The Art of Reading　閱讀的藝術(shù)

The Art of Reading

閱讀的藝術(shù)

André Maurois

安德烈·莫洛亞

作者簡(jiǎn)介

安德烈·莫洛亞（André Maurois，1885—1967），法國(guó)作家、法蘭西學(xué)院院士。他在一戰(zhàn)時(shí)應(yīng)征服役，擔(dān)任英軍與法國(guó)炮隊(duì)之間的翻譯聯(lián)絡(luò)官。在此期間，他根據(jù)軍旅生活所見(jiàn)所聞，寫(xiě)成《布朗勃爾上校的沉默》（The Silence of Colonel Bramble），并一舉成名。

莫洛亞著有長(zhǎng)篇小說(shuō)《貝爾納·蓋斯奈》（Bernard Quesnay）和《愛(ài)的氣候》（The Climates of Love）等，并寫(xiě)下了大量膾炙人口的傳記文學(xué)作品，如《巴爾扎克傳——普羅米修斯》（Prometheus: The Life of Balzac）、《拜倫傳》（Byron）和《泰坦巨人：三代仲馬傳》（Titans: A Three-Generation Biography of the Dumas）等。

本文選自安德烈·莫洛亞1939年出版的作品《生活的藝術(shù)》（The Art of Living）。書(shū)中，作者以流暢的文筆展示了自己的人生閱歷和前賢的嘉言懿行。全書(shū)雖無(wú)深邃的哲學(xué)思想，卻有雋永的人生哲理。本文暢談閱讀的藝術(shù)，細(xì)數(shù)閱讀的規(guī)律，對(duì)愛(ài)書(shū)人有一定的參考價(jià)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.

可以稱(chēng)閱讀為勞作嗎？瓦雷里·拉爾博1稱(chēng)其為“不受懲罰的罪惡”，笛卡兒2則恰恰相反，稱(chēng)之為“與過(guò)去幾個(gè)世紀(jì)里最誠(chéng)實(shí)的人們交談”。兩人的說(shuō)法都有理。

有些人視書(shū)為讓自己脫離現(xiàn)實(shí)、深陷虛境的麻醉劑，“惡性閱讀”就發(fā)生在他們身上。如果無(wú)書(shū)可讀，他們一分鐘也忍受不了；對(duì)他們來(lái)說(shuō)，什么書(shū)都是好書(shū)；無(wú)論是百科全書(shū)中關(guān)于水彩技法的散文，還是關(guān)于火器槍械的文章，他們一樣會(huì)貪婪閱讀。如果是獨(dú)自待在屋里，他們會(huì)直奔成堆的報(bào)刊、雜志，急匆匆地瀏覽任意專(zhuān)欄，而不自己思考問(wèn)題。他們閱讀不是為尋找觀點(diǎn)或事實(shí)，而是無(wú)休止地徜徉于文字之中，以免面對(duì)現(xiàn)實(shí)世界或自己的內(nèi)心。他們讀完書(shū)后記不住內(nèi)容，面對(duì)豐富的信息毫無(wú)辨別能力。他們進(jìn)行的這種閱讀完全是被動(dòng)的；他們手捧文本，卻不分析解讀，也不儲(chǔ)存信息，更不吸收知識(shí)。

“趣味閱讀”則主動(dòng)得多。有些人以讀小說(shuō)為樂(lè)，去尋找美妙的印象、情感的復(fù)蘇和日常生活中缺少的冒險(xiǎn)。也有人以讀詩(shī)歌和倫理學(xué)著作為樂(lè)，探尋對(duì)自身體會(huì)、自身感受更完美的闡釋。還有人以讀歷史為樂(lè)。他們不是研究特定時(shí)期的歷史，而是查證千百年來(lái)人類(lèi)相似的苦難經(jīng)歷。這種“趣味閱讀”有益健康。

最后，“工作閱讀”是指一個(gè)人去書(shū)里尋找特定的知識(shí)和材料，以便創(chuàng)作或完成他頭腦中已有大體框架的巨著?！肮ぷ鏖喿x”時(shí)最好手里拿著筆，除非你記憶力超群。如果每次需要回顧某個(gè)話題時(shí)都得重讀一遍，那閱讀又有什么用呢？以我自己為例，我讀歷史書(shū)或其他嚴(yán)肅書(shū)籍時(shí)，總會(huì)記下闡明該書(shū)主旨的幾個(gè)關(guān)鍵詞，并在每個(gè)詞下面標(biāo)明相關(guān)段落所在的頁(yè)碼。如此一來(lái)，當(dāng)我需要查閱資料時(shí)，就不需要重讀整本書(shū)了。

像所有工作一樣，閱讀也有準(zhǔn)則。我謹(jǐn)列舉如下幾條。

準(zhǔn)則一：對(duì)少數(shù)作家作品了如指掌，勝過(guò)對(duì)眾多作家作品略知一二。作品的美妙之處極少在第一次閱讀時(shí)顯現(xiàn)。年輕人應(yīng)該像遨游世界一般在書(shū)海中遨游，去尋找志同道合的友人。當(dāng)你發(fā)現(xiàn)、選擇、確定那些友人之后，便要與其攜手一生。與蒙田3、圣西門(mén)4 、雷斯5、巴爾扎克6、普魯斯特7等人親密無(wú)間，足以讓你一生充實(shí)。

準(zhǔn)則二：昔日經(jīng)典必須是閱讀的主體。當(dāng)然，對(duì)當(dāng)代作家感興趣既合理也有必要，因?yàn)樗麄兛赡芘c我們有著相同的關(guān)注和需要。但切勿被無(wú)關(guān)緊要的書(shū)潮淹沒(méi)。杰作的數(shù)量如此之多，我們永遠(yuǎn)無(wú)法了解全部。要相信千百年來(lái)的披沙瀝金：一個(gè)人或許走眼，一代人或許錯(cuò)看，但人類(lèi)不會(huì)誤判。荷馬、塔西佗8、莎士比亞9、莫里哀10顯然無(wú)愧于他們的榮耀。我們應(yīng)當(dāng)偏愛(ài)這些名家，而非未經(jīng)時(shí)間檢驗(yàn)的作家。

準(zhǔn)則三：慎重選擇文學(xué)養(yǎng)料。每個(gè)人都有適合自己的精神食糧。要學(xué)會(huì)辨別哪些作家適合我們。他們可能和前面所說(shuō)的友人完全不同。讀文學(xué)作品就像墜入愛(ài)河，我們總是對(duì)別人的選擇感到吃驚。要忠于適合自己的作家。對(duì)此，我們自己是最佳的裁判。

準(zhǔn)則四：閱讀時(shí)必須平和鎮(zhèn)靜、心懷敬意，如同身處美妙的音樂(lè)會(huì)或神圣的典禮。閱讀時(shí)不可一目十行、斷斷續(xù)續(xù)、心不在焉，或是把書(shū)放到第二天再讀。真正的讀者需要長(zhǎng)時(shí)間的獨(dú)處；為了閱讀某位特別喜愛(ài)的作家的著作，他會(huì)預(yù)留出冬天一個(gè)星期日的下午；他會(huì)感謝火車(chē)之旅讓自己有空閱讀巴爾扎克、司湯達(dá)11的整部小說(shuō)，或是《墓畔回憶錄》12。重讀某個(gè)心愛(ài)的短語(yǔ)或段落時(shí)（比如普魯斯特筆下的“瑪?shù)铝招↑c(diǎn)心”或托爾斯泰13筆下的“勒維納的婚禮”），他會(huì)像音樂(lè)迷聽(tīng)到斯特拉文斯基14的劇作《彼得魯什卡》里的魔術(shù)師主旋律一樣，感覺(jué)到一種強(qiáng)烈的快感。

準(zhǔn)則五，也是最后一條準(zhǔn)則：讓自己配得上偉大的作品。因?yàn)殚喿x就像身處西班牙旅店或沐浴愛(ài)河——你只會(huì)找到自己帶進(jìn)去的東西。對(duì)情感描寫(xiě)感興趣的，不是已經(jīng)有過(guò)切身體會(huì)的過(guò)來(lái)人，就是滿(mǎn)懷希望、焦急等待愛(ài)情之花綻放的年輕人。一個(gè)去年還只讀冒險(xiǎn)小說(shuō)的小伙子，突然對(duì)《安娜·卡列尼娜》或《多米尼克》15萌生了強(qiáng)烈興趣，因?yàn)樗F(xiàn)在明白了愛(ài)戀的甜蜜與痛苦。沒(méi)有什么場(chǎng)景能比這更令人感動(dòng)了。偉大的行動(dòng)主義者讀吉卜林16的著作，偉大的政治家讀塔西佗或雷斯的著作。利奧泰17在非法政府接管摩洛哥政權(quán)的第二天，就一頭扎進(jìn)了莎士比亞的《科利奧蘭納斯》18之中，這是多么偉大的場(chǎng)景。在很大程度上，閱讀的藝術(shù)就是在書(shū)中再一次發(fā)現(xiàn)生活，并更好地理解生活。

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要相信千百年來(lái)的披沙瀝金：一個(gè)人或許走眼，一代人或許錯(cuò)看，但人類(lèi)不會(huì)誤判。

André Maurois 安德烈·莫洛亞

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1．瓦雷里·拉爾博（Valery Larbaud，1881—1957），法國(guó)小說(shuō)家、詩(shī)人、評(píng)論家。

2．勒內(nèi)·笛卡兒（René Descartes，1596—1650），法國(guó)思想家、科學(xué)家，解析幾何的創(chuàng)始人，歐洲近代資產(chǎn)階級(jí)哲學(xué)的奠基人之一，被譽(yù)為“近代科學(xué)的始祖”。

3．蒙田，全名為米歇爾·德·蒙泰涅（Michel de Montaigne，1533—1592），文藝復(fù)興時(shí)期最有影響力的法國(guó)作家之一，歐洲近代散文的創(chuàng)始人，代表作為《蒙田隨筆》。

4．克勞德·昂列·圣西門(mén)（Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon，1760—1825），法國(guó)哲學(xué)家和社會(huì)改革家，空想社會(huì)主義者。

5．雷斯（Cardinal de Retz，1613—1679），法國(guó)政治家、紅衣主教、作家。

6．奧諾雷·德·巴爾扎克（Honoré de Balzac，1799—1850），法國(guó)19世紀(jì)著名作家，法國(guó)現(xiàn)實(shí)主義文學(xué)成就最高者之一。

7．馬塞爾·普魯斯特（Marcel Proust，1871—1922），法國(guó)小說(shuō)家，意識(shí)流作家。

8．普布利烏斯·科爾奈利烏斯·塔西佗（Publius Cornelius Tacitus，約55—120），古羅馬帝國(guó)執(zhí)政官、雄辯家、元老院元老，也是著名的歷史學(xué)家。

9．威廉·莎士比亞（William Shakespeare，1564—1616），英國(guó)文藝復(fù)興時(shí)期的偉大戲劇家、詩(shī)人，著有37部詩(shī)劇，154首十四行詩(shī)，代表歐洲文藝復(fù)興時(shí)期最高的文學(xué)成就。

10．莫里哀（Molière，1622—1673），法國(guó)喜劇作家和演員，古典主義喜劇的創(chuàng)建者，法國(guó)芭蕾舞喜劇的創(chuàng)始人。

11．司湯達(dá)（Stendhal，1783—1842），本名馬利—亨利·貝爾，法國(guó)文學(xué)家，代表作有《紅與黑》《巴馬修道院》等。

12．《墓畔回憶錄》，法國(guó)作家弗朗索瓦—勒內(nèi)·德夏多布里昂寫(xiě)于1809到1841年間的自傳。

13．列夫·尼古拉耶維奇·托爾斯泰（Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy，1828—1910），俄國(guó)文學(xué)家，其代表作《戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)與和平》等家喻戶(hù)曉。

14．伊戈?duì)枴べM(fèi)奧多羅維奇·斯特拉文斯基（Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky，1882—1971），美籍俄羅斯作曲家。

15．《多米尼克》，法國(guó)作家歐仁·弗羅芒坦的心理學(xué)小說(shuō)。

16．約瑟夫·魯?shù)聛喌隆ぜ妨郑↗oseph Rudyard Kipling，1865—1936），生于印度孟買(mǎi)，英國(guó)作家和詩(shī)人，被譽(yù)為“短篇小說(shuō)藝術(shù)創(chuàng)新之人”，1907年榮獲諾貝爾文學(xué)獎(jiǎng)。

17．路易·赫伯特·利奧泰（Louis Hubert Lyautey，1854—1934），一戰(zhàn)法軍名將，1912—1925年在摩洛哥建立法國(guó)保護(hù)國(guó)制度。

18．《科利奧蘭納斯》，莎士比亞晚年撰寫(xiě)的羅馬歷史悲劇。