Cause and interpretation (German text)

This is an experiment set up in search for the fundament of the interpretation of literary texts. In this work the question ‘What is literature?’ is considered an open question. The following theoretical approach therefore stands in contrast to the so called Work-Immanent-Interpretation which always follows a premises of what literature is and therefore how a text is supposed to be read. In my interpretation I do not follow such a limitation. Here I try not to carry any outside ideas into the interpretation of the text itself. The approach to the literary texts in this work is based on a simple idea: the minimum information a text a text can give is information about itself, more precisely about itself as the literature being read at this moment. This fact leads on to a limitation of the questions that can be asked about the text: the assumption what a text might say does not qualify as its interpretive fundament and would not legitimate its interpretation. So the question employed as the fundament of its interpretation is the question ‘What must the text say about itself?’.; The initial statement a text makes is that it states—with this initial statement the text tells about the itself as stating. The first question the interpreter asks about the text is therefore those about what the text states about itself as the literature being read at this moment. In this respect the text functions as the fundament of its own interpretation. The question what the text does say about itself as a self-explanatory medium, now asks for a reading of the text prior to its actual interpretation. To this I refer as the analysis of the text. Since the interpretation follows the question ‘What must the text say?’ refers back to the text as a self explanatory medium, we have to explore the means by which the text does that. That leads to the analysis of its first word. The test that is momentarily interpretable is therefore its first word through which the text states about itself. The determination of the first one of the means through which the test states, therefore simultaneously answers the question what the text says about itself. With its first word the text says about itself what it is. The definition of the first word so becomes the first statement the text makes about itself. This is the cause of its onward interpretation, based on the self interpretive ability the text has.