How_Should_One_Read_a_Book_英文翻译

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.

毋庸讳言，书籍有类别之分，比如小说，传记，诗歌等。我们应该从各种不同类别的图书中获取不同的营养。然而，事实上，只有少数人能正确对待书籍，从中吸取其所能给予的一切。我们常常带着模糊而矛盾的观点，要求小说该实写，诗歌应该虚写，传记必须充满溢美之词，历史得强化我们固有的观念。阅读时，如果我们能摒弃这些偏见，便是一个好的开端。不要强作者所难，而应与作者融为一体，作他的同路人和随行者。倘若你未开卷便先行犹豫退缩，说三道四，你绝不可能从阅读中最大限度地获取有用价值。但是，如果你敞开胸怀，从头开始，认真研读字里行间不易察觉的精妙之处，他将把你带入一个别人难以领略的天地。沉浸其中，仔细玩味，不久，你会发现，作者给予你的，或试图给予你的，绝非某个不确定的意义。一部小说的三十二个章节----如果我们先来讨论怎么阅读小说的话----犹如建筑的构架，但词汇比砖头令人更难捉摸。阅读比之于观看，当然是个更为长久而复杂的过程。也许，最为快捷地领略小说家工作的原理的方法，不是读，而是写；去冒险与词汇打交道。回忆一下某个曾给你留下独特印象的事件：也许街角处你碰到两个人正在交谈，当时周围的场景是，树在随风摆动；街灯灯光摇曳不定；说话人声调悲喜交集，那一刻你感受到的情景全然融合在一起。

可是，当你试图用语言来再现这一场景时，它却变成无数个支离破碎的印象，有些得略述，有些得加强。就在你诉诸文字的当儿，当初的感受已荡然无存。抛开你自己的支离破碎的印象，去打开大师们的名著吧，比如笛福，简·奥斯丁哈代。这时，你当能更好地领会他们的精妙。我们不只是站在不同的大师面前—笛福，简·奥斯丁或者托马斯·哈代----实际上我们是置身于完全不同的世界。在《鲁滨逊漂流记》中，我们跋涉于久远的征途，一个事件接着一个事件发生，事件与事件之间顺序就足以构成其巨制。如果说户外和冒险之于笛福是大显身手的领地，那么，对于简·奥斯丁就无关紧要了。奥斯丁的世界是客厅，她通过活动于客厅里的人物的对话，反映人物性格。习惯了奥斯丁的客厅和通过客厅所反映的意向以后，我们再转向哈代，脑袋似乎又一次发晕了。我们置身于荒野之中，星星在我们头上闪烁。在这里，人类灵魂的另一面----孤寂中迸发的黑暗面，而不是处于凡世尘嚣时所表露的光明面----被充分解剖。这里展示的不是人与人的关系，而是人与自然和命运的关系。三位作家描述了三个不同的世界，他们各自的世界是个连贯一致的整体。他们谨慎地遵循着各自观察事物、描述事物的法则。无论他们的作品给读者带来多大的压力，读者不会在其中迷失方向，不至于像读某些不在行的作者的作品那样，在同一本书里看到两个截然不同的现实。因此，读完一位伟大作家的小说再去读另一位的，我们都要经历一场脱胎换骨的痛苦，就像被连根拔起，然后被跑来跑去。读小说是一门艰难而复杂的艺术。读小说是一门艰难而复杂的艺术。要想充分利用小说家----伟大的艺术家----给予的一切，你不仅要具备非凡的洞察力，你还得具有勇敢的想象。

“我们只要比较一下”，事情就很清楚，阅读的奥秘就在于此。尽可能的理解和感受各种印象，这只是阅读只有一半的过程；如果想获得一本书的全部愉悦，还得完成另一个过程，即对各种感受进行梳理和鉴别；把变幻不定的印象固化为明确和持久的感受。但这不必操之过急，应静待阅读的“尘埃落定”，你的困惑和质疑已经沉淀之后；出去走走，和朋友聊聊，拣去玫瑰花叶上的枯瓣，或者上床睡一觉。就这样，不经意间，造化之神在我们全然不知中完成了它转变的过程，书又会给我们带来全新的意义。它以其完整的意义浮现在我们心际。而完整地领会全书，和只领会它的片言只语，是不可同日而语的。书中的细节已各得其所，我们从头到尾看清了它的整体形象，正如谷仓、猪圈或教堂。现在我们就可以在书与书之间进行比较了，就像比较不同的建筑一样。这比较意味着我们的态度起了变化，我们不再是作者的朋友，而是他的审判者；正如作朋友我们不能不充满友情一样，作审判者我们就不能不严厉了。那些耗费我们时间和情感的书，其作者难道不能被看作是罪犯吗？那些充满谬误、捏造、腐朽与弊病的书，其作者难道不是社会最阴险的敌人，不是腐化者和堕落者吗？我们必须做出严厉裁判；我们把每本书都与其同类中最杰出的作品来做对比。

如果读书之道就是如此，如果读书需要最珍贵的想象力、洞察力和评判力，你也许会得出这样的结论，即文学实在是一门非常复杂的艺术，即便读了一辈子的书，也很难对文学评论做出有价值的贡献。我们始终都是读者，我们不必戴上只属于被称为批评家的少数人才能戴上的荣耀桂冠。但作为读者，我们依然有自己的责任和重要地位。我们提出的标准和做出的评判，潜移默化地成作家进行创作的氛围的一部分。即便没有出版，它们也会对他们产生影响。而这影响，如果导引得好，有活力、有个性，且诚挚真切，会非常有价值。尤其是没有评论家的评论时，情形更是如此。书籍被评论，就像动物进入射击场，评论家只有短短一秒种时间装弹、瞄准和射击，所以如果他把兔子看成老虎，把老鹰看成百姓的家禽，或者完全脱靶，或者误中了正在附近田野里安详吃草的牧牛，都应该原谅他们。如果作者能在评论界变幻莫测的炮火之外感受到另一种批评，感受到那些因爱读书而读书的人们的看法----这些人的评论也许不很及时，不很专业，出于好心但非常严厉----这难道不足以促使他提高作品的质量吗？如果通过我们的努力，图书的世界变得更有影响力，更丰富，更多样，这难道不是值得我们追寻的目标吗？