Qian Zhongshu's reading speed | Fan Xulun

From the summer of 1942 to the spring of 1943 in Shanghai, Zheng Chaozong helped Mr. Qian Zhongshu to borrow books from the library, and later recalled in Nostalgia: "From Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, to Dorothy Sayers's detective novels, he read them as fast as he could. He also wrote "But the open atmosphere is not a teacher" Yun: "He reads very quickly, a thick and very difficult classical philosophical masterpiece, others need a few weeks or even a month or two to nibble, he generally only needs one to come and go." ”

Mr. Qian's diary of more than 24 years old and more than four months, "Notes on Living", confirms that "he reads very quickly". At that time, Mr. Qian was a teacher at the Private Guanghua University College of Letters on Da xi lu in Shanghai, teaching poetics and English prose for twelve hours a week; he did not travel widely, wrote many letters, but did not release the scrolls with his hands, and anointed him with anointing.

Notes on Living, Volume XIV, opening chapter, October 25, 1933: "Essays in English. Read Van Dyne: The Canary Murder Case. Go to Shanghai to see a movie. Get the season book, that is, the compound. Crab eater. Mr. Qian's coherent reading time this day may be three or four hours, and Van Dine's detective novel is more than three hundred pages (in the reader's version). Zhongshu Jun is a genius, lying down to read novels, ten lines at a glance, and can read a hundred pages in an hour. His father, Qian Ziquan, was proud of his reading speed, and it was truly amazing. "Golden Jade Genealogy": "Although I am old and sick, I have not tasted a day to scrap the book." He came to Xiang for three years, read more than 3,600 books, outlined hook Xuan, and had diaries. Zhang Shunhui's "Diary of ZhuangYixuan" also recorded on the first day of 1943 that "Mr. Qian Ziquan said that he had read 3,600 books in the four years of Juxiang." Innate genetics are fused with acquired diligence.

October 27: "Three small exams." Flip through "Thirty-six Kinds of Garden". Read Julian Huxley: Es says in Popular Science. Review a volume of Su poems. "It's time for homework after lunch until midnight." Flipping through "reading" is different from the must-read "reading" of each page, and "reviewing" is to review while reading. Julian Huxley's collection of more than three hundred pages, the reader recorded two pages - the next day's diary has "taking notes", and now it is included in the "Qian Zhongshu Manuscript Collection : Notes in Foreign Languages" No.10 - the earliest surviving notebook of Mr. Qian. October 28: "Read several conan doyle novels. Read Symons: Figures of Several Centuries. Flip through "Thirty-six Kinds of Garden". Review Su poems. Read Mansfield: In a German Pension". The day is Sunday, when there are more than a dozen hours of reading. The novel is two or three hundred pages each. Arthur Symons anthology of four hundred pages. Kath erine Mansfield's collection of novels will be read tomorrow, and fifteen years later, he will be remembered.

October 31: "Reading Authors Living and Dead, Modern Temper, Contact Be tween Minds, Mark Rutherford: Autobi ography." Circle Su Poems in Two Volumes. Frank Lau rence Lucas's collection of Treatises, Authors Dead and Living, three hundred pages, Cecil Delisle Burns' Between Minds: A Metaphysical Hypothesis, nearly two hundred pages, reu ben Shapcott, ed., The The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford is more than two hundred pages; Joseph Wood Krutch's treatise, more than two hundred pages, has been used in the historiographical essay "The Spectator," published a few months ago, "Mr. Krutch's Modern Temper, Especially the Works of Grace and Custom." One day and read four multidisciplinary academic works, Xun "Adventures of the Soul" also. The same is true on December 7 and January 18 of the following year.

November 1: "Read Louis Untermey er, Modern American Poetry, by the end of the day." Read F.L. Lucas: Authors Dead and Living. Read Panyu Chen Pu's "The Remains of the Shakuoka Caotang". Read the second volume of the Notes of the Great Cloud Mountain House. "Modern American Poetry" ("Selected Modern American Poetry") is four hundred pages, and Mr. Qian is in his seventies to read its fourth edition, and uses a typewriter to record nine pages. Chen Ji in eight volumes.

November 6: "Read Calverton: Newer Spirit: A Sociological Criticism of Liter ature. "Victor Francis Cal verton treatise nearly three hundred pages." Nothing is advisable", without taking notes. Looking at this diary, no matter the novel, Mr. Zhiqian did not make notes at this time, and most of the books in the notes were not recorded in the "Notes on Living".

November 7: "Read Jessamy Bride, Varsity Types, Bizhi." Comment on a volume of Su poems. "There are two kinds of novels, the former is more than four hundred pages, by Frankfort Moore; the latter is more than two hundred pages, by Frank Rutter.

November 13: "Read French, German." Read Memoirs of My Dead Life, Victorian Age in Literature, all. Read the "Collected Poems of Xiao Mo Yan Guan". "George Moore's Memoirs of My Dead Life is more than three hundred pages, and Gilbert Keith Chesterton's Victorian Age in Literature is more than two hundred pages." Reading French " seems to be "warm French", not reading French works, this volume of "Notes on Living" does not have a record of reading French documents.

November 23: "Changed. Read Walley: 170 Chinese Poems. Read Sullivan: Aspects of Science. Read French, German. Take notes. Circle Su poems in a volume. Read France: Life and Let ters, St. Adcock: The Glory that was Grub Street. Study books. A.W. Evans translated the first series of On Life and Letters by Anatole France, more than three hundred pages, read for three consecutive days. St John Adcock's The Glory That Was Grub Street: Im pressions of Contemporary Authors is four hundred pages long and read again. Arthur Waley's book is revisited. John William Navin Sullivan's Aspects of Sciences ("Aspects of Science") is more than 200 pages, Mr. Qian's notes are four pages, the book is covered in a notebook of "Guanghua University" ("Qian Zhongshu Manuscripts" mistakenly compiled as No. 109), and added (that is, "changed text") to the "Introduction to the Small History of Chinese Literature": "W.J.N. Sulli van: Aspects of Science has an essay on music and mathematics, Literature is like music to physics to mathematics, and its words are extremely intriguing. "Circle" means "review". "Study book", pro post.

November 24: "Poetry, English Prose." Read the Choice of Books. The Choice of Books, and Other Literary Pieces, by Frederic Harrison, nearly five hundred pages.

December 14: "Read Walker: The Litera ture of Victorian Era. Mr. Qian composed five and a half pages of notes, the first of no. 30 notebooks, and mixed in the no. 109 volume ("The Georgian Scene, by Frank Swinnerton" notes). No.10 and No.30 are like one volume or connected, both using Guanghua University notebooks.

December 21: "Read Sanayana: Scepticism and Animal Faith." George Santayana's collection of more than three hundred pages, first read on December 7, with thirteen pages of notes, followed by the essay "On the Separation of Distinctions" for aesthetics. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, there are those who do not have to seek to understand, that is, there are those who do not have to seek much understanding, and there are those who need to be chewed and digested. The language is more elaborate, but it is only half the way: the reader of the book also has no need to seek a good understanding; in the discourse of words, it is often only necessary to take a grass view, but for the sake of righteousness and consideration, it must be ten eyes and one line. In a person's body, the broad and meticulous reading is informal and meticulous, which varies from time to time and from event to event. The sixty-seventh chapter of the "Huai Ju RiZha" uses the ruan yuan language of the third volume of the "Essay on Retreating": "Every person in the world looks at ten talents and ten lines, and Yu Yuzhi." The husband must be ten eyes and a line, and the beginning is to be able to really read also. The origin of the "ten eyes and one line".

Feb. 7: "Read The Promise of Conduct, The Stolen Body." Edward Taylor's Prosper of Conduct: A Study in the Phenomenology of Ethics, Mr. Qian ordered more than a month ago from the Maruzen Bookstore in Japan, where Mr. Qian received five hundred pages of Western books before he stayed in the Ocean, reading on the 9th and 12th, without saying "Bizhi." Two and a half pages of notes are found in the notebook at the end of the year beginning with "English Poets, edited by Thomas Humphry Ward" (compiled in Volume No. 6 for the management of the third examination for publicly funded students on the board of directors of the Sino-English Geng. Herbert George Wells' novel is two hundred pages.

Mr. Qian later wrote on his studies, xiandao and the books read in this volume of "Notes on Living". On January 23, the diary "Read South Wind"; Norman Douglas's novel is more than four hundred pages, and the sixtieth day of the Dayzha is called Cyril Connolly's The Rock Pool ("Stone Pond") "poor and stiff, cover Norman Doug las, the branch and stream of the South Wind, and the talent is embarrassed, the toddler is not able to walk, and the exhaustion is exhausted". Irving Babbitt's rousseau and Romanticism, which began on February 24, was used in Žiža 660. It has only become part of the accumulation of dust in Mr. Qian's life.

Author: Fan Xulun

Editors: Andy, Qian Yutong

Editor-in-Charge: Shu Ming

*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.