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Sontag got me going

 I have perhaps implicitly focused my attention on mimesis, the text as an imitation of reality, a representation such that the reader "gets" the same experience as that of the writer before or as s/he writes. Perhaps I am in error.

 Susan Sontag in her essay, "Against Interpretation" writes that
Even in modern times, when most artists and critics have discarded the theory of art as representation of an outer reality in favor of the theory of art as subjective expression, the main feature of the mimetic theory persists. Whether we conceive of the work of art on the model of a picture (art as a picture of reality) or on the model of a statement (art as the statement of the artist), content still comes first. The content may have changed. It may now be less figurative, less lucidly realistic. But it is still assumed that a work of art is its content. Or, as it's usually put today, that a work of art by definition says something. ("What X is saying is . . . ," "What X is trying to say is . . . ," "What X said is . . ." etc., etc.)
I may be sinning, but I cannot help but think--because of experiencing writing and reading--that what (the content) is experienced and to be experienced is if nothing else what is said (again content). Expression for expression's sake--fine, let the artist go for it. But if s/he gives us a text to read, s/he puts it out there, we search for meaning, and without obvious signs and symbols, we will try to understand, we will interpret, we search for meaning (Viktor Frankl).

Sontag goes on to outline a more enlightened form of literary criticism focusing on form and appearances.
The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.
Thus, what is direct and transparent is (should be) the object of our attention and appreciation. If art/writing is what it is and therein is its value, we can proceed. But how?

There must be levels of interpretation starting with the direct and transparent and moving up (or down) through translation and paraphrasing and description to eventual acceptance. We can beware the trap of going beyond the text, but basic decoding and placing what is said into the author's and the readers contexts for understanding cannot be escaped. And understanding is about meaning.

Note. Ms. Sontag calls for a phenomenology of art, to see how it is and what it is. A next step is to address the meaning of content, and whether content is the same as the thing itself, the what.

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