A Sideways Balancing Act

I was thinking recently, as the question was posed by a professor this last week, what is it about a piece of literature that is the MOST important aspect to consider when looking deeper into it? This is something that I have answered a few times by now in my oh-so-long career as a college English student. Needless to say, I have had some time to really think about it and I have come to the conclusion that the most important aspect to consider when reading a text is the context in which it was written. By this I mean that it is crucial to consider who the author is or was, who the work was written for, and what the author was trying to convey. Socrates says in Plato’s “Ion” that there is a very important interconnectedness between the poet, the actor/rhapsode and the spectator which is a sideways balancing act in which none is more important than any other.

Through all these, the god draws the souls of men wherever he wants, making the power of one depend upon the other. And, just as from that stone, a huge chain of choral performers and trainers and assistant trainers is suspended, attached sideways to the rings that hang from the Muses. (Murray, Classical Literary Criticism, pg. 7)

There is no doubt in my mind that understanding the author (poet) of a piece of literature (poem) is critically important. But I can’t deny that without artistic rendering (actor) or someone (spectator/audience) to ultimately derive some sort of emotion or meaning from the work, there is no point in ever writing anything to begin with.