How Should One Read a Book?
By Virginia Woolf
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.
無庸諱言,書籍有類別之分,比如小說,傳記,詩歌等等。我們應(yīng)該從各種不同類別的圖書中獲取不同的營養(yǎng)。然而,事實(shí)上,只有少數(shù)人能正確對待書籍,從中吸取其所能給予的一切。我們常常帶著模糊而矛盾的觀點(diǎn)來 ,要求小說該真實(shí),詩歌應(yīng)該不真實(shí),傳記必須充滿溢美之詞,歷史得強(qiáng)化我們固有的觀念。閱讀時,如果我們能摒棄這些偏見,便是一個好的開端。不要強(qiáng)作者所難,而應(yīng)與作者融為一體,作他的同路人和隨行者。倘若你未開卷便先行猶豫退縮,說三道四,你絕不可能從閱讀中最大限度地獲取有用價值。但是,字里行間不易察覺的精妙之處,就為你洞開了一個別人難以領(lǐng)略的天地。沉浸其中,仔細(xì)玩味,不久,你會發(fā)現(xiàn),作者給予你的,或試圖給予你的,絕非某個確定意義。一部小說的三十二個章節(jié)--------如果我們先來討論怎么閱讀小說的話-------猶如建筑的構(gòu)架,但詞匯比磚頭令人更難捉摸。閱讀比之于觀看,當(dāng)然是個更為長久而復(fù)雜的過程。也許,最為快界地領(lǐng)略小說家工作的原理的方法,不是讀,而是寫;去冒險與詞匯打交道。回憶一下某個曾給你留下獨(dú)特印象的事件:街角處你碰到兩個人正在交談,當(dāng)時周圍的場景是,樹在隨風(fēng)擺動;街燈燈光搖曳不定;說話人聲調(diào)悲喜交集;那一刻你感受到的情景全然融合在一起。