Brain Candy

Complexity --> Flexibility --> ??? --> Profit

Or at least, so it seems, when it comes to literature. Or art in general. Substitute "greatness" for profit (hooray for old memes?) Though I'm sure plenty of money has changed hands where re-prints of works are concerned.

It seems to me that one thing that contributes greatly to whether a work makes a lasting impression on human culture is how open to interpretation it is. It can't be devoid of meaning, mind you, but if you cram enough into it and somehow manage to make it coherent and let it stew for a century or several, just about anyone can get something out of it. Granted, for it to last at all, it must first be beautiful. For the first century or so after Paradise Lost was published, for example, most critics seemed to only focus on the style and the language of the poem instead of the content (then the Romantics got ahold of it. Mwahaha.) Or Shakespeare. Shakespeare was meant to appeal to the masses, and yet now it's regarded as great literature (and unfortunately lofty and unaccessable in some circles -__-.)

The concept extends to music, too. I recall reading at least an essay (that may or may not have been part of a whole book on the subject) detailing how Beethoven's music was co-opted for pretty much every political purpose under the sun in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

In short, it would seem that under the right circumstances, if a work is beautiful enough so people remember it and keep reading it over the centuries, it seems to gain this extra patina full of different interpretations (liberally applicable once the author is dead so they can't contradict anyone beyond what they wrote or said in their own lifetime, of course) that perpetuates the work even after societal standards of beauty have changed, turning it to chewy delicious brain candy for geeks and over-thinkers everywhere.

Of course, this all seems pretty obvious once I type it out. I think it's one of my favorite things about literature and art in general, though. Great works continue to generate new meanings as long as people are still reading them. They just need that initial something to capture peoples' attention.