 For Hamann, the depth and meaning of a text go beyond the author’s own contribution, and are the responsibility of the interpreter: “Few authors understand themselves, and a proper reader must not only understand his author but also be able to see beyond him” (ZH 6, 22:10–12). And yet this recognition that the author’s opinions and intentions do not exhaust the possibilities of the text does not annihilate the place of the author. At the very least, the ‘beyond’ of the text includes a territory which, if unknown to the author, is not unrelated: that is, the author’s own unconscious workings and meanings. It is not accidental that Hamann observes not that few authors understand their own text, but that few authors understand themselves. This suggests a picture of creation in which more of the author is expressed in a text and entrusted to the interpreter than the author’s conscious intentions and opinions. This in turn suggests a picture of interpretation—of “understanding one’s hero” as Hamann put it when writing about Socrates—in which greater sensitivity, insight, and fidelity is demanded of the interpreter than would otherwise be the case. Above all, the interpreter must have the courage to be a kabbalist; that is, to say more than the text does, not to express oneself but to say what the author left unsaid. The fruits of such faithful creativity may be impossible to ‘justify’ or ‘verify’ to the demands of the objectivist, however.