> I would hold any day that the purpose of writing is to have something understood. See, that's exactly the issue. Shakespeare didn't write his sonnets simply

> I would hold any day that the purpose of writing is to have something understood. See, that's exactly the issue. Shakespeare didn't write his sonnets simply to be "understood," he adopted a more difficult language for the sake of expressivity and aesthetic pleasure. Direct transmission of the author's intent is only one of writing's purposes. To treat it as the only one is to obliterate entire realms of human experience. This is pretty clearly the author's point, anyway.