How Should One Read a Book?

by Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) from The Second Common Reader

Born in England, Virginia Woolf was the daughter of Leslie Stephen, a well-known scholar. She was educated primarily at home and attributed her love of reading to the early and complete access she was given to her father’s library. With her husband, Leonard Woolf, she founded the Hogarth Press and became known as member of the Bloomsbury group of intellectuals, which included economist John Maynard Keynes, biographer Lytton Strachey, novelist E. M. Forster, and art historian Clive Bell. Although she was a central figure in London literary life, Woolf often saw herself as isolated from the mains stream because she was a woman. Woolf is best known for her experimental, modernist novels, including Mrs. Dalloway(1925) and To the Lighthouse(1927) which are widely appreciated for her breakthrough into a new mode and technique--the stream of consciousness. In her diary and critical essays she has much to say about women and fiction. Her 1929 book A Room of One’s Own documents her desire for women to take their rightful place in literary history and as an essayist she has occupied a high place in 20th century literature. The common Reader (1925 first series; 1932 second series) has acquired classic status. She also wrote short stories and biographies. “Professions for Women” taken from The collected Essays Vol 2. is originally a paper Woolf read to the Women’s Service League, an organization for professional women in London.

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.

* * * *

“We have only to compare”—with those words the cat is out of the bag, and the true complexity of reading is admitted. The first process, to receive impressions with the utmost understanding, is only half the process of reading; it must be completed, if we are to get the whole pleasure from a book, by another. We must pass judgment upon these multitudinous impressions; we must make of these fleeting shapes one that is hard and lasting. But not directly. Wait for the dust of reading to settle; for the conflict and the questioning to die down; walk, talk, pull the dead petals from a rose, or fall asleep. Then suddenly without our willing it, for it is thus that Nature undertakes these transitions, the book will return, but differently. It will float to the top of the mind as a whole. And the book as a whole is different from the book received currently in separate phrases. Details now fit themselves into their places. We see the shape from start to finish; it is a barn, a pig-sty, or a cathedral. Now then we can compare book with book as we compare building with building. But this act of comparison means that our attitude has changed; we are no longer the friends of the writer, but his judges; and just as we cannot be too sympathetic as friends, so as judges we cannot be too severe. Are they not criminals, books that have wasted our time and sympathy; are they not the most insidious enemies of society, corrupters, defilers, the writers of false books, faked books, books that fill the air with decay and disease? Let us then be severe in our judgments; let us compare each book with the greatest of its kind. There they hang in the mind the shapes of the books we have read solidified by the judgments we have passed on them—Robinson Crusoe, Emma, The Return of the Native. Compare the novels with these—even the latest and least of novels has a right to be judged with the best. And so with poetry—when the intoxication of rhythm has died down and the splendour of words has faded a visionary shape will return to us and this must be compared with Lear, with Phedre,[5] with The Prelude;[6] or if not with these, with whatever is the best or seems to us to be the best in its own kind. And we may be sure that the newness of new poetry and fiction is its most superficial quality and that we have only to alter slightly, not to recast, the standards by which we have judged the old.

It would be foolish, then, to pretend that the second part of reading, to judge, to compare, is as simple as the first—to open the mind wide to the fast flocking of innumerable impressions. To continue reading without the book before you, To hold one shadow-shape against another, to have read widely enough and with enough understanding to make such comparisons alive and illuminating—that is difficult; it is still more difficult to press further and to say, “Not only is the book of this sort, but it is of this value; here it fails; here it succeeds; this is bad; that is good.” To carry out this part of a reader’s duty needs such imagination, insight, and learning that it is hard to conceive any one mind sufficiently endowed; impossible for the most self-confident to find more than the seeds of such powers in himself. Would it not be wiser, then, to remit this part of reading and to allow the critics, the gowned and furred authorities of the library, to decide the question of the book’s absolute value for us? Yet how impossible! We may stress the value of sympathy; we may try to sink our own identity as we read. But we know that we cannot sympathise wholly or immerse ourselves wholly; there is always a demon in us who whispers, “I hate, I love,” and we cannot silence him. Indeed, it is precisely because we hate and we love that our relation with the poets and novelists is so intimate that we find the presence of another person intolerable. And even if the results are abhorrent and our judgments are wrong, still our taste, the nerve of sensation that sends shocks through us, is our chief illuminating; we learn through feeling; we cannot suppress our own idiosyncrasy without impoverishing it. But as time goes on perhaps we can train our taste; perhaps we can make it submit to some control. When it has fed greedily and lavishly upon books of all sorts—poetry, fiction, history, biography—and has stopped reading and looked for long spaces upon the variety, the incongruity of the living world, we shall find that it is changing a little; it is not so greedy, it is more reflective. It will begin to bring us not merely judgments on particular books, but it will tell us that there is a quality common to certain books. Listen, it will say, what shall we call this? And it will read us perhaps Lear and then perhaps Agamenon[7] in order to bring out that common quality. Thus, with our taste to guide us, we shall venture beyond the particular book in search of qualities that group books together; we shall give them names and thus frame a rule that brings order into our perceptions. We shall gain a further and a rarer pleasure from that discrimination. But as a rule only lives when it is perpetually broken by contact with the books themselves—nothing is easier and more stultifying than to make rules which exist out touch with facts, in a vacuum—now at least, in order to steady ourselves in this difficult attempt, it may be well to turn to the very rare writers who are able to enlighten us upon literature as an art. Coleridge[8] and Dryden[9] and Johnson,[10] in their considered criticism, the poets and novelists themselves in their considered sayings are often surprisingly relevant; they light up and solidity the vague ideas that have been tumbling in the misty depths of our minds. But they are only able to help us if we come to them laden with questions and suggestions won honestly in the course of our own reading. They can do nothing for us if we herd ourselves under their authority and lie down like sheep in the shade of a hedge. We can only understand their ruling when it comes in conflict with our own and vanquishes it.

If this is so, if to read a book as it should be read calls for the rarest qualities of imagination, insight, and judgment, you may perhaps, conclude that literature is a very complex art and that it is unlikely that we shall be able, even after a lifetime of reading, to make any valuable contribution to its criticism. We must remain readers; we shall not put on the further glory that belongs to those rare beings who are also critics. But still we have our responsibilities as readers and even our importance. The standards we raise and the judgments we pass steal into the air and become part of the atmosphere which writers breathe as they work. An influence is created which tells upon them even if it never finds its way into print. And that influence, if it were well instructed, vigorous and individual and sincere, might be of great value now when criticism is necessarily in abeyance; when books pass in review like the procession of animals in a shooting gallery, and the critic has only one second in which to load and aim and shoot and may well be pardoned if he mistakes rabbits for tigers, eagles for bar-door fowls, or misses altogether and wastes his shot upon some peaceful sow grazing in a further field. If behind the erratic gunfire of the press the author felt that that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of people reading for the love of reading, slowly and unprofessionally, and judging with great sympathy and yet with great severity, might this not improve the quality of his work? And if by our means books were to become stronger, richer, and more varied, that would be an end worth reaching.

Yet who reads to bring about an end however desirable? Are there not some pursuits that we practice because they are good in themselves, and some pleasures that are final? And is not this among them? I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards—their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble—the Almighty will turn to Peter[11] and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.”

Questions for Comprehension and Consideration:

1. The title of the essay gives a sense of offering advice on reading and the author begins her essay by saying “In the first place, I want to emphasize the note of interrogation at the end of my title.” Why does the author start her essay in this way and what does she really want to point out in her first paragraph which serves as her starting point when she offers ideas and suggestions on reading.

2. How do you understand the author’s idea of “Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice” in paragraph 3. How does your reading experience agree or disagree with the author’s advice?

3. Virginia Woolf says “the quickest way to understand the elements of what a novelist is doing is not to read, but to write;” and she also gives an example to support it. What do you think of the example? Have you ever had such experience of “experimenting with dangers and difficulties of words” ? If you have how do you comment your experience?

4. The author mentions three writers in paragraph 4 and points out that although they depict things totally different they share one same important element. What is it? Read at least one novel of each writer mentioned and try to understand the different worlds the authors created and see whether you agree to the comment Virginia Woolf made or not.

5. What is the true complexity of reading and what are the reading processes Virginia Woolf depicts? How do the processes agree or disagree to your reading experience?

6. In the difficult process of reading the author advises us to read some very rare writers who are able to enlighten us upon literature of art. To what extent and on what circumstance they are able to help us?

7. In what sense does Virginia Woolf think that common readers have responsibilities and importance in raising the standards and the judgment of reading?

8. How do you feel the author’s rhetoric question “Are there not some pursuits that we practice because they are good in themselves, … and is not this (reading) among them”? Write a passage with concrete examples to show your true understanding of it.

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解释：

[1] the battle of Waterloo Waterloo is a town in Belgium, the place where Napoleon Bonaparte(1769—1821) and his army was totally defeated.

[2] Thomas Love Peacock (1785--1866)，British novelist and poet.

[3] Anthony Trollope (1815—82), British novelist.

[4] George Meredith(1828--1909)，British novelist and poet.

[5] Phedre French tragic poet Jean Racine’s(1639—1699) works.

[6] The Prelude British poet William Wordsworth’s(1770—1850) long poem.

[7] Agamenon The ancient Greece great tragic poet Aischulos’(520 BC—456BC) works.

[8] Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1772—1834) British romantic poet.

[9] John Dryden(1631—1700) British poet and critic.

[10] Samuel Johnson(1709—1784) British writer.

[11] Peter one of the twelve disciple of Jesus Christ.

应当怎么念书

弗凶僧亚·伍尔妇

起首我要特殊提示读者注重本文题目前面的问号，即使我可能答复这个问题，谜底或者也只合适我自己而其实不合适你。实在，指导他人如何读书的独一提议，就是别服从任何指点。遵守自己的曲觉、应用自己的断定，去得出自己的论断。假如我们对此有共鸣，我便可以无拘谨地提出一些见解和倡议，由于这些见地和发起不至于会禁锢你的自力看法。而独立看法，恰是读者应具备的最主要的品德。那么，对于读书，会有些什么法则呢？滑铁卢之战无疑是发作在某特定一天中的一场战斗；《哈姆雷特》一剧是不是就必定比《李尔王》更好呢？这问题想必很难回覆，不同的读者会有不同的看法。若是让威望之说盘踞我们的图书范畴，不管它们多堂皇、多宽实，让它们指导我们怎样读、读什么和对所读之书做出评估，都无疑损坏了书之魂中所蕴涵的自由与开放精力。我们好像在任何方里都有风俗和标准，唯独在读书圆面没有。

要实正享用自在（恕我用那一陈词），就必需要有自我束缚。我们不克不及徒劳而无益地滥用本人的精神战才智，就像为给一株玫瑰浇水而喷洒了半个花棚一样。我们应该合适而扎真地擅待本身的精神跟才干，当初便破马开端。这兴许是我们在藏书楼起首面对的艰苦。作甚“坐马起头”？我们面临的仿佛是复杂繁纷的堆砌：诗歌、小道、汗青、列传、辞书、蓝皮书；分歧种族差别年月的男女用不同说话写就的不同档次的书；它们一本本松靠着摆列在书架上。而院中，驴子在咴咴地嘶叫，女人在火井边叽喳天闲谈，小马驹正在原野上自在地欢跳。我们从哪动手呢？我们怎样才干从纷纷的混乱中理出脉络，进而从咱们的所读中获得最深最广的悲愉呢？

毋庸讳行，书籍有种别之分，好比小说，传记，诗歌等等。我们应该从各种不同种别的图书中获取不同的养分。但是，事实上，只有少数人能准确看待书籍，从中汲取其所能赐与的所有。我们经常带着隐约而冲突的概念来 ，要供小说该真实，诗歌该当不实在，传记必须布满溢好之词，历史得强化我们固有的观点。阅读时，如果我们能摒弃这些成见，即是一个好的开始。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。假使你已开卷便先行迟疑畏缩，说长道短，你毫不能够从阅读中最大限度地获与有效价值。然而，字里行间不容易觉察的精巧之处，就为你敞开了一个体人难以领略的六合。沉迷此中，细心玩味，未几，你会收现，作者给予你的，或试图给予你的，绝非某个断定意义。一部小说的三十二个章节--------如果我们先来探讨怎么阅读小说的话-------如同修建的构架，但辞汇比砖头令人更难捉摸。阅读比之于旁观，当然是个更加久长而庞杂的过程。或许，最为快界地领略小说家事情的道理的方式，不是读，而是写；去冒险与词汇打交讲。回想一下某个曾给你留下共同印象的事务：街角处你遇到两小我私家正在扳谈，其时四周的场景是，树在随风摆动；街灯灯光摇摆不定；谈话人音调百感交集；那一刻你感遭到的情形全然融会在一路。

可是，当你试图用言语来再现这一场景时，它却支离成上千个抵牾的印象，有些得略述，有些得增强。就在你诉诸文字确当儿，当初的感觉已无影无踪。抛开词不达意的收离碎片吧，去翻开巨匠们的名著吧，好比笛祸，简·奥斯丁，哈代。这时候，你当能更好地体会他们的精巧。我们不仅是站在不同的巨匠眼前---笛福，简·奥斯丁，或者托马斯·哈代----现实上我们是置身于完全不同的世界。在《鲁宾逊漂流记》中，我们跋涉于长远的征途，一个事件接着一个事件产生，事件与事宜之间次序就足以形成其巨造。如果说户外和冒险之于笛福是大显神通的领地，那么，对简·奥斯丁就可有可无了。奥斯丁的世界是客厅，她经过运动于客厅里的使命的对话，反应人物性情。习惯了奥斯丁的客厅和经由过程客堂所反应的动向当前，我们再转向哈代，脑壳仿佛有一次发晕了。我们置身于荒原当中，星星在我们头上闪耀。在这里，人类魂灵的另一面----孤寂中爆发的暗中面，而不是处于凡世尘嚣时所暴露的光亮面----被充实剖解。这里展现的不是人与人的闭系，而是人与天然和运气的干系。三位作家描写了三个不同的世界，他们各自的世界是个联贯分歧的整体。他们谨严地遵守着各自察看事物、描写事物的法令。无论作家偏向性多大，读者不会在其中丢失标的目的，不至于像读某些不在行的作者的作品那样，在统一本书里看到两个判然不同的事实。因而，阅读一个个伟巨细说家----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----你几乎就如排山倒海，被一会儿扔到这里，一会儿扔向何处。读小说是一门艰巨而庞大的艺术。要想应用小说家----巨大的艺术家----给予的一切，你不但的具备洞察的战略，你还得具备英勇的设想。

*****

“我们只要比力一下，”，事件就很明白，阅读的神秘就在于此。以尽量的懂得往感触，这只是浏览的前一半历程，假如念取得一本书的全体愉悦，借得实现另外一个进程，即对各类感触进止梳理和辨别；把幻化不定的印象固化为明白和坚固的感想。但这不用操之过慢，应静待浏览的“灰尘降定”，您的迷惑和量疑已经积淀以后；进来逛逛，和友人聊聊，拣来玫瑰花叶上的枯瓣，大概上床睡一觉。就如许，不经意间，制化之神在我们全然不知中完成了它内化改变的进程，书重又给我们带来齐新的意思。它以其完全的意义显现在我们古道热肠际。而完全地体会全书，和只懂得它的三言两语，是不成同日而语的。书中的细节已各得其所，我们从头至尾看浑了它的整体形象，正如谷仓、猪圈或教堂。此刻我们就能够在书与书之间停止比拟了，就像比力不同的建造一样。这对照象征着我们的立场起了变更，我们不再是作者的伴侣，而是他的审讯者；正如作朋侪我们不能不充斥友谊一样，作审讯者我们就不能不严格了。那些消耗我们时光和感情的书，其作者莫非不克不及被看做是功犯吗？那些布满舛误、假造、腐败与弊端的书，其作者岂非不是社会最阳险的仇敌，不是堕落者和腐化者吗？我们必需做出峻厉裁判；我们把每本书都取其同类中最精采的作品去做比较。这类作品的特色我们曾经懂得，我们对它们的判决愈加深了这类领会，比方〈鲁滨孙飘流记〉、〈爱玛〉与〈回籍〉等。把你读到的小说与它们比拟----即使最新和最次的小说，也皆应当与这些最出色的小说进行对照评判。诗歌一样如斯。当使人沉醉的韵律被浓记，当诗中词语的美好意象已消散，一种视觉形象会呈现在我们的脑际，无妨把它与〈李我王〉、〈费德尔〉和〈序直〉比拟，即便不与它们比拟，也要与此外最好的，或我们以为最好的同类做品相比。能够确定的是，新创作的诗歌和小说的新鲜的地方，就在于它们的浮浅，我们毋庸完整转变评判从前作品的那些尺度，只有稍做变更便可。

假如以为阅读的第两个阶段，即评判和对照阶段（收拾那一涌而至的浩繁印象），与第一个阶段一样简略，那是不理智的。放下脚中的书持续阅读，心中对各种意象进行比较，同时还要普遍阅读、充足贯通，以确保这样的比拟能形象而富成心义----这无疑是难题的。若是再减上这样的请求，那就难上加易了：“不但这类书如斯，这种审阅也很广泛；这里处置不敷妥善；这里很胜利；这处所是个败笔，这女如同神来之笔”，等等。想胜任这一职责的读者，必需存在非同凡是响的设想力、洞察力和学问，这尽非易事，最自负者也恐难找到本身这样的潜能。那末，免除阅读的这一过程，让攻讦家、让藏书楼里衣衫褴褛的权势巨子来为我们决议书的终究价值这个成绩，岂非不更明智些吗？非也！我们可以夸大同感的代价；我们可以在阅读中忘失落本人。但我们清晰，我们弗成能与他人完整同感，也不行能完全忘掉自我，心坎深处好像总有一个没法停息的“魔鬼”在低语：“我恨！我爱！”。而恰是这爱恨之情，亲密了我们与诗人和小说家之间的关联，让我们无奈容忍另一人绵亘个中。即使成果不符，评判错误，但阅读中我们的品位，既震动我们的感到，无疑都深深感动和启发了我们。我们经由过程感触感染获知；压制本性会招致它的强化和干涸。而跟着时候的推移，我们还可以培育本身的品位，使之获得某种调控。饱览种种书本（诗歌、小说、汗青、传记）之后，当你停下阅读，面临更普遍的空间，即实在大千世界中的各种抵触时，你会发明，你的品位转变无多少，它不迫切，而是越发深谋远虑。它不只令我们对详细册本作出评判，还会告知我们某些书所具有的相似的独特特点。留神，它会报告我们什么是共同特性。它会引发我们去读《李尔王》，而后再读《阿伽门农》，从而去发明这配合特面。因而，有品位作领导，我们可以超出详细作品，去寻觅把书籍回于一类的特点，然后为这些特点定名，并由此建构出赞助我们感知的划定规矩。从这种分辨中，我们失掉更深刻、更可贵的愉悦。但是，规矩只有在与册本自己碰撞过程当中一直被攻破，才会更有性命力，是以，出有甚么比平空制订法则更轻易、也更愚笨了。为了能镇静地完成这一坚苦义务，我们无妨转向那些很奇特的作家，是他们让我们意识了作为艺术的文教。柯尔律治、德莱顿和约翰逊在他们谨严的批驳中，诗人和小说家在他们三思而行的表白中，均隐出了惊人的好汉所睹。他们展示并固化了我们心里浑沌深处那些翻滚、含混的思维。而只有当我们在阅读中逼真发生了题目和获得了倡议，才读有所获。假如只是一味服从其威望，就像躺在灌木荫处的羊群那样，是别期望取得辅助的。只要当他们的划定规矩与我们的产生碰碰并征服我们时，我们能力了解之。

如果读书之道就是如此，如果读书需求最名贵的想象力、洞察力和评判力，你也许会得出这样的结论，既文学切实是一门无比复纯的艺术，即便读了一生的书，也很难对文学评论做出有价值的奉献。我们初末都是读者，我们没必要戴上只属于被称为评述家的少数人材能戴上的光荣桂冠。但作为读者，我们仍然有自己的义务和主要位置。我们提出的尺度和做出的评判，耳濡目染地成作家进行创作的气氛的一局部。即便没有出书，它们也会对他们发生影响。而这影响，如果扶引得好，有活气、有个性，且真挚逼真，会十分有价值。特别是当品评正处于一种必须的弃捐状况之时，情况更是如此。书籍进进评论，就像植物进进射击场，评论家只有短短一秒种工夫拆弹、对准和射击，所以如果他把兔子算作山君，把老鹰当作庶民的家禽，或者完全中靶，或者误中了正在邻近郊野里宁静吃草的牧牛，都应该谅解他们。如果作者能在评论界变化多端的炮水以外感遭到另一种评论，感受到那些果爱读书而读书的人们的意见----这些人的评论或许不很实时，不很专业，但却很共识，很当真----这难道不敷以促使他进步作品的品质吗？如果通过我们的尽力，图书的世界变得更有影响力，更丰盛，更多样，这岂非不是值得我们追随的目的吗？

固然，谁又会在阅读时老想实在现一个目的呢？不管这个方针如许令人憧憬？生涯中有些事我们寻求，不就是由于这寻求自身很值，而我们又乐在此中吗？而读书，莫非不是这些乐事中的一个吗？我有时遥想，当世界审讯日终极降临，那些巨大的驯服者、律师、政治家前来支付他们的夸奖：王冠、桂冠和永恒镂刻在不会磨灭的年夜理石上的名字时，天主会转背圣·彼得，而当他看到我们夹着书向他走来时，他会不无妒意地说，“看啊，这些人不须要任何奖赏。我们这里也不能够给他们的奖。他们酷爱读书。”

（何旭日，中国迷信技巧大学外语系）

文/Virginia Woolf 译/何向阳