Some texts (potentially all of them?) are complete, or complete-in-themselves, as a German philosopher would say. It seems they become so as more readers love them; they cannot be extended, shortened, changed in any way; nor can we look for something in them and not find it.
And yet time passes, and we change. Our part of the text, its image/representation in our minds, as a German philosopher would say, therefore changes also, being the crop of the same seeds grown in a new earth.
This is the natural selection of ideas, that some should no longer grow, being no longer cultivatable; that others should flourish or grow anew.
But love is a mechanism in this process too; some texts we refuse to abandon, with or without reason, coddling them instead at great expense. To our sense.
Interpretation is the endless toil of these devoted, and not unrewarded, as we all stroll through the pastoral gardens they maintain. There is, however, an easier way.
This way we forgot, in desperate times; besieged by those who would destroy an idea, we were forced to protect it; when these crusaders receded, we did not recall that it was natural, strong, wise– to let it change.