This question leads into the general realm of reading theory where many dangers await the unwary amateur. Having cast discretion to the winds, I shall venture the hypothesis that the reading of a poem probably provides a better basis for a general "model" of the, reading process than does the reading of a scientific formula or .a recipe for cooking. The tendency of the layman is to assume that the latter forms are simpler modes of reading, and that in the reading that results in a poem, something more has been added. Actually, are not both the aesthetic and non-aesthetic readings different versions of the same basic process?
The difference between these two kinds of reading derives ultimately, it seems to me, from a difference in the aspect of the reading process that the reader holds in the focus of his attention. In a reading that results in a work of art, the reader is concerned with the quality of the experience that he is living through under the stimulus and guidance of the text. No one else can read the poem or the novel or the play for him. To ask someone else to experience a work of art for him would be tantamount to seeking nourishment by asking someone else to eat his dinner for him.
The non-aesthetic mode of reading is primarily instrumental. The differentiating factor is that the reader is not primarily
concerned with the actual experience during the time of his relationship with the text. His primary purpose is something that will remain as a residue after the actual reading event-e.g., the information to be acquired, the operations referred to or implied in a scientific experiment, or the actions to be carried out in some practical situation.
An illustration of this instrumental type of reading might be a woman who has just discovered a fire in her kitchen, has picked up a fire extinguisher of a type that she has never used, and is frantically reading the directions for its use. Her attention, her whole muscular set, will be directed toward the actions to be performed as soon as she has finished interpreting, i.e., reading, the text. She is not paying attention to the sound of the words,
nor to the particular associations that they might evoke. Whether the directions refer to "fire" or "flames" or "combustion" is quite unimportant to her, so long as she grasps what the word points to. The sound, the associations, the relationship of the overtones of these words to those of the rest of the verbal context, would be very important if she were paying attention to this aspect of the reading while evoking a poem; in this instrumental reading they
are ignored, are not allowed into the center of attention. The response to the text will be the actual operations to be performed.