双语：How Should One Read a Book? （应该怎样读书）
How Should One Read a Book?by Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) from The Second Common Reader
Born in England, Virginia Woolf was the daughter of Leslie Stephen, a
well-known scholar. She was educated primarily at home and attributed her love
of reading to the early and complete access she was given to her father’s
library. With her husband, Leonard Woolf, she founded the Hogarth Press and
became known as member of the Bloomsbury group of intellectuals, which included
economist John Maynard Keynes, biographer Lytton Strachey, novelist E. M.
Forster, and art historian Clive Bell. Although she was a central figure in
London literary life, Woolf often saw herself as isolated from the mains stream
because she was a woman. Woolf is best known for her experimental, modernist
novels, including Mrs. Dalloway(1925) and To the Lighthouse(1927) which are
widely appreciated for her breakthrough into a new mode and technique--the
stream of consciousness. In her diary and critical essays she has much to say
about women and fiction. Her 1929 book A Room of One’s Own documents her desire
for women to take their rightful place in literary history and as an essayist
she has occupied a high place in 20th century literature. The common Reader
(1925 first series; 1932 second series) has acquired classic status. She also
wrote short stories and biographies. “Professions for Women” taken from The
collected Essays Vol 2. is originally a paper Woolf read to the Women’s Service
League, an organization for professional women in London.
In the first place, I want to emphasize the note of interrogation at the
end of my title. Even if I could answer the question for myself, the answer
would apply only to me and not to you. The only advice, indeed, that one person
can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own
instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. If this is
agreed between us, then I feel at liberty to put forward a few ideas and
suggestions because you will not allow them to fetter that independence which is
the most important quality that a reader can possess. After all, what laws can
be laid down about books? The battle of Waterloo was certainly fought on a
certain day; but is Hamlet a better play than Lear? Nobody can say. Each must
decide that question for himself. To admit authorities, however heavily furred
and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read,
what value to place on what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which
is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and
conventions—there we have none.
But to enjoy freedom, if the platitude is pardonable, we have of course to
control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly,
squirting half the house in order to water a single rose-bush; we must train
them, exactly and powerfully, here on the very spot. This, it may be, is one of
the first difficulties that faces us in a library. What is “the very spot”?
There may well seem to be nothing but a conglomeration and huddle of confusion.
Poems and novels, histories and memoirs, dictionaries and blue-books; books
written in all languages by men and women of all tempers, races, and ages jostle
each other on the shelf. And outside the donkey brays, the women gossip at the
pump, the colts gallop across the fields. Where are we to begin? How are we to
bring order into this multitudinous chaos and get the deepest and widest
pleasure from what we read?
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 moment.
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 novelist—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 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—from Jane Austen to Hardy, from
Peacock to Trollope, from Scott to Meredith—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 finesse 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 pig-sty, 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. There they
hang in the mind the shapes of the books we have read solidified by the
judgments we have passed on them—Robinson Crusoe, Emma, The Return of the
Native. Compare the novels with these—even the latest and least of novels has a
right to be judged with the best. And so with poetry—when the intoxication of
rhythm has died down and the splendour of words has faded a visionary shape will
return to us and this must be compared with Lear, with Phedre, with The
Prelude; or if not with these, with whatever is the best or seems to us to be
the best in its own kind. And we may be sure that the newness of new poetry and
fiction is its most superficial quality and that we have only to alter slightly,
not to recast, the standards by which we have judged the old.
It would be foolish, then, to pretend that the second part of reading, to
judge, to compare, is as simple as the first—to open the mind wide to the fast
flocking of innumerable impressions. To continue reading without the book before
you, To hold one shadow-shape against another, to have read widely enough and
with enough understanding to make such comparisons alive and illuminating—that
is difficult; it is still more difficult to press further and to say, “Not only
is the book of this sort, but it is of this value; here it fails; here it
succeeds; this is bad; that is good.” To carry out this part of a reader’s duty
needs such imagination, insight, and learning that it is hard to conceive any
one mind sufficiently endowed; impossible for the most self-confident to find
more than the seeds of such powers in himself. Would it not be wiser, then, to
remit this part of reading and to allow the critics, the gowned and furred
authorities of the library, to decide the question of the book’s absolute value
for us? Yet how impossible! We may stress the value of sympathy; we may try to
sink our own identity as we read. But we know that we cannot sympathise wholly
or immerse ourselves wholly; there is always a demon in us who whispers, “I
hate, I love,” and we cannot silence him. Indeed, it is precisely because we
hate and we love that our relation with the poets and novelists is so intimate
that we find the presence of another person intolerable. And even if the results
are abhorrent and our judgments are wrong, still our taste, the nerve of
sensation that sends shocks through us, is our chief illuminating; we learn
through feeling; we cannot suppress our own idiosyncrasy without impoverishing
it. But as time goes on perhaps we can train our taste; perhaps we can make it
submit to some control. When it has fed greedily and lavishly upon books of all
sorts—poetry, fiction, history, biography—and has stopped reading and looked for
long spaces upon the variety, the incongruity of the living world, we shall find
that it is changing a little; it is not so greedy, it is more reflective. It
will begin to bring us not merely judgments on particular books, but it will
tell us that there is a quality common to certain books. Listen, it will say,
what shall we call this? And it will read us perhaps Lear and then perhaps
Agamenon in order to bring out that common quality. Thus, with our taste to
guide us, we shall venture beyond the particular book in search of qualities
that group books together; we shall give them names and thus frame a rule that
brings order into our perceptions. We shall gain a further and a rarer pleasure
from that discrimination. But as a rule only lives when it is perpetually broken
by contact with the books themselves—nothing is easier and more stultifying than
to make rules which exist out touch with facts, in a vacuum—now at least, in
order to steady ourselves in this difficult attempt, it may be well to turn to
the very rare writers who are able to enlighten us upon literature as an art.
Coleridge and Dryden and Johnson, in their considered criticism, the
poets and novelists themselves in their considered sayings are often
surprisingly relevant; they light up and solidity the vague ideas that have been
tumbling in the misty depths of our minds. But they are only able to help us if
we come to them laden with questions and suggestions won honestly in the course
of our own reading. They can do nothing for us if we herd ourselves under their
authority and lie down like sheep in the shade of a hedge. We can only
understand their ruling when it comes in conflict with our own and vanquishes
it.
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.
Yet who reads to bring about an end however desirable? Are there not some
pursuits that we practice because they are good in themselves, and some
pleasures that are final? And is not this among them? I have sometimes dreamt,
at least, that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and
lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards—their crowns, their laurels,
their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble—the Almighty will turn to
Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with
our books under our arms, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give
them here. They have loved reading.”
Questions for Comprehension and Consideration:
1. The title of the essay gives a sense of offering advice on reading and
the author begins her essay by saying “In the first place, I want to emphasize
the note of interrogation at the end of my title.” Why does the author start her
essay in this way and what does she really want to point out in her first
paragraph which serves as her starting point when she offers ideas and
suggestions on reading.
2. How do you understand the author’s idea of “Do not dictate to your
author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice” in paragraph 3.
How does your reading experience agree or disagree with the author’s advice?
3. Virginia Woolf says “the quickest way to understand the elements of what
a novelist is doing is not to read, but to write;” and she also gives an example
to support it. What do you think of the example? Have you ever had such
experience of “experimenting with dangers and difficulties of words” ? If you
have how do you comment your experience?
4. The author mentions three writers in paragraph 4 and points out that
although they depict things totally different they share one same important
element. What is it? Read at least one novel of each writer mentioned and try to
understand the different worlds the authors created and see whether you agree to
the comment Virginia Woolf made or not.
5. What is the true complexity of reading and what are the reading
processes Virginia Woolf depicts? How do the processes agree or disagree to your
reading experience?
6. In the difficult process of reading the author advises us to read some
very rare writers who are able to enlighten us upon literature of art. To what
extent and on what circumstance they are able to help us?
7. In what sense does Virginia Woolf think that common readers have
responsibilities and importance in raising the standards and the judgment of
reading?
8. How do you feel the author’s rhetoric question “Are there not some
pursuits that we practice because they are good in themselves, … and is not this
(reading) among them”? Write a passage with concrete examples to show your true
understanding of it.
the battle of Waterloo Waterloo is a town in Belgium, the place where
Napoleon Bonaparte(1769—1821) and his army was totally defeated.
Thomas Love Peacock (1785--1866)，British novelist and poet.
Anthony Trollope (1815—82), British novelist.
George Meredith(1828--1909)，British novelist and poet.
Phedre French tragic poet Jean Racine’s(1639—1699) works.
The Prelude British poet William Wordsworth’s(1770—1850) long poem.
Agamenon The ancient Greece great tragic poet Aischulos’(520 BC—456BC)
works.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1772—1834) British romantic poet.
John Dryden(1631—1700) British poet and critic.
Samuel Johnson(1709—1784) British writer.
Peter one of the twelve disciple of Jesus Christ.
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