"How to Read the Classics" is a reading note or a compilation of book reviews, and its function is very clear, that is, to recommend some classic books. The selected books are more conducive to social currency, and the occasions for use are more suitable for Europe, except for the "Tale of Genji" of the Purple Style Department, which is basically a Western classic, as long as people who are more familiar with western cultural history are very familiar. Such as Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey", Dante's "Divine Comedy", James Joyce's "Ulysses", as well as Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Cervantes, Henry James and so on.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="2" > classic as a social currency</h1>
In His Book How to Read the Classics, Henry Higgins mentions in his preface that books are recognized as social currencies. Everyone feels that way. For example, in a controversial situation, when a person begins to quote the scriptures, whether the content is highly relevant to the issue in question, it will have the effect of making the opponent awe-inspiring. Of all the controversies I've seen, anyone who uses this trick is basically invincible. Many times, after a long period of quotation and recitation, people don't remember exactly why they were arguing and what they were arguing about.
In some occasions where strangers and acquaintances are present, you need to introduce yourself, if you introduce yourself bluntly, it is like a blind date, it is very strange, if you talk about a book that you have read at this time, you will quickly close the distance between each other. If people's evaluations of a book are far from each other, for example, some people think that the work is very great and open their own wisdom, others think it is garbage, and they will also close the distance between each other - the physical distance is too close, and it may fight.
Henry Higgins asked, we seem to be in desperate need of such a currency on many occasions, but the problem is that many people can't read books, what to do? Higgins points out very poignantly that when someone talks about a book you've never read before, most people echo it and appear to have read it themselves. He would even scavengle up against other people's comments, or details that had impressed him so much that he proved he had read them. In this state, we are often detached from discussing the specific subject of the book and are simply showing that we have read the book so that we will not be left out in the cold socially. But within the scope of the topic, we have actually been left out in the cold, because our attention is not on the topic at all.
Reading a certain book is nothing remarkable, just punching a card. Punching a card in the memelite sanctuary does not prove that you are an influencer. In some social situations, someone does say that I seem to have flipped through or swept through a book. It's possible to turn over, sweep through, hear people say it, and thunder it all up, and if this book hasn't sparked your thoughts, it's almost like not having read it.
I have a friend who wants to read Greek classics, especially Homer's epics. So I set myself two grand goals, to learn Greek first and then read from the original text. Later, feeling that this goal was too far away, he took a different approach, carefully read Greek and Roman mythology, and handmade a very detailed genealogy of immortals. He memorized the awkward names, and finally spoke of Hector, Agamemnon, and Achilles as easily as he spoke of Zhang Sanlisi. After this effort, he told me that when I became familiar with these archetypes, it would be very easy for me to read Homer's writings again. Not only that, but these archetypes also helped him to deeply understand the novels of later generations. If a Westerner wants to understand Journey to the West, he must first understand the lineage of the gods and immortals of the two worlds of Buddhism and Taoism and their relationship. This also shows that if we are not in the same cultural soil as the book we want to read, we need to fill in the threshold first, and first prepare the corresponding knowledge construction.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="39" > Jane Austen: Pragmatic Love</h1>
Jane Austen is a writer I love so much that she published 6 novels in her lifetime, with one more unfinished. I have read each of these 6 novels, and some of them have been read more than once. So when he watched Henry Higgins introduce Jane Austen, he didn't receive more unfamiliar information, and he said something that everyone knew. For example, Austin is indeed liked by some people, some people do not like, it is said that especially male readers do not like it, think she is trivial, no thoughts, no grand attention. We know that Austin has experienced great upheavals in history, but is still obsessed with writing about the quiet rural life at home, about the young girls and their mothers-in-law (hereinafter referred to as the mother-in-law)—girls who value both wealth and love, who are active in dances and dinners, looking for a partner for the rest of their lives.
Without a doubt, Austen's most popular novel is Pride and Prejudice. Henry Higgins found Austen's rhetoric full of meaning, and he used the well-known opening line of Pride and Prejudice as an example: Golden bachelors want to take a wife, which is a universally recognized truth. He said it seemed offensive because it was so blunt, and she presented it in an assertive way of truth, seeing it as a provocation to the reader rather than providing an answer. I doubt this statement, which belongs to the text, structure, and rhetorical link of the work, and has no special value for looking at Austen. In Higgins' description of Austin, the reference, or a little bit of gold content, is that he contrasts the income level and living standard of that era. For example, in Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy's arrival excited the mother-in-law and girls in the town, because he was not only single, young, and handsome, but most importantly, he earned ten thousand pounds a year, while Mr. Bingley, who had let the mother-in-law run away before that, had an income of 4,000 to 5,000 pounds a year. What is this concept? Around 1800, an income of £500 a year was good for a single upper-class woman. At that time, the disposable income of middle-income households in the United Kingdom was about 300 pounds a year, and the average urban household income was between 40 and 300 pounds.
Wealth has the same energy from the past to the present, on the one hand, it has the ability to resist risks in life, and on the other hand, it has a greater degree of freedom of choice. In Austen's other novel, Emma, the heroine Emma's conditions are too good. She is beautiful, kind, cheerful and very intelligent, living in a harmonious family, her father has a very good relationship with her, she is independent, she is considerate of people, and when her father is reluctant to let her governess leave, she resolutely defends the right of the governess to pursue her own happiness. Just such an excellent girl, the novel is written about her recklessness, she is both reckless to point out and dominate other people's love and married life, but also recklessly almost missed her own happiness. At least part of her recklessness comes from her income of 30,000 pounds, a total of about 30 million yuan, and she can live according to her own wishes. Being able to live according to one's own will is seen as a sign of freedom. Austin succeeded in making Emma's intelligence appear an unstoppable stupidity.
In "Sense and Sensibility", the Dathwood sisters have different expectations of their ideals, and Marianne wants to marry a husband who earns 2,000 pounds a year. She calculated according to the standard of living at that time: there must be a two-wheeled carriage, there must be servants, there must be hunters, houses, manors aside, so it will cost 2,000 pounds. This was the result of a precise calculation of the standard of living at the time, and the last colonel she married, Colonel Brandon, was worth it. Her sister felt a little greedy for an annual income of 2,000 pounds, and about 1,000 pounds was enough.
In Austin's time, There were two classes in Britain, aristocracy and plebeians. The family property and titles of the nobility were inherited by the eldest son, who generally worked as an officer, priest or went to overseas colonies to seek development, and was also a commoner. The income of the nobles and landed squires came mostly from the rent of land, and a small number of people had income from stocks and overseas investments, and their incomes were generally stable. In the Victorian era, which began two decades after Austen's death, there were probably more than 2,000 squires in Britain, and their fields ranged from 1,000 to 3,000 acres. The bottom of the upper nobility and the squire have the possibility of social contact, and it is also possible to intermarry, from the lower to the higher class, marriage is a shortcut.
In Austen's novels, women with low incomes are usually more constricted, subservient, and condescending. They are grateful for the friendship and help brought to them by their female companions who are richer than them, and they are unlikely to see the poor and determined. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth is not poor, but after her father's death, they have to move out of the comfortable house they now live in, and their lives will be affected. This makes it understand how dramatic Elizabeth's rejection of Darcy's first marriage proposal, who earns £10,000 a year. Fanny of Mansfield Manor, her background is more representative. Fanny's mother, who married a Marine Lieutenant out of love, had a poor life and gave birth to a large number of children, of whom Fanny was the youngest. Fanny's aunt Maria married Sir Thomas for just £7,000 and lived a good life. Fanny's mother was forced to put her in foster care at her aunt's house. The two sisters are only married differently, and the social class and quality of life are far apart. Fanny's mother was very proud when she was young, and she drew a line with her wealthy sisters, but she could not withstand the hardships of life and had to ask her sister and brother-in-law for help.
There is also a character charlotte in Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Collins, elizabeth's father's nephew, who was about to inherit their family property, first proposed to Elizabeth, and when he refused, he proposed to Elizabeth's friend Charlotte. Charlotte said: "Mr. Collins is indeed unreasonable and unlikable, and it is very annoying to associate with him, and his love for me is also imaginary, but I still want to marry him because of property." After understanding the situation in England at that time, I could understand the choices of the mother-in-law and the girls at that time.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="40" > Maugham's Jane Austen</h1>
Maugham was a literary magnate who was very fond of Jane Austen. Maugham goes from Austen's letters to get close to the real Jane Austen. Throughout her life, Austin was intimate with her sister Cassandra. In their mother's words, if Cassandra had been beheaded one day, Austin would not hesitate to follow. It was a wonderful kinship that Austin eventually fell ill and died in the arms of her sister. She wrote a lot of letters to Cassandra in her life, and she can see a real, vivid, and interesting Austin. Her letters were trivial, gossiping about the neighbors, talking about the family's finances, saying what she had been looking at lately, and also satirizing the people she hated. Maugham takes this information very seriously. Some writers write letters for the purpose of going directly to the printing press and can publish them verbatim. For safety, Maugham mentioned only one person, dickens, who had died many years ago. In fact, he wanted to say that many people's letters were just their own makeup artists, and they persistently put on makeup for themselves, but Austin's letter was not.
Austen experienced great historical events in her life, the French Revolution, the terrible times, the rise and rout of Napoleon, but none of them were written in her pen. Were these things not affecting her? No, some of her relatives were in the Navy, so of course she would care about what happened to them. How did Maugham explain it? He said that although she had experienced so much, she still had to write about those quiet lives. From a literary point of view, no matter how drastic the social changes are, they are only a flash in the pan. That's why Austin doesn't talk about these big things at all. It's a writer's understanding of another writer who feels that in Austen's view of literature, those things don't matter. But I deeply suspect that this is Maugham's over-interpretation and interpretation of Austin.
At that time, Austen's area of life was in her home, and when she wrote novels in the early days, she could only write secretly, and none of her novels were published under her real name, and the first novel was published under the name "A Lady". If someone knocked on the door or passed by, she would quickly hide what she had written. At that time, women had neither the qualifications nor the means to truly care about the affairs of the country.
Thirty years later, when Sense and Sensibility was published, the atmosphere in Britain had changed so much that it was common for women to write novels, which had previously been unthinkable. Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813, and Scott praised her for her particularly good at describing tedious and complex things. Maugham was surprised to quote Scott, wondering why Scott couldn't see Austin's humor. Curious, humorous, spicy, and cultured, this is Austin. Maugham also found that Austin never wrote about things she hadn't experienced, like a conversation between two men in an enclosed space, because she hadn't seen or heard it, so she couldn't write.
When every writer looks at another writer, he sees the absence or amplification of his own endowments in others. For example, Scott is good at writing grand, so Austen's triviality and complexity are missing for him; while Maugham himself is humorous, he values humor more. Maugham once said in an article that Austen's novel Mansfield Manor was his favorite, but he said pride and prejudice were best in another article describing Austen. Austen's 6 works are of a high level, and it is difficult to say which one has a very obvious flaw.
Maugham pointed out some of the problems and problems with Austen's novel, and he believed that Austin did not have any outstanding talent for the fiction of unusual events, and he gave some examples, feeling that the exaggerated and unusual plot she created was not in line with the logic of life. She couldn't get through here, so she had to create something unusual, but it was too blunt. Maugham had asked a question before, Austen's novels are so trivially written, and there are no surprises and ups and downs, why do people can't wait to turn the page after page? He didn't have an answer at that time. Later, he gave a very good response to the question in another article, saying that Austin was not only interested in the characters in the book and their fate, but she was also convinced of what happened to them.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="41" > the writer's cryptic language</h1>
There is some hidden language between writers and writers. For example, Orwell once asked the question: Why did Tolstoy hate Shakespeare so much? Both were masters, and both submitted to them, but Tolstoy completely denied shakespeare everything. Shakespeare, he said, was not only not a genius, but also an ordinary writer. Tolstoy hated Shakespeare's King Lear the most, and he heaped all the vicious words about it, saying that the play was stupid, wordy, contrived, exaggerated, vulgar, dull, and plagiarized. Tolstoy said, what is so great about Shakespeare? Exaggerated words, casually shoving one's words into one's mouth, whether or not they fit one's identity and upbringing. Did Shakespeare have this problem? Yes. But literature is so magical, even if he has it, it still makes people feel that it is a glorious work.
Maugham has a very interesting argument that he believes that the greatest novelist in the world is Balzac, but the greatest novel in the world is Tolstoy's War and Peace. Tolstoy was an aristocrat and did not have a very good relationship with his wife, Sonia. His daughter is an adult and has to go out and socialize, otherwise she will not find a good in-law. His wife forced the family to live in the city. There, Tolstoy saw the astonishing gap between rich and poor, and he was greatly stimulated. Encouraged by the limited number of close friends around him, he renounced his titles, land, and property, believing that land and property would hinder people's beliefs and that property itself was a sin. But he had a large family to feed, and his wife could not tolerate him giving up his property. This is an insoluble contradiction between them. Tolstoy went to work with the farmer himself, to mend his shoes and pick up manure, and finally his appearance and temperament were highly close to those of the peasants. Once he came back from picking up the dung and sat down to eat, the house was so smelly that everyone had to open the windows.
It's easy to understand that he doesn't have the support of his family. In fact, I don't think Sonia is such a vicious bad woman, she is just an ordinary countess who wants to live a good life, she gives birth to children one by one, and she is not in good health. She couldn't breathe, after all, the whole family couldn't look up at the stars like Tolstoy, and someone had to think about livelihood. In fact, when the family was about to open the pot, she took the copyright to Tolstoy's books, which were originally to be donated by Tolstoy, and in her hands let the family pay off the debt. But Tolstoy hated her even more, seeing her as a stumbling block to his spiritual redemption, a selfish control freak.
When Tolstoy saw King Lear, he was horrified to find that Shakespeare had clearly written his fate. Writing out all his absurdity, self-righteousness, his family's disgust for him, and his final tragic ending, Tolstoy could not afford this fable. As a writer, he knew that Shakespeare wrote precisely, almost like the fingerprints of God, and that he was nothing more than an ant crawling hard along the grooves of the fingerprints. King Lear cursed bitterly and indignantly that the people of the whole world were ungrateful, and in fact he was the wasted king who did not understand loyalty, tired of his daughter, and ungrateful. King Lear died in the wilderness of the storm, holding his daughter's body, surrounded by only a madman and a courtier. Tolstoy died on his way to escape his wife. When he was dying, he fell into a coma, and he still kept shouting: Run! Run!
The author is the deputy editor-in-chief of CITIC Publishing Group and a writer
(This article is "Books and You" - The Way to Read Books series of books to read the ninth issue of the content, with abridgements)
Fang Xi recommended books:
Summary: Memoirs of Maugham's Creative Career, by Maugham, translated by Feng Tao, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, May 2021.
This is Maugham's memoir of his creative career. The book is his description of the most important themes at different stages of his life. There are both fictions and non-fictions.
The Power of Words, by Martin Puckner, translated by Chen Fangdai, CITIC Press, July 2019.
This book is a unique selection of 16 books that talk about how writing and literature have shaped history, philosophy, religion, and civilization.
"Ancient Literature And Guan Zhi", Qing Wu Chucai, Zhong Ji, Li Xianyin, Wang Zhengang Translation, Zhonghua Bookstore, January 2016.
This book is a collection of essays selected by Wu Chucai and Wu Tiaohou's uncles and nephews in the Qing Dynasty. There are about 300 articles representing the highest level of ancient Chinese literature, starting from "Zheng Boke Duan Yu Yan", selecting the most brilliant and splendid articles, including some Piao texts and also some standard articles.
Reading Romance Novels: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature, Beauty/Janice A. Radway, Translation Forest Press, July 2020.
This book is actually an academic work called landmark research, a monograph that has carried out a very important and in-depth academic study of modern romantic popular novels.