‘There are readings- of the same text- that are dutiful, readings that map and dissect, reading that hear a rustling of unheard sounds, that count grey little pronouns for pleasure or instruction, and for a time do not hear golden or apples. There are personal readings, that snatch for personal readings, I am full of love, or disgust, or fear, I scan for love, or disgust, or fear. There are-believe it- impersonal readings, where the mind’s eye sees the lines move onwards, and the mind’s ear hears them sing and sing.
Now and then there are readings which make the hairds on the neck, the non-existent pelt, stand on end and tremble, when every word shines bright and hard and clear and infinite and exact, like stone of fire, like points of stars in the dark- readings when the knowledge that we shall know the writing differently or better, or satisfactorily, runs ahead of any capacity to say what we know or how. In these readings, a sense that the text has appeared to be wholly new, never before seen, is followed, almost immediately, by the sense that it was always there, that we , the readers, knew that it was always there and have always known it was as it was though we have now for the first time recognised, become fully cognizant of our knowledge.’
-A.S Byatt, ‘Possession’.
