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- Herausgeber: Pieffe Edizioni
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: MegaMicrón
- Sprache: Englisch
“It is childish to suppose that a hundred books can be named as those which are the best for each and every one. The simplest experience of the world proves that a work of great excellence may deeply move one person, while it leaves another untouched; and that a book which has influenced one strongly in one's youth may lose such influence over one's later years. There is practically nothing that every man can read at every time...” (Georg Brandes)
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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ON READING
An Essay
by
Georg Brandes
Pieffe Edizioni
Copyright
© Pieffe Edizioni, 2017
© Edited by / A cura di: Fabrizio Pinna
For this Edition: All rights reserved.
Tutti i diritti riservati; a norma di legge, senza autorizzazione è vietata la distribuzione e riproduzione anche parziale e con qualsiasi mezzo.
First published / I edizione e-Book: December / Dicembre 2017
ISBN: 978-88-99508-10-4 (ebk)
TITLE / TITOLO: ON READING
by Georg Brandes (1842-1927)
Series / Collana: MEGAMICRÓN, n. 1
Pieffe Edizioni
Sede legale: via Gramsci 5 - 17031 Albenga (SV) - Italy
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Contents
ON READING. An Essay
On Reading(*)
A few years ago several European newspapers offered prizes for a list of the best one hundred books for a first-class library. The answers poured in: the Bible and “Robinson Crusoe,” Homer and Horace, Dante and Shakespeare, Holberg and Oehlenschläger, Goethe and Mickiewitz, Racine and Pascal, Arany and Petöfi, Cervantes and Calderón, Bjørnson and Ibsen, Tegnér and Runeberg, — each list characteristic of the country and the individual taste of the correspondent.
It is childish to suppose that a hundred books can be named as those which are the best for each and every one.
The simplest experience of the world proves that a work of great excellence may deeply move one person, while it leaves another untouched; and that a book which has influenced one strongly in one's youth may lose such influence over one's later years. There is practically nothing that every man can read at every time.
This fact is not particularly evident, of course, for the simple reason that nowadays very few people can be said to read at all, or enjoy reading, or get any good out of it. Out of a hundred persons able to read, ninety generally read nothing but newspapers, — a species of reading which demands no exertion. Most people, for that matter, read without any particular attentiveness. Perhaps they select reading-matter which does not deserve any particular attention. What wonder, then, that they forget what they read? Everyone will recall such remarks as the following: “There's no use talking to me about this book or that book, — I must have read it, I suppose, some years ago; but I have the unfortunate faculty of forgetting everything I read.” And many people, after all, are not accustomed to understand fully. They are like young people reading books in foreign languages, who neglect to refer to the dictionary for words they do not understand; they infer them from the sense, — so they say; that is, they understand half, and are content with that.
In the case of works, the nature of which is not intended to be grasped by the intellect, as, for example, in lyric poetry, readers generally relinquish beforehand all idea of understanding exactly what the author means. An acquaintance of mine, in a company of ladies, once tried the experiment of reading aloud Goethe's The God and the Bayadere, beginning each verse with the last line, and reading upwards. The rhymes fell without intermission, all the melody of the verses was retained — and every one was charmed with the following:
“Then by her with grace is the nosegay bestowed.
Well skilled in its mazes the sight to entrance.
Thecymbal she hastens to play for the dance.
And this house is love's abode.”
Reflecting a little upon this and similar phenomena, one readily finds oneself raising the questions:
Why should we read?
What should we read?
How should we read?
It is neither superfluous nor idle to raise these questions. I had accepted invitations several times to the home of a well-to-do family enjoying a good position abroad, — a household which took a certain standing in the artistic life of a capital city, — when it struck me one day that I had never seen any book-case or book-shelves in the house. In reply to my query, I was told that they had no book-case, nor any books, except the two or three that lay on the sitting-room table. “But you read, or have read a good deal?” I asked. “Oh, yes,” was the answer; “we travel a good deal, as you know, and in the course of the year we buy a great many books; but we always leave them behind in the net,” — meaning the nets of the railway carriages. And, by way of explanation: “ You see, one never reads a book more than once.”
I should have caused great astonishment, I suppose, had I replied that in the domain of reading — if in no other — it is regarded as a changeless rule that one time is no time at all, that a man who restricts himself to one reading of a good book knows little about it. The books I value I have frequently read more than ten times; indeed, in some cases I could not possibly say how many times. One does not really know a book until one knows it almost by heart.
It is a good thing, too, if one has the means, to own one's books. There are people who do not own any books, although they have the means. I was once invited, abroad, to the house of a certain Maecenas, — a man whose art collections are worth considerably more than a million, — and when I had viewed his pictures, I said: “Now I should like to see the books. Where are they?” He replied, somewhat testily: “I do not collect books.” He had none.
There are people who are content, as to books, with the provision afforded them by circulating libraries, — a sorry method at the best. It is a sure sign of failing culture and poor taste when at every watering-place in a great country expensively dressed women are invariably seen each with a greasy novel from a circulating library in her hand. These ladies, who would be ashamed to borrow a dress, or wear second-hand clothes, do not hesitate to economize in book-buying. As a result, they read one novel after another, and the last supplants all knowledge of those that have gone before.
The man who replied “I do not collect books,” saw no necessity for reading. He belonged to the wealthy bourgeois class, and men of that class rarely have the time and the concentration for reading anything but newspapers. Outside the ranks of scholars, a strong and passionate love for reading is felt, in the main, only by those who have neither the time nor the means for it, — the lower middle classes, artisans, and workmen. Among these latter there is still to be found that thirst for education which distinguished the wealthy bourgeois classes a hundred years ago, though it was so quickly slaked.
Why should we read?
Why should we read? is therefore the question that requires an answer first.
