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The Art of Reading 阅读的艺术

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2019年06月04日

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The Art of Reading

阅读的艺术

André Maurois

安德烈·莫洛亚

作者简介

安德烈·莫洛亚(André Maurois,1885—1967),法国作家、法兰西学院院士。他在一战时应征服役,担任英军与法国炮队之间的翻译联络官。在此期间,他根据军旅生活所见所闻,写成《布朗勃尔上校的沉默》(The Silence of Colonel Bramble),并一举成名。

莫洛亚著有长篇小说《贝尔纳·盖斯奈》(Bernard Quesnay)和《爱的气候》(The Climates of Love)等,并写下了大量脍炙人口的传记文学作品,如《巴尔扎克传——普罗米修斯》(Prometheus: The Life of Balzac)、《拜伦传》(Byron)和《泰坦巨人:三代仲马传》(Titans: A Three-Generation Biography of the Dumas)等。

本文选自安德烈·莫洛亚1939年出版的作品《生活的艺术》(The Art of Living)。书中,作者以流畅的文笔展示了自己的人生阅历和前贤的嘉言懿行。全书虽无深邃的哲学思想,却有隽永的人生哲理。本文畅谈阅读的艺术,细数阅读的规律,对爱书人有一定的参考价值。

Can reading be called work? Valery Larbaud calls it the “unpunished vice”, and Descartes, on the contrary, says it is “a conversation with the most honest people of past centuries.”Both of them are right.

The vicious reading occurs in people who find in reading a kind of opium that liberates them from the real world sinking them into an imaginary one. They cannot spend one minute without reading; to them, everything is good; they will open an encyclopedia and read an essay on water-color technique as voraciously as they will read an article on firearms. Left alone in a room, they will go straight to a pile of newspapers and magazines and plunge into the middle of any column, rather than be left their own thoughts for a moment. They seek neither ideas nor facts in reading, but merely the endless procession of words which prevents them from facing the world or their souls. They retain very little substance of what they read; they set up no scale of values amongst the various sources of information. As practiced by them, reading is completely passive; they hold the texts; they do not interpret them; they do not make any room for them in their minds; they do not assimilate them.

Pleasure reading is much more active. The novel lover reads for his pleasure, to find either beautiful impressions, or the awakening and exaltation of his own emotions, or the adventures which life has denied him. Another will read for the pleasure of discovering among the poets and moralists a more perfect expression of his own observations and feelings. Still another will read, without studying a particular period of history, for the pleasure of verifying the similarities of human suffering throughout the course of the centuries. This sort of pleasure reading is healthy.

Finally, work reading is the sort done by the man who is seeking in a book definite knowledge or material needed for the creation or completion in his mind of a structure whose magnitude he has conceived in general terms. Work reading must be done with pen or pencil in hand, unless the reader possesses an extraordinary memory. It is useless to read if we must reread each time we need to return to the subject. If I may cite my own example, when I read a volume of history or a serious book of any kind, I always write a few key words indicating the important topics covered. Underneath each word I write the page number where the corresponding passage is located, in case I need to consult it without having to read the entire book again.

Reading, like all work, has its rules. Let us outline some of them.

The First rule is that a perfect knowledge of a few writers and a few subjects is more valuable than a superficial one of a great many. The beautiful features of a piece of writing are seldom apparent at first reading. In youth, one should search among books as one searches the world for friends, and once these friends are found, chosen, and adopted, one must retire with them. Intimacy with Montaigne, Saint-Simon, Retz, Balzac, or Proust is sufficient to enrich an entire life.

The second rule is that the great writings of the past must figure preeminently in our readings. Of course it is both natural and necessary to be interested in the writers of our times, for it is among them that we are likely to find friends who have our own cares and needs. But let us not submerge ourselves in the tide of insignificant books. The number of masterpieces is such that we would never be able to know them all. Let us trust the selection made in past centuries. A man may be wrong; a generation may be wrong; humanity is never wrong. Homer, Tacitus, Shakespeare, and Molière certainly deserve their glory. We should give them some preference over those who have not undergone the test of time.

The third rule is to choose our literary nourishment well. Each mind requires its own particular food. Let us learn to recognize which authors are our authors. They will be very different from those of our friends. In literature as in love, we are surprised at what is chosen by others. Let us be faithful to what is appropriate for us. We are the best judges of that.

The fourth rule is that whenever possible our reading should be done in the atmosphere of composure and respect which surrounds a fine concert or a noble ceremony. Reading is not to run through a page, interrupt to answer the telephone, pick up a book when one's thoughts are elsewhere, lay it down until the next day. The true reader procures long periods of solitude; for some especially admired author, he reserves a Sunday afternoon in the Winter; he is thankful for a train journey which provides him with the opportunity to read a whole novel of Balzac, Stendhal, or the Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe. He experiences an intense pleasure from rereading a favorite phrase or passage he loves (the Madeleine in Proust, or Levine's betrothal in Tolstoy), as the music lover does when he hears the magician's theme in Stravinsky's Petrouchka.

The fifth rule, finally, is to make ourselves worthy of great books because in reading, like in the Spanish inns and in love, one finds only what one brings to them. The delineation of emotions interests only those who have experienced them or young people who await their flowering with hope and anguish. There is nothing so moving as the spectacle of a young man who could endure nothing but adventure stories last year and has suddenly developed a great liking for Anna Karenina or Dominique, because now he knows what the joys and the pains of love are like. Great men of action read Kipling, great statesmen read Tacitus or Retz. It was a great spectacle to see Lyautey absorbed in Shakespeare's Coriolanus the day after an unjust government took Morocco from him. The art of reading is in great part that of finding life once again in the books, and thanks to them, in understanding life better.

可以称阅读为劳作吗?瓦雷里·拉尔博1称其为“不受惩罚的罪恶”,笛卡儿2则恰恰相反,称之为“与过去几个世纪里最诚实的人们交谈”。两人的说法都有理。

有些人视书为让自己脱离现实、深陷虚境的麻醉剂,“恶性阅读”就发生在他们身上。如果无书可读,他们一分钟也忍受不了;对他们来说,什么书都是好书;无论是百科全书中关于水彩技法的散文,还是关于火器枪械的文章,他们一样会贪婪阅读。如果是独自待在屋里,他们会直奔成堆的报刊、杂志,急匆匆地浏览任意专栏,而不自己思考问题。他们阅读不是为寻找观点或事实,而是无休止地徜徉于文字之中,以免面对现实世界或自己的内心。他们读完书后记不住内容,面对丰富的信息毫无辨别能力。他们进行的这种阅读完全是被动的;他们手捧文本,却不分析解读,也不储存信息,更不吸收知识。

“趣味阅读”则主动得多。有些人以读小说为乐,去寻找美妙的印象、情感的复苏和日常生活中缺少的冒险。也有人以读诗歌和伦理学著作为乐,探寻对自身体会、自身感受更完美的阐释。还有人以读历史为乐。他们不是研究特定时期的历史,而是查证千百年来人类相似的苦难经历。这种“趣味阅读”有益健康。

最后,“工作阅读”是指一个人去书里寻找特定的知识和材料,以便创作或完成他头脑中已有大体框架的巨著。“工作阅读”时最好手里拿着笔,除非你记忆力超群。如果每次需要回顾某个话题时都得重读一遍,那阅读又有什么用呢?以我自己为例,我读历史书或其他严肃书籍时,总会记下阐明该书主旨的几个关键词,并在每个词下面标明相关段落所在的页码。如此一来,当我需要查阅资料时,就不需要重读整本书了。

像所有工作一样,阅读也有准则。我谨列举如下几条。

准则一:对少数作家作品了如指掌,胜过对众多作家作品略知一二。作品的美妙之处极少在第一次阅读时显现。年轻人应该像遨游世界一般在书海中遨游,去寻找志同道合的友人。当你发现、选择、确定那些友人之后,便要与其携手一生。与蒙田3、圣西门4 、雷斯5、巴尔扎克6、普鲁斯特7等人亲密无间,足以让你一生充实。

准则二:昔日经典必须是阅读的主体。当然,对当代作家感兴趣既合理也有必要,因为他们可能与我们有着相同的关注和需要。但切勿被无关紧要的书潮淹没。杰作的数量如此之多,我们永远无法了解全部。要相信千百年来的披沙沥金:一个人或许走眼,一代人或许错看,但人类不会误判。荷马、塔西佗8、莎士比亚9、莫里哀10显然无愧于他们的荣耀。我们应当偏爱这些名家,而非未经时间检验的作家。

准则三:慎重选择文学养料。每个人都有适合自己的精神食粮。要学会辨别哪些作家适合我们。他们可能和前面所说的友人完全不同。读文学作品就像坠入爱河,我们总是对别人的选择感到吃惊。要忠于适合自己的作家。对此,我们自己是最佳的裁判。

准则四:阅读时必须平和镇静、心怀敬意,如同身处美妙的音乐会或神圣的典礼。阅读时不可一目十行、断断续续、心不在焉,或是把书放到第二天再读。真正的读者需要长时间的独处;为了阅读某位特别喜爱的作家的著作,他会预留出冬天一个星期日的下午;他会感谢火车之旅让自己有空阅读巴尔扎克、司汤达11的整部小说,或是《墓畔回忆录》12。重读某个心爱的短语或段落时(比如普鲁斯特笔下的“玛德琳小点心”或托尔斯泰13笔下的“勒维纳的婚礼”),他会像音乐迷听到斯特拉文斯基14的剧作《彼得鲁什卡》里的魔术师主旋律一样,感觉到一种强烈的快感。

准则五,也是最后一条准则:让自己配得上伟大的作品。因为阅读就像身处西班牙旅店或沐浴爱河——你只会找到自己带进去的东西。对情感描写感兴趣的,不是已经有过切身体会的过来人,就是满怀希望、焦急等待爱情之花绽放的年轻人。一个去年还只读冒险小说的小伙子,突然对《安娜·卡列尼娜》或《多米尼克》15萌生了强烈兴趣,因为他现在明白了爱恋的甜蜜与痛苦。没有什么场景能比这更令人感动了。伟大的行动主义者读吉卜林16的著作,伟大的政治家读塔西佗或雷斯的著作。利奥泰17在非法政府接管摩洛哥政权的第二天,就一头扎进了莎士比亚的《科利奥兰纳斯》18之中,这是多么伟大的场景。在很大程度上,阅读的艺术就是在书中再一次发现生活,并更好地理解生活。

* * *

要相信千百年来的披沙沥金:一个人或许走眼,一代人或许错看,但人类不会误判。

André Maurois 安德烈·莫洛亚

* * *

————————————————————

1.瓦雷里·拉尔博(Valery Larbaud,1881—1957),法国小说家、诗人、评论家。

2.勒内·笛卡儿(René Descartes,1596—1650),法国思想家、科学家,解析几何的创始人,欧洲近代资产阶级哲学的奠基人之一,被誉为“近代科学的始祖”。

3.蒙田,全名为米歇尔·德·蒙泰涅(Michel de Montaigne,1533—1592),文艺复兴时期最有影响力的法国作家之一,欧洲近代散文的创始人,代表作为《蒙田随笔》。

4.克劳德·昂列·圣西门(Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon,1760—1825),法国哲学家和社会改革家,空想社会主义者。

5.雷斯(Cardinal de Retz,1613—1679),法国政治家、红衣主教、作家。

6.奥诺雷·德·巴尔扎克(Honoré de Balzac,1799—1850),法国19世纪著名作家,法国现实主义文学成就最高者之一。

7.马塞尔·普鲁斯特(Marcel Proust,1871—1922),法国小说家,意识流作家。

8.普布利乌斯·科尔奈利乌斯·塔西佗(Publius Cornelius Tacitus,约55—120),古罗马帝国执政官、雄辩家、元老院元老,也是著名的历史学家。

9.威廉·莎士比亚(William Shakespeare,1564—1616),英国文艺复兴时期的伟大戏剧家、诗人,著有37部诗剧,154首十四行诗,代表欧洲文艺复兴时期最高的文学成就。

10.莫里哀(Molière,1622—1673),法国喜剧作家和演员,古典主义喜剧的创建者,法国芭蕾舞喜剧的创始人。

11.司汤达(Stendhal,1783—1842),本名马利—亨利·贝尔,法国文学家,代表作有《红与黑》《巴马修道院》等。

12.《墓畔回忆录》,法国作家弗朗索瓦—勒内·德夏多布里昂写于1809到1841年间的自传。

13.列夫·尼古拉耶维奇·托尔斯泰(Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy,1828—1910),俄国文学家,其代表作《战争与和平》等家喻户晓。

14.伊戈尔·费奥多罗维奇·斯特拉文斯基(Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky,1882—1971),美籍俄罗斯作曲家。

15.《多米尼克》,法国作家欧仁·弗罗芒坦的心理学小说。

16.约瑟夫·鲁德亚德·吉卜林(Joseph Rudyard Kipling,1865—1936),生于印度孟买,英国作家和诗人,被誉为“短篇小说艺术创新之人”,1907年荣获诺贝尔文学奖。

17.路易·赫伯特·利奥泰(Louis Hubert Lyautey,1854—1934),一战法军名将,1912—1925年在摩洛哥建立法国保护国制度。

18.《科利奥兰纳斯》,莎士比亚晚年撰写的罗马历史悲剧。


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