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mushiHow_Should_One_Read_a_Book_英文翻译

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2021-01-22 22:11
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2021年1月22日发(作者:泄露)
How

Should

One

Read

a

Book


























It
is
simple
enough
to
say
that
since
books
have
classes
fiction,
biography,
poetry
——
we should separate them and take from each what it is right that each should
give us. Yet few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come
to books with blurred and divided minds. asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that
it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our
own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be
an admirable beginning. Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow
——
worker and accomplice. If you hang back, and reserve and criticize at first, you are
preventing yourself from getting the fullest possible value from what you read. But if you
open
your
mind
as
widely
as
possible,
the
signs
and
hints
of
almost
imperceptible
fineness, from the twist and turn of the first sentences, will bring you into the presence of a
human being unlike any other. Steep yourself in this, acquaint yourself with this, and soon
you will find that your author is giving you, or attempting to give you, something far more
definite.
The
thirty-two
chapters
of
a
novel
——

if
we
consider
how
to
read
a
novel
first
——
are
an
attempt to make something as
formed
and
controlled
as
a
building: but
words are more impalpable than bricks; reading is a longer and more complicated process
than seeing. Perhaps the quickest way to understand the elements of what a novelist is
doing
is
not
to
read,
but
to
write;
to
make
your
own
experiment
with
the
dangers
and
difficulties of words. Recall, then, some event that has left a distinct impression on you
——

how at the corner of the street, perhaps, you passed two people talking. A tree shook;
an electric light danced; the tone of the talk was comic, but also tragic; a whole vision; an
entire conception seemed contained in that movement.




But when you attempt to reconstruct it in words, you will find that it breaks into a
thousand
conflicting
impressions.
Some
must
be
subdued;
others
emphasized;
in
the
process
you
will
lose,
probably,
all
grasp
upon
the
emotion
itself.
Then
turn
from
your
blurred and littered pages to the opening pages of some great novelists
——
Defoe, Jane
Austen, or Hardy. Now you will be better able to appreciate their mastery. It is not merely
that
we
are
in
the
presence
of
a
different
person
——
Defoe,
Jane
Austen,
or
Thomas
Hardy
——
but that we are living in a different world. Here, in Robinson Crusoe, we are
trudging a plain high road; one thing happens after another; the fact and the order of the
fact is enough. But if the open air and adventure mean everything to Defoe they mean
nothing to Jane Austen. Hers is the drawing- room, and people talking and by the many
mirrors
of
their
talk
revealing
their
characters.
And
if,
when
we
have
accustomed
ourselves to the drawing-room and its reflections, we turn to Hardy, we are once more
spun around. The moors are around us and the stars are above our head. The other side
of the mind is now exposed
——
the dark side that comes uppermost in solitude, not the
light
side
that
shows
in
company.
Our
relations
are
not
towards
people,
but
towards
Nature and destiny. Yet different as these worlds are, each is consistent with itself. The
maker of each is careful to observe the laws of his own perspective, and however great a
strain they may put upon us they will never confuse us, as lesser writers so frequently do,
by introducing two different kinds of reality into the same book. Thus to go from one great
novelist to another is to be wrenched and uprooted; to be thrown this way and then that.
To
read
a
novel
is
a
difficult
and
complex
art.
You
must
be
capable
not
only
of
great
fitness of perception, but of great boldness of imagination if you are going to make use of
all that the novelist
——
the great artist
——
gives you.

“We have only to compare”

——
with those words the cat is out of the bag, and the
true complexity of reading is admitted. The first process, to receive impressions with the
utmost understanding, is only half the process of reading; it must be completed, if we are
to get the whole pleasure from a book, by another. We must pass judgment upon these
multitudinous impressions; we must make of these fleeting shapes one that is hard and
lasting.
But
not
directly.
Wait
for
the
dust
of
reading
to
settle;
for
the
conflict
and
the
questioning to die down; walk, talk, pull the dead petals from a rose, or fall asleep. Then
suddenly without our willing it, for it is thus that Nature undertakes these transitions, the
book will return, but differently. It will float to the top of the mind as a whole. And the book
as a whole is different from the book received currently in separate phrases. Details now
fit themselves into their places. We see the shape from start to finish; it is a barn, a pigsty,
or a cathedral. Now then we can compare book with book as we compare building with
building.
But
this
act
of
comparison
means
that
our
attitude
has
changed;
we
are
no
longer the friends of the writer, but his judges; and just as we cannot be too sympathetic
as friends, so as judges we cannot be too severe. Are they not criminals, books that have
wasted
our
time
and
sympathy;
are
they
not
the
most
insidious
enemies
of
society,
corrupters,
defilers,
the
writers
of
false
books,
faked
books,
books
that
fill
the
air
with
decay and disease? Let us then be severe in our judgments; let us compare each book
with the greatest of its kind.




If this is so, if to read a book as it should be read calls for the rarest qualities of
imagination, insight, and
judgment, you may perhaps, conclude
that literature
is a
very
complex art and that it is unlikely that we shall be able, even after a lifetime of reading, to
make any valuable contribution to its criticism. We must remain readers; we shall not put
on the further glory that belongs to those rare beings who are also critics. But still we have
our responsibilities as readers and even our importance. The standards we raise and the
judgments we pass steal into the air and become part of the atmosphere which writers
breathe as they work. An influence is created which tells upon them even if it never finds
its way into print. And that influence, if it were well instructed, vigorous and individual and
sincere,
might
be
of
great
value
now
when
criticism
is
necessarily
in
abeyance;
when
books pass in review like the procession of animals in a shooting gallery, and the critic has
only
one
second
in
which
to
load
and
aim
and
shoot
and
may
well
be
pardoned
if
he
mistakes rabbits for tigers, eagles for bar-door fowls, or misses altogether and wastes his
shot upon some peaceful sow grazing in a further field. If behind the erratic gunfire of the
press the author felt that that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of people
reading
for
the
love
of
reading,
slowly
and
unprofessionally,
and
judging
with
great
sympathy and yet with great severity, might this not improve the quality of his work? And if
by our means books were to become stronger, richer, and more varied, that would be an
end worth reaching.




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