3 P. L. Travers Quotes on Interpretation

P. L. Travers quotes on interpretation

2. A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.

27. On September 6, 1995 La Stampa, Turin's daily newspaper, titled at full page 'Is Mary Poppins really Satan?'. Many readers were, understandably, surprised but no reader was more astonished than the undersigned. In fact I learned from the article that I had accused Mary Poppins to have 'clear links with the esoteric and satanic thought'. I was credited for having discovered that 'under the gentle mask of the extraordinary nanny a dangerous creature was hidden, with features no less than satanic'. The same journalist, appropriately, interviewed an exorcist who complained that 'Introvigne normally minimizes the presence of Satan in our life' (a reference to my book on Satanism, where I argue that the number of real Satanists is minimum compared to the number of those who promote Satanism scares). But this, for the exorcist, amounted to still more convincing evidence that Mary Poppins was really satanic: 'If someone like Massimo Introvigne has written such a thing, this could only mean that the danger is really there'. The problem was, however, that I had never written such a thing.

28. In an interview which appeared in The Paris Review in 1982 the interviewers asked Travers whether 'Mary Poppins' teaching - if one can call it that - resemble that of Christ in his parables'. Travers replied: 'My Zen master, because I've studied Zen for a long time, told me that every one (and all the stories weren't written then) of the Mary Poppins stories is in essence a Zen story. And someone else, who is a bit of a Don Juan, told me that every one of the stories is a moment of tremendous sexual passion, because it begins with such tension and then it is reconciled and resolved in a way that is gloriously sensual'. The answer is clarified by the following question: 'So people can read anything and everything into the stories?'. 'Indeed'