Sometimes, when I come across a book, I feel like it's written for me alone. Like a lover who fears losing, I don't want others to know that she exists. Having a million such readers, unaware of each other's existence, reading with passion but never talking to each other, is undoubtedly a pipe dream for every writer.
—W.H. Auden
A book is a mirror: if a donkey is looking inward, don't expect an apostle to look outward.
- C.G. Lichtenberg
It can only be read perfectly with some very personal purpose. It can be for the sake of gaining some power, or it can be out of hatred for the author.
—Paul Valery
The interests of writers are never the same as those of readers, and if they are occasionally aligned, it is an unexpected stroke of luck.
In their relationship with writers, most readers practice "double standards": they can disloyal to the writer as they please, but the writer can never, never, disloyal to them.
Reading is translation, because no two people's experiences are completely consistent. A bad reader is a bad translator: literal translation when it should be translated, and paraphrasing when it should be literal. Learning how to read perfectly is as valuable as intuition; some great scholars are inferior translators.
We tend to benefit more from reading a book in a different way than the author envisions, and only when we know we're doing it (once childhood is over).
As readers, most of us are sort of like some trickster who smears the beards of the women in the ads.
One of the hallmarks of a book's literary value is that it can be read in a variety of different ways. Conversely, the basis for the lack of literary value of pornographic books is that it would be boring to read in a way other than to find sexual stimulation, for example, as a psychological case of the author's sexual fantasies.
Although true literature can withstand reading in a variety of different ways, the number of these ways is limited and can be arranged in a certain hierarchy. Some reading styles are obviously "more real" than others, some are suspicious, some are obviously wrong, and some seem absurd—like reading a book backwards. That is why, if we are stranded on a desert island, we would rather have with us a brilliant dictionary than the greatest literary masterpiece we can think of, because in relation to the reader the dictionary is absolutely obedient and can be read in an infinite way, as a matter of course.
We can't read a new author for the first time, as we can read a recent work by a famous writer. For a new author, we tend to see only his strengths or his weaknesses, and even if we can take care of both, we can't see the relationship between the two. And for a well-known writer, if we are still willing to read his work, we know that we cannot appreciate his admirable merits unless we endure his regrettable flaws. Moreover, our evaluation of famous writers does not stop at aesthetic judgments. For his new work, it is as if we are dealing with the behavior of a person we have been paying attention to for a long time, in addition to paying attention to the literary value that may have, we also have a historical interest. He was not just a poet or a novelist, he was a character who blended into the course of our lives.
Any poet who reads someone else's poetry, or a novelist who reads someone else's novel, inevitably compares it to his own work. When he reads, he makes comments such as: "Oh my God! My ancestors! My uncle! My enemy! My brother! My stupid brother! ”
In literature, vulgarity is always better than worthlessness, just as wine in a grocery store is always stronger than distilled water.
Good taste depends more on discernment than on blind rejection. When good taste is forced to exclude something, it brings regret rather than happiness.
Happiness is by no means a foolproof guide to criticism, but it is the most infallible method of criticism.
Children are driven by happiness in reading, but their happiness is one. For example, he cannot distinguish between aesthetic pleasure and the joy of learning or daydreaming. In adolescence, we realize that there are different types of happiness, some of which cannot be enjoyed at the same time, but we need to seek help from others when defining happiness. Whether it's about taste for food or taste for literature, young people are looking for trusted and authoritative mentors. He tasted food or read according to his mentor's recommendation, and sometimes he inevitably deceived himself; he had to pretend to like olives or War and Peace, though that was not the case. Between the ages of twenty and forty, when we are in the process of discovering ourselves, we need to learn how to distinguish between the accidental limitations we should break through and the inherent limitations of our nature that once we cross them, we are punished. Few of us can learn this without making mistakes, without trying to be more knowledgeable than we allow. During this period, one writer is most likely to be led astray by another writer or by an ideology. If a person in his twenties and forties comments on a work of art and says, "I know what I like," he is actually saying ," "I don't have my own taste, but accept the taste that my cultural background gives." Because, between the ages of twenty and forty, the most reliable basis for determining whether a person has a truly own taste is hesitation about his own taste. After forty years of age, if we have not lost our authentic selves, we will regain the joy of childhood, which will become the appropriate guide to teach "us" how to read.
Although the pleasures that works of art give us should not be confused with other pleasures we enjoy, they are interconnected through "ours" rather than the pleasures of others. The aesthetic or moral judgments we make, no matter how hard we try to make them objective, are always partly motivated by the process of rationalization and partly by the corrective laws of subjective desire. Anyone who dreams of the Garden of Eden when writing poetry or novels is his own business, but once literary criticism is carried out, the intrinsic sincerity requires him to describe the Garden of Eden to the reader, so that the reader can find a perspective to examine his judgment. So I had to answer a questionnaire I had drawn up that gave the information I wanted to have when reading other critics.
eden
scenery:
Limestone highlands similar to the Pennines, plus a small area of igneous rock with at least one extinct volcano. A steep, jagged coast.
climate:
British.
Ethnic origin of the inhabitants:
As diverse as the United States, but the Nordics have a slight advantage.
language:
Sources are mixed like English, but with a high degree of inflection variation.
Weight units and units of measurement:
Irregular, complex, and no decimal.
religion:
Affable Mediterranean Roman Catholicism. Lots of local saints.
Size of the capital:
Plato's ideal number is exactly five thousand and four.
Forms of government:
Absolute monarchy, election by lot, lifelong system.
Sources of natural energy:
Wind, water, peat, coal. No oil.
Economic activity:
Lead mining, coal mining, chemical plants, paper mills, sheep herding, vegetable cultivation, greenhouse gardening.
vehicle:
Horses and horse-drawn carriages, canal barges, hot air balloons. No cars or planes.
building:
Country: Baroque style. Ecclesiastical architecture: Roman or Byzantine style. Home: Eighteenth century British style or American colonial style.
Interior furniture and equipment:
Victorian, in addition to the kitchen and bathroom to be as full of modern appliances as possible.
Formal attire:
Parisian fashion in the 1830s and 1840s.
Public Information Sources:
gossip. Scientific and academic journals, but no newspapers.
Public Sculptures:
Only the late famous chef.
Public Entertainment:
Religious processions, brass bands, operas, classical ballet. There are no movies, radio or television.
I am sincerely grateful to some poets and novelists, and I know that if I had not read them, my life would have become even poorer, and if I tried to list all their names, it would have been several pages long. But when I think about all the critics I really appreciate, I get only thirty-four names. Twelve of them were Germans and two were French. Does this indicate a deliberate bias?
Indeed.
If good literary critics are rarer than good poets or novelists, one of the reasons is the egoistic nature of human beings. The poet or novelist must learn humility in the face of his subject matter (generally life). However, critics must learn to treat subject matter with humility, which is made up of authors, i.e., individual human beings, and it is much more difficult to obtain this humility. It's much easier to say, "Mr. A's work is more important than anything I can comment on," and say, "Life is more important than anything I can describe."
Some people are too smart to be writers, but they also don't become critics.
God knows that writers can be stupid, but not always as stupid as some kind of critics think. I mean, when such a critic condemns a work or a chapter, it is impossible to think that the author has foreseen what he is going to say.
What is the responsibility of a critic? In my opinion, he can provide me with one or more of the following services:
First, introduce me to writers or works that I have not noticed so far.
Second, it convinces me that I underestimate a writer or a work because I am not careful enough when reading.
Third, point out to me the relationship between works of different eras and cultures, which I do not know enough, and will never know, and I will not be able to see these relationships on my own.
Giving a work a way of "reading" can deepen my understanding of it.
Fifth, illustrate the process of "making" art.
6. Clarify the relationship between art and life, science, economy, ethics, religion, etc.
The first three services require knowledge.
A scholar's knowledge must not only be profound, but also valuable to others. We don't call someone who knows the Manhattan phone book a serious sense of academics, because we can't imagine the circumstances in which he can win over students. Since scholarship implies a relationship between those who know more and those who know less, it may be temporary; in relation to the public, every book critic is for a timely scholar, for he has read the book he is commenting on, and the public has not. Although the knowledge possessed by the scholar must have potential value, he himself does not necessarily recognize its value; it is often the case that the student from whom he imparts knowledge has a better sense of the value of his knowledge than he does. In general, when reading a scholar's critical articles, people can learn more from his quotations than from his comments.
The latter three services require not superior knowledge, but superior insight. The critic's remarkable insight is expressed in whether the questions asked are novel and important, although people may not agree with the answers he gives. Perhaps, few readers can accept Tolstoy's book What is Art? 》（What is Art？ The conclusions drawn in a book, however, can never again be ignored by anyone who has read it.
The last thing I want to ask a critic about is to have him tell me what I "should" be or against. I have no objection to him telling me which writers and works he himself likes and dislikes; in fact, it is useful to me, and based on his liking and dislike of the works I have read, I can know to what extent I will approve or disagree with the judgments he has made about the works I have not yet read. However, he must not impose his likes and dislikes on me. It is my duty to choose what books to read, and no one in the world can decide for me.
We always have to discount the criticism of writers when we listen. Because these claims mainly show that he is considering what to do next and what to avoid. And, unlike scientists, he is more indifferent to what his peers are doing than the general public. A poet over thirty years old may still be a voracious reader, but most of what he reads is not necessarily modern poetry.
Few of us can rightly boast that we have never condemned a book or a writer for hearsay, but most of us have never praised a book or writer we haven't yet read.
In many areas of life, it is impossible to adhere to the admonition that "do not resist evil, but overcome evil with good", but in the field of art it is common sense. Inferior works often accompany us, but any particular work of art is generally inferior only for a certain period of time; sooner or later its revealed inferiority will disappear and be replaced by another characteristic. Therefore, there is no need to attack this inferiority, it will eventually die. If Macaulay had never written an article commenting on Robert Montgomery, we would not be in the illusion that Montgomery was a great poet today. The only sensible thing for a critic is to remain silent about what he perceives to be inferior, while at the same time enthusiastically promoting the good works he believes in, especially when they are ignored or underestimated by the public.
Some books are improperly forgotten; yet no books are improperly remembered.
Some critics argue that it is their moral duty to expose the badness of one writer, because only then does the writer not corrupt other writers. It is true that a young writer may be led astray by older writers, i.e. off track, but he seems more likely to be seduced by good writers than bad writers. The more powerful and original writers are, the more dangerous they are for less talented writers who are trying to find themselves. Moreover, works that are inherently poor often stimulate the imagination and indirectly produce excellent works in other writers.
To improve a person's taste for food, you don't have to point out how disgusting the foods they're used to — like too much soup and overcooked cabbage — but just convince him to taste a beautifully cooked dish. Yes, for some people, the following church has an immediate effect: "Vulgar people like to eat boiled cabbage, and cultured people like to Chinese the taste of cooking cabbage", but the effect will not last.
When a book critic I trust in its taste accuses a book, if I feel comforted, it's just because the books published are too voluminous, and it's reassuring to think, "Hey, there's at least one book here that you don't have to worry about." "But if he were silent, the effect would be the same."
Attacking a book of inferiority is not only a waste of time, but also a detriment of human character. If I find a book really bad, the only pleasure of writing an article bashing it can only come from myself, from my efforts to show off my knowledge, my intellect, and my resentment. It is impossible for a person not to flaunt himself when commenting on inferior books.
There is a sin in literature that we must not turn a blind eye to and remain silent, but on the contrary must be openly and persistently attacked, and that is the corruption of language. The writer cannot create his own language, but depends on the language he inherits, so that when the language is corrupted, the writer himself must also be corrupted. Critics concerned about this evil should criticize it from its roots, not in literature, but in the misuse of language by ordinary people, journalists, politicians, etc. Moreover, he must be able to live up to his claims. How many of today's Anglo-American critics are masters of their native language, just as Karl Klaus was a master of the German language?
We can't just blame book critics. Most of them really only want to comment on books that they believe are worth reading, and despite their flaws, if a person who specializes in writing reviews for the Sunday editions of major newspapers follows his preferences, his column will be blank on at least one Sunday of the three weeks. Any responsible book critic knows that if a new book of poetry must be reviewed in a limited space, the only appropriate way to do so is to give a series of citations without comment, but once he does so, the editor will complain that he is useless.
However, the vices of book critics in labeling and categorizing writers are to blame. Originally, critics divided writers into classical writers (i.e., Greek and Latin writers) and modern writers (i.e., post-classical writers). Subsequently, they divided writers by era: Augustusian writers, Victorian writers, and so on. Now they take a ten-year divide: writers of the thirties, writers of the forties, and so on. Soon, it seemed that they were going to divide writers by year, just like cars. The ten-year divide is already somewhat absurd, and it seems to suggest that writers stop writing at an appropriate time around the age of thirty-five.
"Contemporary" is an overused word. My contemporaries are just people who were on earth when I was alive, and they could be babies or centenarians.
"Who are you writing for?"
Writers, or at least poets, are often asked this question, although the questioner should know better about it. This question is of course stupid, but I can also give a stupid answer. Sometimes, when I come across a book, I feel like it's written for me alone. Like a lover who fears losing, I don't want others to know that she exists. Having a million such readers, unaware of each other's existence, reading with passion but never talking to each other, is undoubtedly a pipe dream for every writer.
Text | from The Hand of the Dyer, [English] W· By H. Auden, translated by Hu Sang, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2018-03
Photo | from the works of [Danish] Carl Wilhelm Holser, Daniel Jerhaz, and [U.S.] Child Hassan
Transferred from | Chuchen culture