Maybe It Is And Maybe It Isn't And Maybe It's Both (Ambiguity)

When reading Maimonides, I immediately connected his celebration of ambiguity to Eliot. “The Wasteland” is ambiguity at it’s finest, and I found it necessary to concede to an eternal perplexity in order to reconcile my utter lack of understanding, what with untranslated Greek and Sanskrit and innumerable classical references (though I am a commoner and consequently an inferior reader in Eliot’s understanding, I am at least able to have a considerable appreciation for the sheer scale and craft of the work.) Back to the subject at hand. The similarities between Maimonides and Eliot/New Criticism are too insane to overlook. I could not believe “Seven Types of Ambiguity,” the critical New Criticism publication by Empson which posits Eliot’s work as poetic genius, goes unconnected with Maimonides’ seven causes. 

In particular, Maimonides’ sixth cause and the fourth type of ambiguity are quite similar. The sixth cause is a concealed contradiction exposed through premises, which “escapes the attention of scholars who write books” (176). Essentially, it is a contradiction that arises, not necessarily through the ineptitude of the author, but through the natural emergence of conflicting elements. The author is only condemned if a lack of craft is evident from the beginning, whether that be forgetfulness or a lack of care. Empson’s fourth type is characterized by “two or more meaning that do not agree but combine to make clear a complicated state of mind in the author” (133). The contradiction serves as a testament to the intelligence of the author, to praise a “complexity of the mind” (133), not an unintentional confusion. Like Maimonides, the author is to blame if there are undeveloped conflicts that result from poor craft. A lack of specificity is unacceptable in both camps, so you can’t get away with being vague/inconsistent/muddled and calling it scholarship (sorry, Wordsworth.)

The main difference between Maimonides and the New Critics, I think, lies in the source of ambiguity. For the New Critics, the ambiguity stems from the author. And, if one is learned and elite enough and armed with multiple dictionaries, the ambiguity can be sorted through into a greater clarity. At that level, however, there are still different interpretations that can be made of “The Wasteland” or Prufrock. A level of ambiguity remains. The New Critics are not concerned with Eliot’s intention in how “The Wasteland” should be read, the “right reading,” rather, they are concerned with the poem itself, and the ambiguity that pervades the text object. Likewise, Maimonides establishes ambiguity as an unavoidable reality in spiritual texts, and one that should be embraced, not reasoned through. Similar to the New Critics, the intention is not to unearth the “real” truth or the “right” reading. 

My question is this:

For Maimonides, does the (unintentional) contradiction arise from the author’s mind, or is it solely a spiritual ambiguity, a mystery of the universe?