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1
Two Models of Interpretation |
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Some years ago I examined several senses of the word symbol (Eco 1984). Among them was the well-known distinction between symbol and allegory drawn by Goethe: "Symbolism transforms the experience into an idea and an idea into an image, so that the idea expressed through the image remains always active and unattainable and, even though expressed in all languages, remains inexpressible. Allegory transforms experience into a concept and a concept into an image, but so that the concept remains always defined and expressible by the image" (Goethe 1809:11121113). Goethe's definition seems perfectly in tune with the one advocated by idealistic philosophy, for which symbols are signifiers that convey imprecise clouds or nebulae of meaning that they leave continually unexploited or unexploitable. |
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But we know that there is another sense of the word symbol. If we take it in the sense of logicians and mathematicians, then a symbol is either a signifier correlated to its meaning by a law, that is, by a precise convention, and as such interpretable by other signifiers, or a variable that can be bound in many ways but that, once it has acquired a given value, cannot represent other values within the same context. If we take it in the sense of Hjelmslev (1943:113114), we find as instances of symbol the Cross, the Hammer and Sickle, emblems, and heraldic images. In this sense symbols are allegories. |
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Early versions of this chapter were "At the Roots of the Modern Concept of Symbol," Social Research 52 (1985), no. 2; and "Welt als TextText als Welt," in Streit der Interpretationen (Konstanz: Universitätsverlag, 1987). |
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