You had better be sure that your seriousness is indeed high seriousness and not, God forbid, low seriousness. A TRUE symbol is substantial, not accidental. You cannot avoid it, you cannot remove it. You can t take the handkerchief from Othello, or the sea from The Nigger of the Narcissus, or the disfigured feet from Oedipus Rex. You can, however, read Ulysses without suspecting that wood shavings have to do with the Crucifixion or that the name Simon refers to the sin of Simony or that the hunger of the Dubliners at noon parallels that of the Lestrigonians.
Information does filter through.
It leaks, as we have taken to saying. Still the knowledge of even the sophisticated is rather thin, and even the most wised-up devils, stuffed to the ears with arcana, turned out to be fairly simple. Perhaps the deepest readers are those who are least sure of themselves. An even more disturbing suspicion is that they prefer meaning to feeling. Yes, it s too bad.