Why Read the Classics?　為何閱讀經(jīng)典？

Why Read the Classics?

為何閱讀經(jīng)典？

Italo Calvino

伊塔洛·卡爾維諾

作者簡介

伊塔洛·卡爾維諾（Italo Calvino，1924—1985），新聞工作者、短篇小說家、意大利當代最具世界影響力的作家，力求表達自己對人生的感悟和信念。其代表作有《我們的祖先》三部曲（Our Ancestors）、《命運交織的城堡》（The Castle of Crossed Destinies）、《通向蜘蛛巢的小徑》（The Path to the Nest of Spiders）、《看不見的城市》（Invisible Cities）等。他于1985年猝然逝世，與當年的諾貝爾文學獎失之交臂，但他在國際文壇上留下了深遠的影響。

本文節(jié)選自散文集《文學的作用》（The Uses of Literature: Essays）。該書由卡爾維諾編輯，帕特里克·克雷（Patrick Creagh）譯為英文。全書收錄36篇文章，談論了許多經(jīng)典名著在卡爾維諾人生的不同階段給他帶來的啟迪。書中評述的作家從古代的荷馬（Homer）、奧維德（Ovid），到近現(xiàn)代的丹尼爾·笛福（Daniel Defoe）、歐內斯特·米勒·海明威（Ernest Miller Hemingway）均有涉及。在本文中，作者列出了“經(jīng)典”的14個定義，全面闡釋了自己心目中的不朽之作。

Let us begin with a few suggested definitions.

1．The classics are the books of which we usually hear people say: “I am rereading…”and never “I am reading…”.

This at least happens among those who consider themselves “very well read.”It does not hold good for young people at the age when they first encounter the world, and the classics as a part of that world.

The reiterative prefix before the verb “read”may be a small hypocrisy on the part of people ashamed to admit they have not read a famous book. To reassure them, we need only observe that, however vast any person's basic reading may be, there still remain an enormous number of fundamental works that he has not read.

Hands up, anyone who has read the whole of Herodotus and the whole of Thucydides! And Saint-Simon? And Cardinal de Retz? But even the great nineteenth-century cycles of novels are more often talked about than read. In France they begin to read Balzac in school, and judging by the number of copies in circulation, one may suppose that they go on reading him even after that, but if a Gallup poll were taken in Italy, I'm afraid that Balzac would come in practically last. Dickens fans in Italy form a tiny elite; as soon as its members meet, they begin to chatter about characters and episodes as if they were discussing people and things of their own acquaintance. Years ago, while teaching in America, Michel Butor got fed up with being asked about Emile Zola, whom he had never read, so he made up his mind to read the entire Les Rougon-Macquart cycle. He found it was completely different from what he had thought: a fabulous mythological and cosmogonical family tree, which he went on to describe in a wonderful essay.

In other words, to read a great book for the first time in one's maturity is an extraordinary pleasure, different from (though one cannot say greater or lesser than) the pleasure of having read it in one's youth. Youth brings to reading, as to any other experience, a particular flavor and a particular sense of importance, whereas in maturity one appreciates (or ought to appreciate) many more details and levels and meanings. We may therefore attempt the next definition:

2．We use the word “classics”for those books that are treasured by those who have read and loved them; but they are treasured no less by those who have the luck to read them for the first time in the best conditions to enjoy them.

In fact, reading in youth can be rather unfruitful, owing to impatience, distraction, inexperience with the product's “instructions for use,”and inexperience in life itself. Books read then can be (possibly at one and the same time) formative, in the sense that they give a form to future experiences, providing models, terms of comparison, schemes for classification, scales of value, exemplars of beauty—all things that continue to operate even if the book read in one's youth is almost or totally forgotten. If we reread the book at a mature age we are likely to rediscover these constants, which by this time are part of our inner mechanisms, but whose origins we have long forgotten. A literary work can succeed in making us forget it as such, but it leaves its seed in us. The definition we can give is therefore this:

3．The classics are books that exert a peculiar influence, both when they refuse to be eradicated from the mind and when they conceal themselves in the folds of memory, camouflaging themselves as the collective or individual unconscious.

There should therefore be a time in adult life devoted to revisiting the most important books of our youth. Even if the books have remained the same (though they do change, in the light of an altered historical perspective), we have most certainly changed, and our encounter will be an entirely new thing.

Hence, whether we use the verb “read”or the verb “reread”is of little importance. Indeed, we may say:

4．Every rereading of a classic is as much a voyage of discovery as the first reading.

5．Every reading of a classic is in fact a rereading.

Definition 4 may be considered a corollary of this next one:

6．A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

Whereas definition 5 depends on a more specific formula, such as this:

7．The classics are the books that come down to us bearing upon them the traces of readings previous to ours, and bringing in their wake the traces they themselves have left on the culture or cultures they have passed through (or, more simply, on language and customs).

All this is true both of the ancient and of the modern classics. If I read the Odyssey I read Homer's text, but I cannot forget all that the adventures of Ulysses have come to mean in the course of the centuries, and I cannot help wondering if these meanings were implicit in the text, or whether they are incrustations or distortions or expansions. When reading Kafka, I cannot avoid approving or rejecting the legitimacy of the adjective “Kafkaesque,”which one is likely to hear every quarter of an hour, applied indiscriminately. If I read Turgenev's Fathers and Sons or Dostoevsky's The Possessed, I cannot help thinking how these characters have continued to be reincarnated right down to our own day.

The reading of a classic ought to give us a surprise or two vis-à-vis the notion that we had of it. For this reason I can never sufficiently highly recommend the direct reading of the text itself, leaving aside the critical biography, commentaries, and interpretations as much as possible. Schools and universities ought to help us to understand that no book that talks about a book says more than the book in question, but instead they do their level best to make us think the opposite. There is a very widespread topsyturviness of values whereby the introduction, critical apparatus, and bibliography are used as a smoke screen to hide what the text has to say, and, indeed, can say only if left to speak for itself without intermediaries who claim to know more than the text does. We may conclude that:

8．A classic does not necessarily teach us anything we did not know before. In a classic we sometimes discover something we have always known (or thought we knew), but without knowing that this author said it first, or at least is associated with it in a special way. And this, too, is a surprise that gives a lot of pleasure, such as we always gain from the discovery of an origin, a relationship, an affinity. From all this we may derive a definition of this type:

9．The classics are books that we find all the more new, fresh, and unexpected upon reading, the more we thought we knew them from hearing them talked about.

Naturally, this only happens when a classic really works as such—that is, when it establishes a personal rapport with the reader. If the spark doesn't come, that's a pity; but we do not read the classics out of duty or respect, but only out of love. Except at school. And school should enable you to know, either well or badly, a certain number of classics among which—or in reference to which—you can then choose your classics. School is obliged to give you the instruments needed to make a choice, but the choices that count are those that occur outside and after school.

It is only by reading without bias that you might possibly come across the book that becomes your book. I know an excellent art historian, an extraordinarily well-read man, who out of all the books there are has focused his special love on the Pickwick Papers; at every opportunity he comes up with some quip from Dickens's book, and connects each and every event in life with some Pickwickian episode. Little by little he himself, and true philosophy, and the universe, have taken on the shape and form of the Pickwick Papers by a process of complete identification. In this way we arrive at a very lofty and demanding notion of what a classic is:

10．We use the word “classic”of a book that takes the form of an equivalent to the universe, on a level with the ancient talismans. With this definition we are approaching the idea of the “total book,”as Mallarmé conceived of it.

But a classic can establish an equally strong rapport in terms of opposition and antithesis. Everything that Jean-Jacques Rousseau thinks and does is very dear to my heart, yet everything fills me with an irrepressible desire to contradict him, to criticize him, to quarrel with him. It is a question of personal antipathy on a temperamental level, on account of which I ought to have no choice but not to read him; and yet I cannot help numbering him among my authors. I will therefore say:

11．Your classic author is the one you cannot feel indifferent to, who helps you to define yourself in relation to him, even in dispute with him.

I think I have no need to justify myself for using the word “classic”without making distinctions about age, style, or authority. What distinguishes the classic, in the argument I am making, may be only an echo effect that holds good both for an ancient work and for a modern one that has already achieved its place in a cultural continuum. We might say:

12．A classic is a book that comes before other classics; but anyone who has read the others first, and then reads this one, instantly recognizes its place in the family tree.

At this point I can no longer put off the vital problem of how to relate the reading of the classics to the reading of all the other books that are anything but classics. It is a problem connected with such questions as, why read the classics rather than concentrate on books that enable us to understand our own times more deeply? Or, where shall we find the time and peace of mind to read the classics, overwhelmed as we are by the avalanche of current events?

We can, of course, imagine some blessed soul who devotes his reading time exclusively to Lucretius, Lucian, Montaigne, Erasmus, Quevedo, Marlowe, the Discourse on Method, Wilhelm Meister, Coleridge, Ruskin, Proust, and Valéry, with a few forays in the direction of Murasaki or the Icelandic sagas. And all this without having to write reviews of the latest publications, or papers to compete for a university chair, or articles for magazines on tight deadlines. To keep up such a diet without any contamination, this blessed soul would have to abstain from reading the newspapers, and never be tempted by the latest novel or sociological investigation. But we have to see how far such rigor would be either justified or profitable. The latest news may well be banal or mortifying, but it nonetheless remains a point at which to stand and look both backward and forward. To be able to read the classics you have to know “from where”you are reading them; otherwise both the book and the reader will be lost in a timeless cloud. This, then, is the reason why the greatest “yield”from reading the classics will be obtained by someone who knows how to alternate them with the proper dose of current affairs. And this does not necessarily imply a state of imperturbable inner calm. It can also be the fruit of nervous impatience, of a huffing-and-puffing discontent of mind.

Maybe the ideal thing would be to hearken to current events as we do to the din outside the window that informs us about traffic jams and sudden changes in the weather, while we listen to the voice of the classics sounding clear and articulate inside the room. But it is already a lot for most people if the presence of the classics is perceived as a distant rumble far outside a room that is swamped by the trivia of the moment, as by a television at full blast. Let us therefore add:

13．A classic is something that tends to relegate the concerns of the moment to the status of background noise, but at the same time this background noise is something we cannot do without.

14．A classic is something that persists as a background noise even when the most incompatible momentary concerns are in control of the situation.

首先，我們要提出一些可探討的定義。

一、所謂經(jīng)典，就是我們通常說的“我在重讀”而非“我正在讀”的書。

至少自詡“博學”的人會這么做。年輕人處于初識世界的階段，經(jīng)典作為那個世界的一部分，重讀經(jīng)典不適用于他們。

有反復之意的“重”字，放在動詞“讀”之前，對于恥于承認自己沒讀過某部名著的人來說，多少顯得有些虛偽。為了讓這些人安心，我們必須指出，無論一個人的基礎閱讀量多大，都會存在大量他沒有讀過的經(jīng)典作品。

有誰讀完了希羅多德和修昔底德的全部作品？請舉手。圣西門呢？紅衣主教雷斯呢？但即使是關于19世紀的偉大小說，通常也是談論者多于閱讀者。法國人上學時就開始讀巴爾扎克的作品，而且從各種版本的銷量判斷，人們畢業(yè)后還會繼續(xù)讀他的書。但如果在意大利做一次受歡迎程度調查，巴爾扎克恐怕會排在最后一名。意大利的狄更斯愛好者組成了一個小型精英俱樂部；俱樂部成員一見面，就開始討論書里的人物和趣事，就像談論熟人和身邊事一樣。多年前，米歇爾·布托爾1在美國教書時，人們總和他談論埃米爾·左拉2。他從沒讀過左拉的書，所以對此不勝其煩。于是，他下決心讀完了全套《盧貢—馬卡爾家族》3，并發(fā)現(xiàn)這部作品和自己想象中的完全不同——書里有一套近乎神話的宏大家族譜系。他后來用一篇精彩的文章描寫了這個譜系。

換句話說，心智成熟后初次閱讀一部偉大作品可謂其樂無窮。這有別于年輕時的讀書之樂（盡管你無法說出樂趣孰多孰少）。年輕時的閱讀體驗像其他體驗一樣，別有一番滋味，也有特殊的重要意義。但心智成熟之后，一個人會更懂得（或更應該懂得）欣賞細節(jié)、層次和深意。由此，我們引入下一定義：

二、我們用“經(jīng)典”這個詞指代一類書，讀過且喜愛這些書的人珍視它們。有幸在絕佳條件下第一次讀這些書的人，同樣會將它們視若珍寶。

事實上，年輕時閱讀大多難有成果，因為年輕人沒有耐性、不夠專注，不懂如何將書用于“指導實際”，而且生活閱歷也不足。年輕時讀的書可能（也許是同時）塑造一個人，影響他的未來，并提供效仿的對象、比較的條件、分類的方式、評價的標準以及美的范例。即使你幾乎已忘卻年輕時讀過的書，卻仍受到這些東西的影響。如果在心智成熟后重讀此書，我們可能會重新發(fā)現(xiàn)這些不變的因素。這時，這些東西已成為我們內心的組成部分，盡管你已記不清它們源自何處。一部文學作品可能會被人遺忘，但會在我們心中播下種子。因此，我們可以得出如下定義：

三、經(jīng)典是能發(fā)揮特殊影響力的書。它們扎根于記憶深處，拒絕被趕出頭腦，將自己偽裝成集體或個人的潛意識。

因此，成年后也該拿出一段時間來，重讀對自己年輕時影響最大的書。即使書還是原樣（盡管從歷史的角度看，書本身也發(fā)生了變化），但人幾乎肯定發(fā)生了變化。與舊書重逢將是一種全新的體驗。

所以說，我們用的動詞是“閱讀”還是“重讀”其實并不重要。實際上，我們可能說：

四、每次重讀經(jīng)典都是一次發(fā)現(xiàn)之旅，宛如初次閱讀。

五、每次閱讀經(jīng)典實際上都是重讀。

定義四或許是下文定義六的必然結果：

六、經(jīng)典是有無限闡釋余地的書。

不過，定義五需要更詳盡的解釋，例如：

七、經(jīng)典是這樣一類書，它們來到我們面前時，本身帶有前人的閱讀痕跡，并一路灑下它們所傳承的文化（或者簡單來說，這里的文化指語言和習俗）。

古代經(jīng)典和現(xiàn)代經(jīng)典都是如此。如果我讀《奧德賽》，我讀的是荷馬寫下的文本，但也不會忘記幾個世紀中尤利西斯冒險的意義。我不禁會想，這些意義究竟是暗含于文本之中，還是經(jīng)過覆蓋、歪曲、延伸的結果。讀卡夫卡4作品的時候，我無法避免對“卡夫卡式”這個形容詞表示肯定或否定。這個詞幾乎每一刻鐘就會出現(xiàn)一次，而且出現(xiàn)得很隨意。如果我讀屠格涅夫的《父與子》或陀思妥耶夫斯基的《群魔》，我不禁會設想，書中人物如何能輪回轉世直到今日。

閱讀經(jīng)典應當帶給我們驚喜，或引發(fā)與原有觀念相反的思考。因此，我強烈建議直接閱讀文本本身，盡可能把評傳、注釋、演繹拋在一邊。學校和大學本應幫助我們理解這一點——沒有哪本關于某書的書，能比原書說得更多。然而，它們盡力灌輸給我們的理念恰恰相反。介紹、書評和參考書目就像煙幕一樣，隱藏了文本的真實含義；事實上，只有擯棄自詡“理解比原文更深入”的中介，文本才能發(fā)出自己的聲音。對這個問題，有許多顛三倒四、流傳甚廣的討論。我們可以總結為：

八、經(jīng)典不一定能教給我們從前不知道的東西。在經(jīng)典作品中，我們有時會發(fā)現(xiàn)自己一直知道，或是自以為知道的東西，但不知是這位作者，或至少是他以特殊的方式，最先提出了這個說法。這也是一種驚喜，就像我們發(fā)現(xiàn)一個起源、一類關系、一種本質時獲得的驚喜。由此，我們可以引申出這樣的定義：

九、經(jīng)典是這樣一類書，越是我們自認為通過別人談論已經(jīng)知曉的東西，越會在閱讀它們時發(fā)現(xiàn)更新鮮、更新奇、更意想不到的一面。

自然，只有讀者與書產(chǎn)生共鳴，經(jīng)典才會起到這種效果。如果雙方?jīng)]能擦出火花，那真是遺憾；但我們讀經(jīng)典不是出于責任或尊重，而是出于喜愛。除非是在學校。無論方式是好是壞，學校都應該讓你知道一定數(shù)量的經(jīng)典。接下來，你可以在這些書里選擇適合自己的經(jīng)典，或是參考這些書找到適合你的經(jīng)典。學校應該給你提供做選擇的工具，但真正算數(shù)的選擇是人們置身校外或畢業(yè)之后作出的。

只有不帶偏見地閱讀，你才可能遇見屬于你的書。我認識一位杰出的藝術史學家，一個博覽群書的人。他在讀過的所有書里，尤其鐘情《匹克威克外傳》5。他只要有機會就引用狄更斯書里的名言，并把身邊的每件事都和書中的趣事聯(lián)系起來。漸漸地，他的整個人、人生觀乃至整個思想體系都與《匹克威克外傳》趨同。基于此，我們得出了一個非常高級的、極其嚴格的“經(jīng)典”定義：

十、我們用“經(jīng)典”這個詞指代一類書，它們如宇宙萬物般形態(tài)各異，又如古代符咒般神秘莫測。根據(jù)這個定義，我們正不斷趨近馬拉美6構想的“全書”境界。

但經(jīng)典能引起共鳴，同樣能引起反對。讓—雅克·盧梭7的言行都很親切，但我總是有一種沖動，想去反駁他、批評他、與他爭辯。氣質不合引起了我對他的反感，我無計可施，只好不讀他的書；但我又忍不住將他列為經(jīng)典作家。所以我要說：

十一、適合你的經(jīng)典作家，就是你無法置之不理的作家。即使你們存在分歧，他仍能幫助你界定自己在雙方關系中所處的地位。

我認為，使用“經(jīng)典”這個詞無需區(qū)分作者的年齡、文風和權威性。我主張，“經(jīng)典”的判斷標準在于，無論是古代作品還是現(xiàn)代作品，都需要在文化譜系中占有一席之地。我們可以說：

十二、“經(jīng)典”是位居其他經(jīng)典之上的書。先讀過其他經(jīng)典的人，接下來讀這部經(jīng)典，會立刻識別其在經(jīng)典譜系中的地位。

說到這里，我不能再忽視一個關鍵問題——如何將“閱讀經(jīng)典”和“閱讀除了經(jīng)典之外的其他作品”聯(lián)系起來。這個問題牽扯到了其他問題，例如：為什么要閱讀經(jīng)典，而不讀那些能讓我們更深刻地了解當下的書？或者，當我們腦中充斥著當下事件時，去哪里尋找空閑的時間和平和的心態(tài)來閱讀經(jīng)典？

當然，我們可以想象有些幸運兒專門讀《方法論》、盧克萊修、琉善、蒙田、伊拉斯謨、克維多、馬洛、威廉·麥斯特、柯勒律治、拉斯金、普魯斯特和瓦勒里的作品，還可以一探《源氏物語》或冰島傳奇。他們可以這么做，而無需撰寫新書評論、教職論文或是即將截稿的雜志文章。為了這頓閱讀大餐不受污染，這些幸運兒不能看報紙，也不能受到最新小說或社會調查的誘惑。但這么嚴苛的閱讀條件是否合理？是否有益？最新的新聞或許充斥著陳詞濫調，或許令人痛心，但它仍提供了一種回顧過去、前瞻未來的視角。要想能閱讀經(jīng)典，你必須知道自己所處的時代背景；否則，讀者就會和書一起，迷失在永恒的云霧之中。這就是為什么，只有懂得交替閱讀經(jīng)典作品和了解當下事件的人，才能從閱讀經(jīng)典中獲得最大的“益處”。這不是說你一定能獲得內心的平靜。閱讀經(jīng)典也可以讓你性急難耐、氣喘吁吁、意猶未盡。

或許理想的狀態(tài)是，既關注窗外當下事件的嘈雜噪音，如交通堵塞和天氣驟變，也聆聽室內清晰的經(jīng)典之聲。不過對多數(shù)人而言，當生活被當下的瑣事——比如聒噪的電視所淹沒時，能將經(jīng)典視為室外遠方的噪音已經(jīng)不錯了。所以讓我們再加上：

十三、經(jīng)典是這樣一類書，它們能將時下人們關注的問題降格為背景噪音8；但與此同時，人們無法離開這些背景噪音。

十四、經(jīng)典像背景噪音一樣頑固，即使與時下大多數(shù)人的關注點大相徑庭。

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1．米歇爾·布托爾（Michel Butor，1926—），法國“新小說派”作家和詩人，曾在多個大學教授哲學和法國文學。

2．埃米爾·左拉（Emile Zola，1840—1902），法國現(xiàn)實主義作家，自然主義的創(chuàng)始人。

3．《盧貢—馬卡爾家族》，左拉的代表作，被譽為“第二帝國時代一個家族的自然史和社會史”。

4．弗朗茨·卡夫卡（Franz Kafka，1883—1924），奧地利小說家，其作品大多用變形荒誕的形象和象征直覺的手法，表現(xiàn)孤立而絕望的個人。

5．《匹克威克外傳》，講述天真善良的有產(chǎn)者匹克威克和朋友漫游英國的奇趣經(jīng)歷，是一部既有浪漫奇想又緊貼現(xiàn)實的幽默諷刺小說。

6．斯特凡·馬拉美（Stéphane Mallarmé，1842—1898），法國詩壇現(xiàn)代主義和象征主義的領袖人物。

7．讓—雅克·盧梭（Jean-Jacques Rousseau，1712—1778），法國思想家、文學家，啟蒙運動的代表人物之一。

8．背景噪音，指在工業(yè)測量中，與測量對象無關的一切干擾。