关于读书

阿诺德·本涅特

阿诺德·本涅特(1867—1931)，本世纪初期英国著名的小说家、散文家。他的文风受法国自然主义的影响较深，行文冷静客观，准确工整；他的文字也简单易懂，与所叙内容非常协调，具有很好的艺术效果。

鲍斯威尔的《约翰逊传》今天出了新版第一卷（奥古斯丁·比勒尔编）。这再次提醒我这本书我还没怎么读过。我在思索,那些一个普通文化人应该读，不读即为罪过的书籍,是否真有人读了或几乎读完了?如果真有这样一个人，那他一定是个非常非常老的人，而且是从婴孩时期就要开始读书,每天要坚持16个小时。

我不记得曾否读完任何一位作家的全部著作，即使简·奥斯汀也不例外。我从未看过《苏珊》和《沃森一家》，其中有一本是绝好的书。莎士比亚、培根、斯宾塞的大部分作品我也不曾读过,乔叟的书几乎没读过；康格里夫、德莱顿、蒲柏、斯威夫特、斯特恩、约翰逊、斯科特、科勒律治、雪莱、拜伦、埃奇沃斯、兰姆、利· 亨特、华兹华斯（几乎全部）、丁尼生、史文朋、勃朗特姐妹、乔治·艾略特、N·毛里斯、乔治·梅瑞迪斯、托马斯，哈代、萨维奇·兰道、萨克雷、卡莱尔—— 事实上每一位古典作家和大多数现代大家的作品我都不曾拜读过，我未读过的名著的名字也可以写一卷书了。只有一位作家——简·奥斯丁,我可称得上熟悉。对济慈和史蒂文生我也稍微了解。英国作家仅此而已。至于外国作家，我只熟悉莫泊桑和龚古儿兄弟。《唐·吉诃德》还未看完。

然而我不能说自己渎职。自20岁起，我就酷爱读书。从那时起,我除了读“正经”书外几乎可以说什么也没读（除了文学批评家的职业所要求的）。我有适度的空闲时间,读书欲望强烈稳定，我选择书籍的品位肯定高出常人；然而多年来,我对那些浩瀚的“人人必读”书目几乎没有什么印象。

On Reading

Arnold Bennett

The appearance today of the first volume of a new edition of Boswell's Johns on, edited by Augustine Birrell, reminds me once again that I have read but little of that work. Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approx imately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man, who has read steadily that which he ought to have read 16 hours a day, from early infancy.

I cannot recall a single author of whom I have read everything — even of Jane Austen. I have never seen Susan and The Watsons, one of which I have been told is superlatively good. Then there are large tracts of Shakespeare, Bacon, Spenser, nearly all Chaucer,Congreve, Dryden, Pope, Swift, Sterne, Johnson, Scott, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Edgeworth, Ferrier, Lamb, Leigh Hunt, Wordsworth (nea rly all), Tennyson, Swinbume, and Brontes, George Eliot, W·Morris, George Meredith, Thomas Hardy, Savage Landor, Thackeray, Carlyle—in fact every classical author and most good modern authors, which I have never even overlooked. A list of the masterpieces I have not read would fill a volume. With only one author can I call myself familiar, Jane Austen. With Keats and Stevenson, I have an acquaintance. So far of English. Of foreign authors I am familiar with Maupassant and the Goncourts. I have yet to finish Don Quixote!

Nevertheless I cannot accuse myself of default. I have been extremely fond of reading since I was 20, and since I was 20 I have read practically nothing (save professionally, as a literary critic) but what was “right”. My leisure has been moderate, my desire strong and steady, my taste in selection certainly above the average, and yet in 10 years I seem scarcely to have made an impression upon the intolerable multitude of volumes which “everyone is supposed to have read ”.