The real problem – as I have already mentioned in connection with the commentary on Ingarden – is not to recognize the existence of a difference, or even a conflict of values involved between the first and the second reading of a literary work, but to decide which of them offers better and more secure assessment criteria. In other words, which of them is worth conferring a legal aesthetic status? But why we have to choose? Why not to consider them complementary phases of a broader process of understanding? Because, I would argue, considerations derived from social and cultural history of reading, as well as from the literary reading psychology, make such a choice very difficult to defend. It may be that a model of literary reading, which merges or reconciles the values of the primary or second reading, is not impossible. But before considering that possibility, it is necessary to become fully aware of the hidden tensions between the two activities which are seemingly continuous.