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What is it that makes a text able to hold a wealth of meanings within it, if not the complementary desires of a writer and a reader to capture a huge reality between them?

What is it that makes a text able to hold a wealth of meanings within it, if not the complementary desires of a writer and a reader to capture a huge reality between them?

The living creature, in its drive to write itself irreplacwably into the text of the universe and in its essay to render itself indispensable to the task of reading this text with any measure of understanding, ...  

The living creature, in its drive to write itself irreplacwably into the text of the universe and in its essay to render itself indispensable to the task of reading this text with any measure of understanding, ...

The war'ly race may riches chase,

| colspan="2" | The war'ly race may riches chase,

An riches still may fly them, O;

An tho at last they catch them fast,

| width="5%"  |   || An riches still may fly them, O;

Their hearts can ne'er enjoy them, O.

Robert Burns, Green Grow the Rashes, O, [CPW, 81]

| colspan="2" | An tho at last they catch them fast,

| width="5%"  |   || Their hearts can ne'er enjoy them, O.

| colspan="2" align="right" | — Robert Burns, ''Green Grow the Rashes, O'', [CPW, 81]

The more one steps back from the objects and the phenomena that first struck one's fancy to know, the ones one really desires to understand, in order to get what one imagines will be a better, more analytic, and more conceptual view of them, the more one sees the envisioned ends of understanding receding into the distance of one's altered perspective, leaving one with respect to them barely at the beginnings of analysis.  Over time, the visionary ends of inquiry appear to disappear into the mists of one's lately imposed starts, to skip over the marks of one's recently interposed stations, perhaps to await one's tardy arrival at the alpha and omega of one's upstart inquiry.

The more one steps back from the objects and the phenomena that first struck one's fancy to know, the ones one really desires to understand, in order to get what one imagines will be a better, more analytic, and more conceptual view of them, the more one sees the envisioned ends of understanding receding into the distance of one's altered perspective, leaving one with respect to them barely at the beginnings of analysis.  Over time, the visionary ends of inquiry appear to disappear into the mists of one's lately imposed starts, to skip over the marks of one's recently interposed stations, perhaps to await one's tardy arrival at the alpha and omega of one's upstart inquiry.

The intervention of an epitext is designed precisely for this reason, to compensate, counteract, and remediate the more deleterious effects of an otherwise heathily growing perspective.  The epitext is meant to keep the end in view, to remind the participants in a communication of the type of text that is ultimately desirable to understand, but without demanding its complete unraveling within the immediate frame of time, nor taunting each other so severely with the distances that remain to their goals that all are daunted from continuing with the ongoing task.

The intervention of an epitext is designed precisely for this reason, to compensate, counteract, and remediate the more deleterious effects of an otherwise heathily growing perspective.  The epitext is meant to keep the end in view, to remind the participants in a communication of the type of text that is ultimately desirable to understand, but without demanding its complete unraveling within the immediate frame of time, nor taunting each other so severely with the distances that remain to their goals that all are daunted from continuing with the ongoing task.

 

But gie me a cannie hour at e'en,

But gie me a cannie hour at e'en,

My arms about my dearie, O,

My arms about my dearie, O,