THE AIM
CHAPTER II
YOUR PARTICULAR CASE
CHAPTER III
WHY A CLASSIC IS A CLASSIC
CHAPTER IV
WHERE TO BEGIN
CHAPTER V
HOW TO READ A CLASSIC
CHAPTER VI
THE QUESTION OF STYLE
CHAPTER VII
WRESTLING WITH AN AUTHOR
CHAPTER VIII
SYSTEM IN READING
CHAPTER IX
VERSE
CHAPTER X
BROAD COUNSELS
CHAPTER XI
AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD I
CHAPTER XII
AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD II
CHAPTER XIII
AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD III
CHAPTER XIV
MENTAL STOCKTAKING
CHAPTER I
THE AIM
At the beginning a misconception must be removed from the path.
Many people, if not most, look on literary taste as an elegant
accomplishment, by acquiring which they will complete themselves, and
make themselves finally fit as members of a correct society. They are
secretly ashamed of their ignorance of literature, in the same way
as they would be ashamed of their ignorance of etiquette at a high
entertainment, or of their inability to ride a horse if suddenly
called upon to do so. There are certain things that a man ought to
know, or to know about, and literature is one of them: such is their
idea. They have learnt to dress themselves with propriety, and to
behave with propriety on all occasions; they are fairly "up" in the
questions of the day; by industry and enterprise they are succeeding
in their vocations; it behoves them, then, not to forget that
an acquaintance with literature is an indispensable part of a
self-respecting man's personal baggage. Painting doesn't matter; music
doesn't matter very much. But "everyone is supposed to know" about
literature. Then, literature is such a charming distraction! Literary
taste thus serves two purposes: as a certificate of correct culture
and as a private pastime. A young professor of mathematics, immense
at mathematics and games, dangerous at chess, capable of Haydn on the
violin, once said to me, after listening to some chat on books, "Yes,
I must take up literature." As though saying: "I was rather forgetting
literature. However, I've polished off all these other things. I'll
have a shy at literature now."
This attitude, or any attitude which resembles it, is wrong. To him
who really comprehends what literature is, and what the function of
literature is, this attitude is simply ludicrous. It is also fatal
to the formation of literary taste. People who regard literary taste
simply as an accomplishment, and literature simply as a distraction,
will never truly succeed either in acquiring the accomplishment or in
using it half-acquired as a distraction; though the one is the most
perfect of distractions, and though the other is unsurpassed by any
other accomplishment in elegance or in power to impress the universal
snobbery of civilised mankind. Literature, instead of being an
accessory, is the fundamental _sine qua non_ of complete living. I am
extremely anxious to avoid rhetorical exaggerations. I do not think I
am guilty of one in asserting that he who has not been "presented
to the freedom" of literature has not wakened up out of his prenatal
sleep. He is merely not born. He can't see; he can't hear; he can't
feel, in any full sense. He can only eat his dinner. What more than
anything else annoys people who know the true function of literature,
and have profited thereby, is the spectacle of so many thousands of
individuals going about under the delusion that they are alive, when,
as a fact, they are no nearer being alive than a bear in winter.
I will tell you what literature is! No--I only wish I could. But I
can't. No one can. Gleams can be thrown on the secret, inklings given,
but no more. I will try to give you an inkling. And, to do so, I will
take you back into your own history, or forward into it. That evening
when you went for a walk with your faithful friend, the friend from
whom you hid nothing--or almost nothing ...! You were, in truth,
somewhat inclined to hide from him the particular matter which
monopolised your mind that evening, but somehow you contrived to get
on to it, drawn by an overpowering fascination. And as your faithful
friend was sympathetic and discreet, and flattered you by a respectful
curiosity, you proceeded further and further into the said matter,
growing more and more confidential, until at last you cried out, in a
terrific whisper: "My boy, she is simply miraculous!" At that moment
you were in the domain of literature.
Let me explain. Of course, in the ordinary acceptation of the word,
she was not miraculous. Your faithful friend had never noticed that
she was miraculous, nor had about forty thousand other fairly keen
observers. She was just a girl. Troy had not been burnt for her. A
girl cannot be called a miracle. If a girl is to be called a miracle,
then you might call pretty nearly anything a miracle.... That is
just it: you might. You can. You ought. Amid all the miracles of
the universe you had just wakened up to one. You were full of your
discovery. You were under a divine impulsion to impart that discovery.
You had a strong sense of the marvellous beauty of something, and you
had to share it. You were in a passion about something, and you had
to vent yourself on somebody. You were drawn towards the whole of the
rest of the human race. Mark the effect of your mood and utterance
on your faithful friend. He knew that she was not a miracle. No other
person could have made him believe that she was a miracle. But you, by
the force and sincerity of your own vision of her, and by the fervour
of your desire to make him participate in your vision, did for quite
a long time cause him to feel that he had been blind to the miracle of
that girl.
You were producing literature. You were alive. Your eyes were
unlidded, your ears were unstopped, to some part of the beauty and the
strangeness of the world; and a strong instinct within you forced you
to tell someone. It was not enough for you that you saw and heard.
Others had to see and hear. Others had to be wakened up. And they
were! It is quite possible--I am not quite sure--that your faithful
friend the very next day, or the next month, looked at some other
girl, and suddenly saw that she, too, was miraculous! The influence of
literature!
The makers of literature are those who have seen and felt the
miraculous interestingness of the universe. And the greatest makers
of literature are those whose vision has been the widest, and whose
feeling has been the most intense. Your own fragment of insight was
accidental, and perhaps temporary. _Their_ lives are one long ecstasy
of denying that the world is a dull place. Is it nothing to you to
learn to understand that the world is not a dull place? Is it nothing
to you to be led out of the tunnel on to the hillside, to have all
your senses quickened, to be invigorated by the true savour of life,
to feel your heart beating under that correct necktie of yours? These
makers of literature render you their equals.
The aim of literary study is not to amuse the hours of leisure; it is
to awake oneself, it is to be alive, to intensify one's capacity for
pleasure, for sympathy, and for comprehension. It is not to affect one
hour, but twenty-four hours. It is to change utterly one's relations
with the world. An understanding appreciation of literature means an
understanding appreciation of the world, and it means nothing else.
Not isolated and unconnected parts of life, but all of life, brought
together and correlated in a synthetic map! The spirit of literature
is unifying; it joins the candle and the star, and by the magic of an
image shows that the beauty of the greater is in the less. And, not
content with the disclosure of beauty and the bringing together of all
things whatever within its focus, it enforces a moral wisdom by the
tracing everywhere of cause and effect. It consoles doubly--by the
revelation of unsuspected loveliness, and by the proof that our lot
is the common lot. It is the supreme cry of the discoverer, offering
sympathy and asking for it in a single gesture. In attending a
University Extension Lecture on the sources of Shakespeare's plots,
or in studying the researches of George Saintsbury into the origins
of English prosody, or in weighing the evidence for and against the
assertion that Rousseau was a scoundrel, one is apt to forget what
literature really is and is for. It is well to remind ourselves that
literature is first and last a means of life, and that the enterprise
of forming one's literary taste is an enterprise of learning how best
to use this means of life. People who don't want to live, people who
would sooner hibernate than feel intensely, will be wise to eschew
literature. They had better, to quote from the finest passage in a
fine poem, "sit around and eat blackberries." The sight of a "common
bush afire with God" might upset their nerves.