Demeaning meaning?

Meaning can be mean, slighting the searcher, evading the evangelist, withdrawing itself from view. Why do we search for meaning and can we find it in text?

Why? - even the poet did not know?

No. The poet knew and wrote from knowledge, but it was not so mean a view as we would impose on the poem.

The meaning was not necessarily in natural or easy language. The idea was not the point. The point was engagement with mystery.

So meaning is not first able to be anything but potentiality till it is found by the reader. Then the poet rejoices.

Readers too might rejoice - but the real risk is that they will be cheated by preachers, carrying them to heights of fancy rather than joy.

Preachers are not the word, but its ministers, and the word does not have a meaning that can be taken away by observation as if we have control over it.

The meaning is in the interaction. The word is like a mirror which deflects the individual: either to life or not, to darkness or light. So the human diffracts by the word when engaged by it. Don't look away.