If we can reach an agreement on this point, I think I have the right to make some comments or suggestions, because you will never allow them to constrain your own independence, which is the most important quality of a reader. Because, after all, what laws can be made for books? When was the Battle of Waterloo fought-that's for sure. But is Hamlet better than King Lear? No one can say for sure.
Everyone can only make up his own mind about this problem. If authoritative experts in thick fur coats and big dresses are invited to our library and asked to tell us what books to read and what value we value the books we read, then the spirit of freedom will be destroyed, and the spirit of freedom is the breath of life in the temple of books. Anywhere else, we may be bound by customs and practices-only here, we have no customs to follow.
However, to enjoy freedom, of course, we must limit ourselves. We can't waste energy in vain and ignorance. In order to water the rose beds, we should spray half the house thoroughly. We must cultivate our ability accurately and effectively on the spot. However, this is probably the first problem we have to face in the library. What is "on the spot"? Suddenly, it might just look like a mess. Poetry and novels, history and memoirs, dictionaries and blue books; Books written by men and women of all temperaments, nationalities and ages in various languages are crowded on the shelves. Outside, donkeys are braying, women are chatting by the water pump, and ponies are running in the fields. Where do we start? How can we sort out this massive chaos in order to get the deepest and widest pleasure from the books we read?
It seems simple to say: since books have various categories (novels, biographies and poems), we just need to classify them and find out what they should give us. But few people ask books for what they can give us. When we study, our ideas are often vague and contradictory: we demand that novels must be true, poems must be false, biographies must beautify people, and history must strengthen our prejudices. When we are studying, it will be a commendable start if we can get rid of all such prejudices first. Don't dictate to the author, but try to be the author himself. Be his collaborator and partner.
If you hesitate, reserve and comment from the beginning, you are preventing yourself from becoming as rich as possible from the books you read. However, as long as you open your heart as much as possible, subtle signs and hints in the tortuous sentences at the beginning of the book will bring you to a person who is completely different from anyone else. Immerse yourself in these things and get familiar with them, and soon you will find that the author is giving you or trying to give you something far more specific.
A 30-chapter novel (if we first consider how to read the novel) is something that is created in a fixed form and strictly controlled like architecture. But language is not like a brick, which is intangible; Reading is more time-consuming and complicated than watching. Perhaps the most convenient way to understand the elements of a novelist's creation is not reading, but writing, and trying the risks and difficulties of language use. Then, think back to an event that left a clear impression on your mind-for example, you were walking in the street and met two people talking: a tree was swinging; An electric light is flashing; The tone of the conversation is both funny and sad; That moment seemed to contain some complete illusion, some pure idea.
However, when you try to put this event back together in words, you find that it is divided into thousands of impression fragments. Some impressions must be reduced, while others must be strengthened; In this process, you may completely lose control of your emotions. Then, put aside your vague and messy manuscripts and open a book by a great novelist (Defoe, Austin or Hardy). At this time, you can better appreciate their superb skills. At this time, we are not only facing the author, Defoe, Austin or Hardy, but living in a different world.
For example, in Robinson Crusoe, we seem to be walking on a smooth road; Things happen one after another; Details and the order of details-that's all. However, if outdoor activities and adventures mean everything to Defoe, they mean nothing to Austin. Her world is the living room, not the speaker, but the character of the person expressed through various reflections of their conversation. When we get used to living room life and its impression, as soon as we walk towards Hardy, we are rotated in the opposite direction. We are surrounded by wilderness, with stars overhead. At this time, the other side of the mind is also exposed-the dark side prevails in loneliness, not the bright side in communication. What we are facing now is not the relationship between people, but the relationship between people and nature and fate. However, although these worlds are so different, each world has its own world and is harmonious.
Every creator of the world carefully abides by his own perspective law, so no matter how heavy a burden they add to our understanding, they will never confuse us like some small writers, because small writers often introduce different kinds of reality into a novel. In this way, from one great novelist to another-from Austin to Hardy, from peacock (Thomas Ralph, peacock (1785- 1866), English novelist and poet, Shelley's friend. ) to Trollope (Ann Trollope (18 15- 1882), an English novelist. ), from Scott to George Merediz-it's like being uprooted, thrown in one direction, and then another. Reading novels is a difficult and complicated art. If you intend to make use of everything that novelists (great artists) can give you, you must not only have extremely fine perception, but also have a very bold imagination.
However, a glance at the books with different categories and at sixes and sevens on the shelves shows that the authors are rarely "great artists"; Moreover, usually, many books are not literary works at all. For example, biographies and autobiographies filled with novels and poems, biographies of great men, biographies of people who have long died and been forgotten, can we not read them just because they are not "literary works"? Or do we still need to read them, but in different ways and for different purposes? For example, at night, when we wander in front of a house, the lights are on, the curtains have not been pulled down, and every floor of the house shows us a period of life, our curiosity arises-can't we read the biography with the mentality of satisfying this curiosity first? At this time, we are full of curiosity about the lives of these people: their servants are chatting, gentlemen are eating, a girl is dressing herself for the party, and an old lady is sitting at the window knitting. Who are they? What kind of people are they? What are their names? What are their occupations? What are their thoughts and experiences?
Biographies and memoirs answer such questions and light up many such houses; They showed us how people do their daily work, work hard, fail, succeed, eat, drink, hate and hate until they die. Sometimes, when we are watching, the house is dark, the iron fence disappears, and we go to the sea; We go hunting, sailing and fighting; We are between barbarians and soldiers; We went to participate in major battles.
Otherwise, if we are happy, we can stay in Britain and London, but the scene is still changing; The streets are narrower, the houses are smaller, the houses are very crowded, the diamond-shaped glass windows smell bad. We saw the poet Dunn, who was forced to escape from such a house because the walls were so thin that when children cried, their voices could penetrate it. We can follow him, through the path written in the book, all the way back to Kennan (an English place name) and Mrs. Bedford's garden, which is a gathering place of famous nobles and poets; Then, we went to Wilton's big house at the foot of the mountain and listened to Sidney read Acadia to his sister (an idyllic legend written by Sidney at the request of his sister pembroke to catch the countess); Stroll in that swamp again and see the heron that appears frequently in the famous legend; Then, I will go north with another pembroke lady, Anne Clifford, to her wasteland, or I will plunge into the city, but I will meet Gabriel Harvey and Spencer (Harvey (15457- 1630) and Ace Spencer (1552) in black swan costumes.
In Elizabethan London, darkness and glory are intertwined, and nothing is more interesting than stumbling. But you can't stay there forever. Because Temple (1628- 1699), a British diplomat and essayist) and Swift, Harry and St. John (British18th century politicians, all Tories) are waving to us; It takes hours and hours to sort out their arguments and decipher each of their personalities. If we are tired of them, we can continue to stroll forward, passing a lady in black with jewels all over her body, looking for Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith and garrick; Otherwise, if you are happy, you can cross the strait and meet Voltaire, Diderot and Madame de Van der (French aristocratic lady (1697- 1780), whose salon is frequented by Voltaire and others); Then I went back to Tukenan, where the gardens of Britain and Mrs. Bedford used to be, and where the Pope (1688- 1744), a British poet) later lived (in some places, some people's names kept appearing! ), and then to Walpur in Strawberry Mountain (Walpur (17 17- 1797), English novelist).
However, Walpur introduced us to a large group of new acquaintances, many families to visit and many doorbells to ring. For example, in front of Ms. Behles's door, we are likely to hesitate for a moment, because, look, Thackeray is coming; He is a friend of the woman Valpur loves; From this point of view, just from this friend to that friend, from this garden to that garden, from this house to that house, we are walking from one end of English literature to the other, and we often suddenly wake up and find ourselves back in the old place-if we can still distinguish this moment from all the moments that have passed before.
Then, this can also be used as a way for us to read biographies and letters; We can use them to light many windows in the past; We can look at the habits of celebrities who have already passed away in their daily lives, and sometimes we can imagine that since we are so close to them, we may accidentally discover their secrets; We can also take out a play or a poem written by them and see what different effects it will have if we read it in front of the author. But this leads to other problems.
We have to ask: to what extent will a book be influenced by the author's life experience? -How reliable is it for this person in life to go to the manual author? And the language is so sensitive that it is easy to accept the influence of the author's personality. So, to what extent should we refuse and accept the sympathy and disgust he caused in our hearts? These are all questions that weigh on our minds when we read biographies and letters. We must answer these questions ourselves, because when it comes to such a purely personal question, it is too dangerous to let other people's preferences completely guide us.
However, we can also read such books with another purpose, not to clarify literary works, nor to get familiar with those celebrities, but to improve and exercise our creative ability. Isn't there an open window on the right side of the bookshelf? What a pleasant thing to stop and look out of the window! The scenery, because of its unconsciousness, its irrelevance and its eternal change, is so inspiring: several ponies are running around in circles in the field, a woman is filling her bucket with water by the well, and a donkey raises its head high and makes a long sharp cry. Most books in any library are only short-lived records of men, women and donkeys like this.
Any literature, once out of date, will always accumulate piles of old books, leaving it to record the lost time and forgotten things in ancient and trembling language. However, if you are interested in reading old books, you will be shocked and even impressed by the traces of human life that have been abandoned and left to rot. This may be a letter, but what kind of image it depicts! That may be just a few words-but what they remind people of!
Sometimes, you will come across a complete story, full of fun and appeal, with a complete beginning and end. It seems that it was written by a great novelist, but it is actually just an actor in the old days, Tate? Wilkinson (English actor), recalling the strange experience of Captain Jones; Or just a young lieutenant under Arthur Wellesley Duke of Wellington fell in love with a beautiful girl in Lisbon; Or just Maria? Allen (18th century British musician Charles? Bernie's second wife (the daughter of her ex-husband) left her needlework in the empty living room and sighed that she wished she had accepted Dr. Born's kind advice instead of eloping with her Leahy. These materials are worthless and can be completely discarded, but when the pony outside the window is running in circles in the field, a woman is pouring water into her bucket by the well, and a donkey is neighing, at this time, occasionally rummaging through these old books and digging up a few rings, scissors or broken noses from the distant past, how successful it is!
But we will eventually get tired of reading old books. We will get tired of rummaging through old books just to find what we need and bring Wilkinson, banbury and Maria together. Half of the facts that Allen can provide us are complete. They don't have the artist's ability to control and delete materials; They can't even tell the whole truth about their lives; They tampered with a story that could have been well organized. What they can provide us is only factual material, which is a low-level form in creation. Therefore, we have a desire to end this incomplete expression and approximate estimation, stop looking for subtle differences in human personality, and enjoy a greater degree of abstraction and purer truth in our creation.
So we create that kind of situation, which is strong and * * *, without paying attention to details, and emphasize the atmosphere with some regular and repeated beats, and its natural expression is poetry; When we can almost write poetry, it is also a good time to read poetry.
West wind, when will you blow?
So that the light rain can fall gently.
When will my love return to my arms?
I am extremely comfortable in my own bed. (/kloc-a poem by an unknown English poet in the 6th century)
The impact of poetry is strong and straightforward. At that moment, I won't feel anything but being moved by this poem. How deep we have fallen into at once! Can't catch anything; Nothing can stop us from flying. The illusion of the novel is gradually formed; The effect of the novel is psychologically prepared; However, when people read these four lines, who will stop and ask who wrote them, or think of Dunn's home or Sidney's secretary in their minds, otherwise, will they be involved in the complicated past years and the constant alternation of generations? Poets will always be our contemporaries. At the moment when we read poetry for the first time, our body and mind are concentrated and tense, just like when our personal feelings are violently impacted. However, later, that feeling expanded the circle in our hearts like ripples of water waves, so that it extended to distant significance; So we began to discuss and comment rationally, and also realized the echo and reflection.
Strong poetry can cover a wide range of emotional fields. We just need to compare, first experience the power of two lines of poetry to cut to the chase:
I'm going to fall like a tree and find my own grave,
Everything is empty, only my sadness is recalled. (Lines from A Girl's Tragedy (16 19) co-authored by British Shakespeare's contemporary playwrights Beaumont and Fletcher)
Taste the cadence of the following poem again:
In the hourglass, every minute.
Is calculated by the sinking of sand grains;
Our lives have been wasted,
Time runs out in people's happiness and goes to the grave.
Finally, everything ended in sadness;
People who are tired of dissolute life go home,
Sighing and counting the yellow sand,
The sand fell and a long sleep ended a disastrous career. (John, British dramatist? Ford's (1856-1639) play The Sorrow of Lovers (1628)
Look at the quiet and thoughtful mood in this poem:
Whether we are young or old,
Our destiny, the center and destination of our life.
Is, and can only be, infinite;
With the hope of never dying,
There is also effort, desire and expectation.
That effort will always exist. (William, British poet? A poem in the fourth part of Wordsworth's long poem "Overture")
Use these four perfect and infinitely lovely lines:
Look, the patrolling moon rises into the sky,
Do not hang, do not stay anywhere,
She stood up gently,
She was accompanied by only one or two stars. (The poem is from Coleridge's long poem "Ode to the Ancient Ship")
Or, compare this dazzling imagination again:
This man haunts the forest,
Wandering around, never stopping,
Suddenly, in the dense forest,
A sea of fire is burning,
Ran Ran rolled up a flame,
He had a brainwave and thought:
Saffron is in full bloom on the treetops. (Unknown source)
Now, let's think about the poet's colorful artistic techniques; Think about his ability to make us both actors and audiences; Think about his familiarity with the characters and his ability to shape Falstaff and King Lear. Think about his ability to compress, expand and display.
"We just need to compare"-this sentence tells the secret and admits the complexity of reading. The first step just mentioned is to accept the impression in the book with the greatest comprehension ability, which is only half of the whole process; If we want to get all the fun from another person's book, we must finish the whole process. We must judge these different impressions; We must form a fixed and lasting image based on these fleeting images. But there's no need to rush. Waiting for the dust to settle, waiting for the arguments and problems to subside; Might as well go for a walk, chat, tear off the dried petals of roses, or go to bed. Then, all of a sudden, I didn't think about it-because nature arranged this change in this way-the book came back, but it was different.
It comes to mind completely, and a complete book is very different from a scattered impression based on scattered words. All the details are put in place. We can clearly see the whole shape from beginning to end: this is a barn, a pigsty, or a cathedral. Now, we can compare books with books, just as we compare buildings with buildings. But this comparative behavior also means a change in our attitude; We are no longer friends of the author, but his judges; Just as we can't be too considerate and sympathetic as friends, we can't be too harsh as judges.
Aren't those books that waste our time and abuse our compassion criminals? Aren't those authors who write fake books, fabricate books, and the air is filled with decay and viruses the insidious enemies, corruptors and defilers of the whole society? Then let's judge them severely and compare each book with the greatest works of its kind.
Fortunately, there are some well-defined books hanging in our minds: Robinson Crusoe, Emma and The Return of the Native. Just compare the novels we are reading with them-even the latest and insignificant novels have the right to judge by the best novels. The same is true of poetry-when the euphoria calms down and the dazzling brilliance of gorgeous rhetoric disappears, an imaginary whole will appear before our eyes, which must be compared with King Lear, Fidel and Overture; Otherwise, we don't compare with these works, but with those we think are the best of their kind. We can be sure that the novelty of new poems and novels is only its extremely superficial characteristics. We only need to change the standards we use to judge ancient works a little, so we don't have to start a new stove.
However, it is foolish to think that the second step in the reading process, that is, judging and comparing, is as simple as the first step-all you have to do is to keep a broad mind on the countless impressions that come in. It is very difficult to put aside the book in front of you, continue reading, and compare this whole impression with another one. You should not only read widely enough, but also have enough judgment to make a vivid and enlightening comparison. It is even more difficult to put forward further: "I demand not only books of this kind, but also books of certain value;" So, it failed in this place and it succeeded in that place; It's well written here, but not well written there. "
To accomplish the tasks of these readers requires great imagination, insight and knowledge, and I am afraid it is difficult for anyone to have such talent; Even the most confident people can only find a little bud of these talents in themselves. Then, isn't it smarter to simply dispense with this part of the reading task and let critics, authoritative experts wearing thick leather coats and big dresses, decide the absolute value of books for us? However, no! We can emphasize the value of induction; When reading, we may try to hide ourselves. However, we also know that we can't completely empathize, and we can't completely bury ourselves; Because there is always a troublemaker whispering "I hate, I love" in our hearts, we can't keep him silent.
Indeed, it is because of our hatred and love that our relationship with poets and novelists is so close that we can't tolerate another irrelevant person in the middle. Even if opinions differ from people, even if our judgment is wrong, our interest that excites our body and mind is still our main lighting; We learn by feeling; You must not suppress your addiction and make it poor. However, with the passage of time, we may be able to cultivate our interest and let it accept some restrictions. When it has wolfed down all kinds of books-poems, novels, history, biographies-and then stopped reading and longed for a vast space about the diversity and disharmony of the life world, then we will find that it has changed a little. Not so greedy, but pay more attention to thinking.
It not only gives us a judgment about this book and that book, but also begins to tell us some similarities of some books. It will say, listen, what should it be called? It can read King Lear to us first and then King Agamemnon, thus revealing this similarity to us. In this way, under the guidance of my own interests, I can boldly go beyond the scope of a certain book and seek the characteristics of combining some books into one category; We can name them, make some rules and sum up our feelings in an orderly way. This classification can make us feel a deeper and more rare pleasure. However, the survival law of the law is always broken in the contact with the book itself-it is easy and foolish to formulate laws that have nothing to do with objective facts in a vacuum-then, in this difficult attempt, in order to keep ourselves stable, it is best to turn to those few writers who can enlighten us on the issue of taking literature as art.
Such as Coleridge, Dryden (John? Dryden's (163 1- 1700, English poet and critic) and Johnson's well-thought-out commentary articles, as well as the remarks made by many poets and novelists without careful consideration, are often surprisingly pertinent-they can illuminate and fix the vague concepts rolling in the misty mountains in our hearts. However, when we ask them for advice, our minds must be filled with questions and opinions that we have honestly accumulated in the process of reading, so that they can help us. If we just gather under the influence of their authority, like a flock of sheep lying in the shade of a fence, they can't do anything about us. Moreover, only when their verdict conflicts with our judgment and has been conquered can we understand their verdict.
In this case, since reading a book as it should be requires rare qualities such as imagination, insight and judgment, you may come to the conclusion that literature is a very complicated art, so even if we read a book for a lifetime, we can't make any valuable contribution to literary criticism.
Yes, we can only be readers forever; We can't wear a nimbus belonging to those rare people called critics. However, as readers, we still have our own responsibilities and even importance. The standards we set and the judgments we make have quietly spread into the air and become the atmosphere for writers to breathe when they work.
We created a sensation, although it could not appear on the pages of books and periodicals, but it still affected the writers. Especially now, due to inevitable reasons, literary criticism is still in an unstable state, and readers' sensitivity will be of great value as long as it is educated, energetic, distinctive and sincere. Because, nowadays, book reviews are like animals passing by in line at the shooting range. Critics only need to take a second to load bullets and aim at them, and then shoot at them. Therefore, even if he treats the rabbit as a tiger, the eagle as a chicken in the barn, or all misses, we can forgive him for wasting all his ammunition on a cow grazing quietly in a distant field. If, in addition to the inaccurate gunfire in newspapers and periodicals, writers can feel another kind of comment, that is, the public opinion of ordinary readers-they just read for the love of reading, reading leisurely and unprofessionally, and their judgments are sometimes sympathetic and sometimes harsh-can't this help writers improve the quality of their works? If we can make books more sound, powerful, substantial and colorful in this way, it will be worthwhile to achieve this goal.
However, who will study to achieve the expected goal? Aren't some of the undertakings we are constantly pursuing beneficial in themselves? Isn't fun the ultimate goal? Isn't reading such a profession? At least, I sometimes dream that when the last judgment day comes, conquerors, judges and politicians all come to accept their rewards-their crowns, their laurels and their immortal names carved in marble. At this time, when Almighty God saw our beloved book coming under our armpits, he turned around and said jealously to St. Peter, "Look, these people don't need a reward. We have nothing to give them here. They like reading. "