Part of a Man's Life: Books Unread　人生必經(jīng)之途：未讀之書

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2019年05月30日

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Part of a Man's Life: Books Unread

人生必經(jīng)之途：未讀之書

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

托馬斯·溫特沃斯·希金森

作者簡介

托馬斯·溫特沃斯·希金森（Thomas Wentworth Higginson，1823—1911），美國教士、作家、激進(jìn)的廢奴主義者。他在19世紀(jì)四五十年代的廢奴運動中非?；钴S，在南北戰(zhàn)爭中為南軍立下不少戰(zhàn)功。內(nèi)戰(zhàn)結(jié)束后，他一直撰文維護(hù)黑人和婦女的權(quán)利，終其一生從未曾停下手中的筆。

希金森的作品文筆優(yōu)雅，詞情懇切，富有人文氣息，充滿對自然的向往。美國著名女詩人埃米莉·狄更生（Emily Dickinson）對希金森極為仰慕，曾去信懇求希金森擔(dān)任其導(dǎo)師，并自稱“您的學(xué)生”。兩人一度保持通信，交流彼此對文學(xué)的看法。狄更生去世后，希金森等人整理出版的詩集引起世人關(guān)注，奠定了狄更生在美國文壇的地位。

希金森經(jīng)常在《大西洋月刊》（Atlantic Monthly）上發(fā)表文章，狄更生最初就是通過此刊物與其相識的。本文首次發(fā)表于1904年《大西洋月刊》，對“夢中翻閱未讀之書”的描寫尤為精彩。讀罷此文，你或許能夠理解狄更生何以對其仰慕不已。

“No longer delude thyself; for thou wilt never read thine own memoranda, nor the recorded deeds of old Romans and Greeks, and those passages in books which thou hast been reserving for thine old age.”

In the gradual growth of every student's library, he may—or—may not continue to admit literary friends and advisers; but he will be sure, sooner or later, to send for a man with a tool-chest. Sooner or later, every nook and corner will be filled with books, every window will be more or less darkened, and added shelves must be devised. He may find it hard to achieve just the arrangement he wants, but he will find it hardest of all to meet squarely that inevitable inquiry of the puzzled carpenter as he looks about him, “Have you really read all these books?”The expected answer is, “To be sure, how can you doubt it?”Yet if you asked him in turn, “Have you actually used every tool in your tool-chest?”you would very likely be told, “Not one half as yet, at least this season; I have the others by me, to use as I need them.”Now if this reply can be fairly made in a simple, well-defined, distinctly limited occupation like that of a joiner, how much more inevitable it is in a pursuit which covers the whole range of thought and all the facts in the universe. The library is the author's tool-chest. He must at least learn, as he grows older, to take what he wants and to leave the rest.

This never was more tersely expressed than by Margaret Fuller when she says, “A man who means to think and write a great deal must, after six and twenty, learn to read with his fingers.”A few men of leisure may satisfy themselves by reading over and over a single book and ignoring all others, like that English scholar who read Homer's Iliad and Odyssey every year in the original, devoting a week to each canto, and reserving the minor poems for his summer vacation. Nay, there are books in the English language so vast that the ordinary reader recoils before their text and their footnotes.

Of course, the books which go most thoroughly unread are those which certainly are books, but of which we explore the backs only, as in fine old European libraries; books as sacredly preserved as was once that library at Blenheim—now long since dispersed—in which, when I idly asked the custodian whether she did not find it a great deal of trouble to keep them dusted, she answered with surprise, “No, sir, the doors have not been unlocked for ten years.”It is so in some departments of even American libraries.

Matthew Arnold once replied to a critic who accused him of a lack of learning that the charge was true, but that he often wished he had still less of that possession, so hard did he find it to carry lightly what he knew. The only knowledge that involves no burden lies, it may be justly claimed, in the books that are left unread. I mean those which remain undisturbed, long and perhaps forever, on a student's bookshelves; books for which he possibly economized, and to obtain which he went without his dinner; books on whose backs his eyes have rested a thousand times, tenderly and almost lovingly, until he has perhaps forgotten the very language in which they are written. He has never read them, yet during these years there has never been a day when he would have sold them; they are a part of his youth. In dreams he turns to them; in dreams he reads Hebrew again; he knows what a Differential Equation is; “how happy could he be with either.”He awakens, and whole shelves of his library are, as it were, like fair maidens who smiled on him in their youth but once, and then passed away. Under different circumstances, who knows but one of them might have been his? As it is, they have grown old apart from him; yet for him they retain their charms.

Books which we have first read in odd places always retain their charm, whether read or neglected. Thus Hazlitt always remembered that it was on the 10th of April, 1798, that he “set down to a volume of the New Eloise at the Inn at Llangollen over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken.”In the same way I remember how Professor Longfellow in college recommended to us, for forming a good French style, to read Balzac's Peau de Chagrin; and yet it was a dozen years later before I found it in a country inn, on a lecture trip, and sat up half the night to read it. It may be, on the other hand, that such haphazard meetings with books sometimes present them under conditions hopelessly unfavorable, as when I encountered Whitman's Leaves of Grass for the first time on my first voyage in an Azorian barque; and it inspires to this day a slight sense of nausea, which it might, after all, have inspired equally on land.

Wordsworth says in his Personal Talk, “Dreams, books are each a world.”And the books unread mingle with the dreams and unite the charm of both. This applies especially, I think, to books of travel: we buy them, finding their attractions strong, but somehow we do not read them over and over, unless they prove to be such books as those of Urquhart—the Pillars of Hercules especially, where the wealth of learning and originality is so great that we seem in a different region of the globe on every page. One of the most poetic things about Whittier's temperament lay in this fact, that he felt most eager to visit each foreign country before he had read any book about it. After reading, the dream was half fulfilled, and he turned to something else, so that he died without visiting any foreign country. But the very possession of such books, and their presence on the shelves, carries one to the Arctic regions or to the Indian Ocean.

“After all,”as the brilliant and melancholy Rufus Choate said, “a book is the only immortality”and sometimes when a book is attacked and even denounced, its destiny of fame is only confirmed. Thus the vivacious and cheery Pope, Pio Nono, when asked by a too daring author to help on his latest publication, suggested that he could only aid it by putting it in the Index Expurgatorius. Yet if a book is to be left unread at last, the fault must ultimately rest on the author, even as the brilliant Lady Eastlake complained, when she wrote of modern English novelists, “Things are written now to be read once, and no more; that is, they are read as often as they deserve. A book in old times took five years to write and was read five hundred times by five hundred people. Now it is written in three months, and read once by five hundred thousand people. That's the proper proportion.”

“別再自欺欺人；因為你將再也無法閱讀自己的備忘錄、希臘羅馬的先賢著作，或是為晚年預(yù)留的書中段落?！?

隨著藏書日益增多，學(xué)者或許不承認(rèn)文學(xué)是良師益友，但他遲早會需要找個木匠。遲早有一天，屋里每個角落都會被書占據(jù)，每扇窗戶或多或少都會被書遮擋，有必要新添幾個書架。他會發(fā)現(xiàn)，要把書收拾成理想的樣子實在不易，但要回答木匠的提問更加困難。困惑的木匠四處張望一番后，不免要提出這樣的問題：“你真的讀過所有這些書？”他預(yù)計得到的答案是：“那當(dāng)然，你難道還懷疑嗎？”但如果你反問他：“你真的用過工具箱里的每件工具？”他很可能這么說：“一半都沒用過呢，至少這個季節(jié)是這樣。我還帶著別的工具，需要的時候用得著?！比绻业幕卮鹨蚕衲窘车囊粯雍唵巍⒍x清晰、限定明確，那么“打破沙鍋問到底”將更加不可避免。書房正是作家的工具箱。隨著年齡的增長，他至少應(yīng)該學(xué)會取舍。

對此，沒有人比瑪格麗特·富勒2表達(dá)得更加簡明扼要。她說：“欲成為思想家之人，6歲后需學(xué)會‘動手’讀書；欲成為作家之人，20歲后也需如此?！庇行╅e人滿足于反復(fù)閱讀同一本書，而忽視其他所有書。比如，某位英國學(xué)者每年都讀一遍荷馬的《伊利亞特》和《奧德賽》3原本。他每周讀一篇長詩，短詩則留到暑假讀。然而，英文書籍如此浩瀚無垠，普通讀者還沒看到正文和腳注，就已經(jīng)望而卻步了。

當(dāng)然，還有些書根本沒人讀。它們確確實實是書，但就像在很好的歐洲舊式圖書館里一樣，人們只查看它們的書脊。這些書曾被鄭重其事地保存在布倫海姆圖書館4里，不過如今早已散落八方。我曾順口問過布倫海姆的書庫保管員，讓那些書保持清潔是不是很麻煩，她一臉驚訝地答道：“不麻煩，先生，書庫大門已經(jīng)10年沒開過了?！泵绹鴪D書館的某些部門也是如此。

有位評論家曾指責(zé)馬修·阿諾德5知識不夠豐富。阿諾德回應(yīng)說，這個說法完全正確，但他還常常希望能再少點，因為知識讓人不堪重負(fù)，攜現(xiàn)有知識已難輕裝上陣。你或許可以理直氣壯地宣稱，唯一不會成為負(fù)擔(dān)的知識只存在于沒有讀過的書里。我指的是學(xué)者書架上那些久被遺忘、或許將永被遺忘的書。為了那些書，他或許節(jié)儉度日；為了那些書，他或許不吃晚飯便跑去買；買回書之后，他曾帶著愛意和柔情，千萬次掃視它們的書脊，直到可能忘卻它們是用何種語言寫成。他從沒讀過那些書，但多年來從未動過賣書的念頭；它們是他青春的一部分。在夢里，他會翻開那些書；在夢里，他又會讀希伯來文了，也知道微分方程是什么了；“只會其中之一他也會開心！”他醒來，滿架藏書依然如故，恰如青春少女對他嫣然一笑，然后便飄然而去。如果一切重來，夢中場景或能成真？現(xiàn)實中，書已老朽，離他遠(yuǎn)去；但對他而言，書的魅力猶存。

在非同尋常的情形下第一次讀的書，無論你是讀完了還是半途而廢，它的魅力都將永存。哈茲利特6總是憶起1798年4月10日，他“坐在蘭戈倫一間小酒館里，就著一瓶雪利酒和一個雞肉冷盤讀《新愛洛伊絲》7?！蔽覄t以同樣的方式憶起，大學(xué)里朗費羅教授推薦我們讀巴爾扎克的《驢皮記》8，以便培養(yǎng)良好的法式格調(diào)；而直到十幾年后，我在一次演說之旅中，在鄉(xiāng)間客棧發(fā)現(xiàn)了這本書，才拿來熬夜苦讀。有些時候，人和書的邂逅也會發(fā)生在不太理想的情況下。比如我初次遇見惠特曼的《草葉集》9時，正好趕上頭一回坐亞速爾帆船出海。直至今日，翻開《草葉集》還會讓我有點頭暈?zāi)垦?，即使在陸地上也一樣?

華茲華斯在他的《私語》10中寫道：“夢與書，各是一個世界?！蔽醋x之書與夢境交會，兩者的魅力融于一體。我想，這句話尤其適合游記：我們買下游記，覺得它們極具吸引力，但我們不會一遍又一遍地閱讀，除非是厄克赫特11的作品，尤其是像《赫拉克勒斯之柱》12這樣知識豐富的原創(chuàng)作品，每一頁都能讓你馳騁于地球上不同的角落。惠蒂埃13的氣質(zhì)中最富詩意之處是，他在讀關(guān)于某國的作品之前，極度渴望前往該國一游，但讀完書后，夢想實現(xiàn)了一半，他就轉(zhuǎn)頭迷上了別國。因此直至去世，他從未踏出國門一步。但擁有這些游記，把它們擱在架上展示，足以讓你的想象飛向南極或是印度洋。

正如才華橫溢而憂郁深沉的魯弗斯·喬特14所說，“畢竟，書是唯一不朽之物”。有時，人們抨擊甚至譴責(zé)某書，只會讓它一舉成名。因此，當(dāng)一位大膽的作家請教皇皮奧·諾諾15幫忙宣傳新書時，這位詼諧的教皇表示，他只能幫忙將此書列入教廷禁書目錄。但如果一本書最后無人閱讀，作者本人應(yīng)該對此負(fù)責(zé)。才華橫溢的伊斯特萊克夫人16在描述英國現(xiàn)代小說家時，曾這樣抱怨過：“如今的書寫來只為讓人讀一遍，無需多讀；也就是說，它們只配讓人讀一遍。過去一本書寫好需要5年，會被500人讀500遍；如今一本書寫好只需3個月，會被50萬人讀一遍。這個比例很恰當(dāng)?！?

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1．節(jié)選自《沉思錄》，古羅馬皇帝馬可·奧勒留·安東尼·奧古斯都的哲理閑思錄。該書記錄了作者對人生哲理的感悟，是古羅馬斯多葛派哲學(xué)的里程碑。

2．薩拉·瑪格麗特·富勒（Sarah Margaret Fuller，1810—1850），美國著名記者、評論家、作家。

3．史詩《伊利亞特》和《奧德賽》均以特洛伊戰(zhàn)爭為背景，相傳為古希臘吟游詩人荷馬所著。

4．布倫海姆圖書館，坐落于布倫海姆宮，藏書約1萬冊。

5．馬修·阿諾德（Matthew Arnold，1822—1888），英國詩人、文藝評論家，牛津大學(xué)教授。

6．威廉·哈茲利特（William Hazlitt，1778—1830），英語隨筆首屈一指的大家，英語文學(xué)批評的大家。

7．《新愛洛伊絲》，法國文學(xué)家讓·雅克·盧梭的愛情小說，其中包含了盧梭的教育觀點、文藝觀點以及社會平等的思想。

8．《驢皮記》，法國文學(xué)家奧諾雷·德·巴爾扎克的第一部長篇哲理小說。

9．《草葉集》，美國著名詩人沃爾特·惠特曼的代表作。

10．《私語》是英國詩人威廉·華茲華斯的一首關(guān)于孤獨的詩歌。

11．托馬斯·厄克赫特（Thomas Urquhart，1611—1660），英國作家、翻譯家。