Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or

Hear the contemplative voice of Nathaniel Hawthorne, master of symbols and shadows, who declared: “Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.” In this insight lies the eternal mystery of art—that it is not a closed box containing meaning, but an open door leading to infinite worlds. The poet writes, the painter paints, the sculptor carves—but what they create is not merely their vision. It is a mirror, a spark, a seed that blossoms differently in each soul that beholds it.

The meaning of Hawthorne’s words is profound. The greatness of poetry or art is not in its ability to state, but in its ability to suggest. A lesser work may describe everything clearly, leaving no room for the imagination. But a greater work leaves space for the reader, the viewer, the listener, to discover more than the artist himself intended. Its lines and forms are but gateways, through which each soul enters to find its own truth. Thus, the merit of art is not in completeness, but in inexhaustibility—in its power to awaken thoughts, emotions, and visions that the creator himself may never have dreamed.

The ancients understood this mystery. Think of the Delphic oracle, whose words were often riddles. To the careless, they seemed obscure; to the wise, they opened endless reflection. So too with Homer—his epics were not mere tales of war and wandering, but vessels of countless interpretations: honor, fate, wrath, love, mortality. Each generation found in him more than the last. This is Hawthorne’s wisdom—that true art is suggestive, not exhausted by one meaning, but alive with infinite possibility.

History bears witness again in the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. His Mona Lisa, with her enigmatic smile, has puzzled and enchanted for centuries. Did Leonardo intend all the meanings people have read into her expression? Surely not. Yet therein lies the greatness of the work: it suggests more than it says. It invites the imagination of the beholder to travel beyond the brushstrokes. Her smile is never fully explained, and thus it remains eternal. A painting that revealed everything would have faded with its time; a painting that suggests has lived for ages.

Consider too the power of poetry in times of struggle. When W. B. Yeats wrote of a “terrible beauty” being born in the Irish uprising, his words did not fix meaning in stone. They suggested many truths: the cost of rebellion, the paradox of sacrifice, the transformation of a nation’s spirit. Each reader has found in those words something unique, something beyond what Yeats himself may have consciously intended. This is why poetry endures—it leaves room for the reader to find more than the poet has expressed.

The lesson for us is clear: do not approach art as if it were a riddle to be solved once and for all. Approach it instead as a well without bottom, a lamp whose light reveals new shadows each time you look. If you read only to find the poet’s meaning, you limit yourself. But if you read with openness, with imagination, with heart, you will discover meanings that belong to you alone. This is the highest joy of art—that it is co-created by the maker and the beholder, alive with suggestiveness.

Practical is this path: when you encounter a poem, do not rush to dissect it—linger, let it breathe within you, ask what it awakens in your own heart. When you gaze upon a painting or a statue, look not only with your eyes, but with your spirit. Seek the truths that rise in you, even if they are not written in the artist’s intention. For as Hawthorne teaches, the highest merit of art is suggestiveness—and if you learn to see in this way, then every poem, every picture, every statue becomes a doorway into the infinite.