How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
IX INTEREST IN THE ARTS
Many people pursue a regular and uninterrupted course of idleness inthe evenings because they think that there is no alternative to idlenessbut the study of literature; and they do not happen to have a taste forliterature. This is a great mistake.
Of course it is impossible, or at any rate very difficult, properly to studyanything whatever without the aid of printed books. But if you desire tounderstand the deeper depths of bridge or of boat-sailing you would notbe deterred by your lack of interest in literature from reading the bestbooks on bridge or boat-sailing. We must, therefore, distinguish betweenliterature, and books treating of subjects not literary. I shall come toliterature in due course.
Let me now remark to those who have never read Meredith, and who arecapable of being unmoved by a discussion as to whether Mr. StephenPhillips is or is not a true poet, that they are perfectly within their rights.It is not a crime not to love literature. It is not a sign of imbecility. Themandarins of literature will order out to instant execution the unfortunateindividual who does not comprehend, say, the influence of Wordsworth onTennyson. But that is only their impudence. Where would they be, I wonder,if requested to explain the influences that went to make Tschaikowsky's"Pathetic Symphony"?
There are enormous fields of knowledge quite outside literature whichwill yield magnificent results to cultivators. For example (since I havejust mentioned the most popular piece of high-class music in Englandto-day), I am reminded that the Promenade Concerts begin in August.You go to them. You smoke your cigar or cigarette (and I regret to saythat you strike your matches during the soft bars of the "Lohengrin"overture), and you enjoy the music. But you say you cannot play thepiano or the fiddle, or even the banjo; that you know nothing of music.
What does that matter? That you have a genuine taste for music isproved by the fact that, in order to fill his hall with you and your peers,the conductor is obliged to provide programmes from which bad musicis almost entirely excluded (a change from the old Covent Garden days!).
Now surely your inability to perform "The Maiden's Prayer" on a pianoneed not prevent you from making yourself familiar with the constructionof the orchestra to which you listen a couple of nights a week during acouple of months! As things are, you probably think of the orchestra as aheterogeneous mass of instruments producing a confused agreeable massof sound. You do not listen for details because you have never trainedyour ears to listen to details.
If you were asked to name the instruments which play the great theme atthe beginning of the C minor symphony you could not name them for yourlife's sake. Yet you admire the C minor symphony. It has thrilled you. Itwill thrill you again. You have even talked about it, in an expansive mood,to that lady--you know whom I mean. And all you can positively stateabout the C minor symphony is that Beethoven composed it and that it isa "jolly fine thing."
Now, if you have read, say, Mr. Krehbiel's "How to Listen to Music" (whichcan be got at any bookseller's for less than the price of a stall at the Alhambra,and which contains photographs of all the orchestral instruments and plans ofthe arrangement of orchestras) you would next go to a promenade concert withan astonishing intensification of interest in it. Instead of a confused mass, theorchestra would appear to you as what it is--a marvellously balanced organismwhose various groups of members each have a different and an indispensablefunction. You would spy out the instruments, and listen for their respectivesounds. You would know the gulf that separates a French horn from an Englishhorn, and you would perceive why a player of the hautboy gets higher wagesthan a fiddler, though the fiddle is the more difficult instrument. You would*live* at a promenade concert, whereas previously you had merely existedthere in a state of beatific coma, like a baby gazing at a bright object.
The foundations of a genuine, systematic knowledge of music might be laid.You might specialise your inquiries either on a particular form of music (suchas the symphony), or on the works of a particular composer. At the end of ayear of forty-eight weeks of three brief evenings each, combined with a studyof programmes and attendances at concerts chosen out of your increasingknowledge, you would really know something about music, even though youwere as far off as ever from jangling "The Maiden's Prayer" on the piano.
"But I hate music!" you say. My dear sir, I respect you.
music applies to the other arts. I might mention Mr. ClermontWitt's "How to Look at Pictures," or Mr. Russell.
What applies to music applies to the other arts. I might mention Mr. ClermontWitt's "How to Look at Pictures," or Mr. Russell Sturgis's "How to JudgeArchitecture," as beginnings (merely beginnings) of systematic vitalisingknowledge in other arts, the materials for whose study abound in London.
"I hate all the arts!" you say. My dear sir, I respect you more and more.
I will deal with your case next, before coming to literature.