How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
XI SERIOUS READING
Novels are excluded from "serious reading," so that the man who, bent onself-improvement, has been deciding to devote ninety minutes three timesa week to a complete study of the works of Charles Dickens will be welladvised to alter his plans. The reason is not that novels are not serious--some of the great literature of the world is in the form of prose fiction--the reason is that bad novels ought not to be read, and that good novelsnever demand any appreciable mental application on the part of the reader.It is only the bad parts of Meredith's novels that are difficult. A good novelrushes you forward like a skiff down a stream, and you arrive at the end,perhaps breathless, but unexhausted. The best novels involve the leaststrain. Now in the cultivation of the mind one of the most important factorsis precisely the feeling of strain, of difficulty, of a task which one part of youis anxious to achieve and another part of you is anxious to shirk; and that feeling cannot be got in facing a novel. You do not set your teeth in order toread "Anna Karenina." Therefore, though you should read novels, you shouldnot read them in those ninety minutes.
Imaginative poetry produces a far greater mental strain than novels. Itproduces probably the severest strain of any form of literature. It is thehighest form of literature. It yields the highest form of pleasure, andteaches the highest form of wisdom. In a word, there is nothing tocompare with it. I say this with sad consciousness of the fact that themajority of people do not read poetry.
I am persuaded that many excellent persons, if they were confrontedwith the alternatives of reading "Paradise Lost" and going roundTrafalgar Square at noonday on their knees in sack-cloth, wouldchoose the ordeal of public ridicule. Still, I will never cease advisingmy friends and enemies to read poetry before anything.
If poetry is what is called "a sealed book" to you, begin by readingHazlitt's famous essay on the nature of "poetry in general." It is thebest thing of its kind in English, and no one who has read it can possiblybe under the misapprehension that poetry is a mediaeval torture, or amad elephant, or a gun that will go off by itself and kill at forty paces.Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the mental state of the man who, afterreading Hazlitt's essay, is not urgently desirous of reading some poetrybefore his next meal. If the essay so inspires you I would suggest thatyou make a commencement with purely narrative poetry.
There is an infinitely finer English novel, written by a woman, thananything by George Eliot or the Brontes, or even Jane Austen, whichperhaps you have not read. Its title is "Aurora Leigh," and its authorE.B. Browning. It happens to be written in verse, and to contain aconsiderable amount of genuinely fine poetry. Decide to read thatbook through, even if you die for it. Forget that it is fine poetry.Read it simply for the story and the social ideas. And when youhave done, ask yourself honestly whether you still dislike poetry.I have known more than one person to whom "Aurora Leigh" hasbeen the means of proving that in assuming they hated poetry theywere entirely mistaken.
Of course, if, after Hazlitt, and such an experiment made in the lightof Hazlitt, you are finally assured that there is something in you whichis antagonistic to poetry, you must be content with history or philosophy.I shall regret it, yet not inconsolably. "The Decline and Fall" is not to benamed in the same day with "Paradise Lost," but it is a vastly pretty thing;and Herbert Spencer's "First Principles" simply laughs at the claims ofpoetry and refuses to be accepted as aught but the most majestic productof any human mind. I do not suggest that either of these works is suitablefor a tyro in mental strains. But I see no reason why any man of averageintelligence should not, after a year of continuous reading, be fit to assaultthe supreme masterpieces of history or philosophy. The great convenienceof masterpieces is that they are so astonishingly lucid.
I suggest no particular work as a start. The attempt would be futile in thespace of my command. But I have two general suggestions of a certainimportance. The first is to define the direction and scope of your efforts.Choose a limited period, or a limited subject, or a single author. Say toyourself: "I will know something about the French Revolution, or therise of railways, or the works of John Keats." And during a given period,to be settled beforehand, confine yourself to your choice. There is muchpleasure to be derived from being a specialist.
The second suggestion is to think as well as to read. I know people whoread and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as wellcut bread-and-butter. They take to reading as better men take to drink.They fly through the shires of literature on a motor-car, their sole objectbeing motion. They will tell you how many books they have read in a year.
Unless you give at least forty-five minutes to careful, fatiguing reflection(it is an awful bore at first) upon what you are reading, your ninety minutesof a night are chiefly wasted. This means that your pace will be slow.
Never mind.
Forget the goal; think only of the surrounding country; and after a period,perhaps when you least expect it, you will suddenly find yourself in a lovelytown on a hill.