Virginia Woolf

作者Virginia Woolf很多人并不熟悉，可是如果是影迷的话，应该不会陌生。前汤嫂NICHOLE KIDMAN获得奥斯卡最佳女主角的电影《时时刻刻》（the hours）中就有NICHOLE饰演的Virginia Woolf撰写《Mrs.Dalloway》的情节。另外，如同电影中的描述一样，Virginia Woolf在现实中也是一个lesbian。

How Should One Read a Book? 应该怎样读书
by Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) from The Second Common Reader

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[1] 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[2] to Trollope,[3] from Scott to Meredith[4]—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.

应该怎样读书
弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫
首先我要特别提醒读者注意本文标题后面的问号，即便我能够回答这个问题，答案或许也只适合我自己而并不适合你。其实，指点别人怎样读书的唯一建议，就是别听从任何指点。遵循自己的直觉、运用自己的判断，去得出自己的结论。如果我们对此有共识，我就可以无拘束地提出一些看法和建议，因为这些看法和建议不至于会禁锢你的独立见解。而独立见解，正是读者应具备的最重要的品质。那么，关于读书，会有些什么规则呢？滑铁卢之战无疑是发生在某特定一天中的一场战役；《哈姆雷特》一剧是否就一定比《李尔王》更好呢？这问题想必很难回答，不同的读者会有不同的见解。如果让权威之说占据我们的图书领域，无论它们多堂皇、多严实，让它们指点我们怎么读、读什么和对所读之书做出评价，都无疑破坏了书之魂中所蕴涵的自由与开放精神。我们似乎在任何方面都有习俗和规范，惟独在读书方面没有。
要真正享受自由（恕我用这一陈词），就必须要有自我约束。我们不能徒劳而无益地滥用自己的精力和才智，就像为给一株玫瑰浇水而喷洒了半个花棚一样。我们应当适宜而扎实地善待自己的精力和才智，现在就立马开始。这也许是我们在图书馆首先面临的困难。何为“立马开始”？我们面对的似乎是庞杂繁纷的堆砌：诗歌、小说、历史、传记、词典、蓝皮书；不同种族不同年代的男女用不同语言写就的不同品位的书；它们一本本紧靠着排列在书架上。而院外，驴子在咴咴地嘶叫，女人在水井边叽喳地闲聊，小马驹在田野上自由地欢跳。我们从哪入手呢？我们怎么才能从纷繁的杂乱中理出头绪，进而从我们的所读中获取最深最广的欢愉呢？
无庸讳言，书籍有类别之分，比如小说，传记，诗歌等等。我们应该从各种不同类别的图书中获取不同的营养。然而，事实上，只有少数人能正确对待书籍，从中吸取其所能给予的一切。我们常常带着模糊而矛盾的观点来，要求小说该真实，诗歌应该不真实，传记必须充满溢美之词，历史得强化我们固有的观念。阅读时，如果我们能摒弃这些偏见，便是一个好的开端。不要强作者所难，而应与作者融为一体，作他的同路人和随行者。倘若你未开卷便先行犹豫退缩，说三道四，你绝不可能从阅读中最大限度地获取有用价值。但是，字里行间不易察觉的精妙之处，就为你洞开了一个别人难以领略的天地。沉浸其中，仔细玩味，不久，你会发现，作者给予你的，或试图给予你的，绝非某个确定意义。一部小说的三十二个章节--------如果我们先来讨论怎么阅读小说的话-------犹如建筑的构架，但词汇比砖头令人更难捉摸。阅读比之于观看，当然是个更为长久而复杂的过程。也许，最为快界地领略小说家工作的原理的方法，不是读，而是写；去冒险与词汇打交道。回忆一下某个曾给你留下独特印象的事件：街角处你碰到两个人正在交谈，当时周围的场景是，树在随风摆动；街灯灯光摇曳不定；说话人声调悲喜交集；那一刻你感受到的情景全然融合在一起。
可是，当你试图用语言来再现这一场景时，它却支离成上千个抵触的印象，有些得略述，有些得加强。就在你诉诸文字的当儿，当初的感受已荡然无存。抛开词不达意的支离碎片吧，去打开大师们的名著吧，比如笛福，简·奥斯丁，哈代。这时，你当能更好地领会他们的精妙。我们不只是站在不同的大师面前---笛福，简·奥斯丁，或者托马斯·哈代----实际上我们是置身于完全不同的世界。在《鲁宾逊漂流记》中，我们跋涉于久远的征途，一个事件接着一个事件发生，事件与事件之间顺序就足以构成其巨制。如果说户外和冒险之于笛福是大显身手的领地，那么，对于简·奥斯丁就无关紧要了。奥斯丁的世界是客厅，她通过活动于客厅里的任务的对话，反映人物性格。习惯了奥斯丁的客厅和通过客厅所反映的意向以后，我们再转向哈代，脑袋似乎有一次发晕了。我们置身于荒野之中，星星在我们头上闪烁。在这里，人类灵魂的另一面----孤寂中迸发的黑暗面，而不是处于凡世尘嚣时所表露的光明面----被充分解剖。这里展示的不是人与人的关系，而是人与自然和命运的关系。三位作家描述了三个不同的世界，他们各自的世界是个连贯一致的整体。他们谨慎地遵循着各自观察事物、描述事物的法则。无论作家倾向性多大，读者不会在其中迷失方向，不至于像读某些不在行的作者的作品那样，在同一本书里看到两个截然不同的现实。因此，阅读一个个伟大小说家----从简·奥斯丁到哈代，从皮科克到特罗洛普，从司各脱到梅瑞迪思----你简直就如翻江倒海，被一会儿扔到这里，一会儿抛向那边。读小说是一门艰难而复杂的艺术。要想利用小说家----伟大的艺术家----给予的一切，你不仅的具备洞察的策略，你还得具有勇敢的想象。

（何朝阳，中国科学技术大学外语系）

文章引用自：http://education.163.com/06/0411/09/2EDT24OM00290164.html