The New Atheism movement has made an inexorable impact on the public consciousness. Yet they peddle burning simplicities, which hardly touch on multiple issues and meanings. Although ambiguity makes public discourse richer, it is hardly able to have a broader impact, because people want easy arguments which are reducible to slogans.

When it comes to linguistic ambiguity, this tends to make literature richer. Spareness and simplicity work very well when they are stylised; otherwise, it is too one-dimensional. When you string together two words which negate and contradict each other, this takes your mind to different directions. It makes you reflect. The signifiers which cause the words (i.e. the actual objects the words symbolise - a tree, a stone, a car, etc.) gain an extra dimension. The world, likewise, becomes richer and more three-dimensional. A multiplicity of meanings ultimately leads the reader to a transcendent sphere. The juxtaposition of words and ideas which are not combinatorial results in a concept which is not realistically feasible and is quite unpalatable. Its unreality is almost divine. The use of language in a lovely poem or a paragraph from a novel ultimately create new hybrids. They transcend the hum-drum reality of material objects because they make you think of them in a new way.

When a book has been completed, can one claim to understand it wholly? Does it have one overriding meaning and message? Of course not. It would be dreadfully boring if it did. The queasiness one feels upon completing a novel comes after having absorbed such a range of ideas, emotions, messages, phrases, etc. You could not possibly say that even allegories like 1984 and Lord of the Flies deal with one single subject. A literary work is the accumulation of several different subjects. It is ambiguous and is, therefore, richer.