阅读不止于看，比看更深远的是思考作者想在作品中表达的思想。
阅读二三事
How to read
译者：猕猴桃 原文作者：Virginia Woolf
It is simple enough to say that since books have classes — fiction, biography, poetry — we should separate them and take from each what it is right that each should give us.
由于书籍已经有了分类——小说，传记，诗歌，所以我们应该分辨它们并且取其精华。
Yet few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning.
然而却很少有人问书能给我们提供什么，很多时候，我们在阅读时都是意识模糊和精力分散的，要求这个小说故事应该要真实，说这个诗歌内容是错的，这个传记是在溜须拍马，这个历史会加深我们的成见。如果当我们阅读时能消除这这些偏见，那将会是个非常不错的开始。
Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice. If you hang back, and reserve and criticize at first, you are preventing yourself from getting the fullest possible value from what you read.
别去要求作者，而要尝试融入他，成为他的伙伴，如果你一开始就背着手，心存偏见，到处批评，那么你就是在阻碍自己从这本书中获得最宝贵的价值。
But if you open your mind as widely as possible, then signs and hints of almost imperceptible fineness, from the twist and turn of the first sentences, will bring you into the presence of a human being unlike any other. Steep yourself in this, acquaint yourself with this, and soon you will find that your author is giving you, or attempting to give you, something far more definite.
不过如果你思维开放，从书中隐晦的句子中你可以发现那些深藏的美好，就像带你去认识了一个新朋友，让你自己去沉浸、去熟知这种感觉，你就会发现作者正在给你，或者尝试给你一些现象之外的东西。
The thirty-two chapters of a novel — if we consider how to read a novel first — are an attempt to make something as formed and controlled as a building: but words are more impalpable than bricks; reading is a longer and more complicated process than seeing. Perhaps the quickest way to understand the elements of what a novelist is doing is not to read, but to write; to make your own experiment with the dangers and difficulties of words.
一本有32章的小说，如果我们能首先去思考如何读一本小说——就像尝试如何将盖一栋有模有样的房子，不过比起砖头，文字是无形的，阅读比看更加漫长和复杂，可能了解小说家在说什么最快的办法不是去读，而是去写，让你自己去体验书中那些危险和晦涩的文字。
Recall, then, some event that has left a distinct impression on you — how at the corner of the street, perhaps, you passed two people talking. A tree shook; an electric light danced; the tone of the talk was comic, but also tragic; a whole vision, an entire conception, seemed contained in that moment.
回想那些给你留下深刻印象的事情——当时在街角的哪个角落，可能你经过了两个正在谈话的人，树在摇晃，电光火石，说话的语气非常滑稽且悲伤，那一刻似乎包含了整个画面和故事框架。
But when you attempt to reconstruct it in words, you will find that it breaks into a thousand conflicting impressions. Some must be subdued; others emphasized; in the process you will lose, probably all grasp upon the emotion itself.
不过当你尝试再次组织语言的时候，你就会发现那里面有上千个冲突的印象，有些必须删减，有些要强调，在这个过程中你可能会失去所有之前抓住的情感。
Then turn from your blurred and littered pages to the opening pages of some great novelist — Defoe, Jane Austen, Hardy. Now you will be better able to appreciate their mastery. It is not merely that we are in the presence of a different person — Defoe, Jane Austen, or Thomas Hardy — but that we are living in a different world.
从你那乱七八糟的稿纸转向名家写的小说那看一看——Defoe, Jane Austen, Hardy，你将由衷赞叹他们的文字功底了。我们不仅面对一个不同的人，而且我们还生活在一个不同的世界里。
Here, in Robinson Crusoe, we are trudging a plain high road; one thing happens after another; the fact and the order of the fact is enough. But if the open air and adventure mean everything to Defoe they mean nothing to Jane Austen. Hers is the drawing-room, and people talking, and by the many mirrors of their talk revealing their characters. And if, when we have accustomed ourselves to the drawing-room and its reflections, we turn to hardy, we are once more spun around.
在《鲁滨孙漂流记》里，我们跋涉过一条平坦的道路，事情一件接着一件发生，事情和事情发生的顺序都足够好，如果说野外和冒险对迪福来说就是一切的话，那对Jane Austen就毫无意义。有一个客厅，里面的人们在谈话，当他们谈话时会呈现非常多不同的特点，如果我们过于习惯了我们自己在客厅时谈话的状态，就会很难反应过来，被弄得晕头转向。
The moors are round us and the stars above our heads. The other side of the mind is now exposed — the dark side that comes uppermost in solitude, not the light side that shows in company. Our relations are not towards people, but towards Nature and destiny.
身陷沼泽，头顶星云，你会发现另一个自己，人在孤独时最容易显露出黑暗的一面，不像和伙伴在一起时那样阳光，那时我们不是在和人互动，而是在和自然和宿命。
Yet different as these worlds are, each is consistent with itself. The maker of each is careful to observe the laws of his own perspective, and however great a strain they may put upon us they will never confuse us, as lesser writers so frequently do, by introducing two different kinds of reality into the same book.
尽管这些世界各有不同，但他们自己却保持一致性，小说家以他们细腻的手法构建着那些世界，不管他们给我们多大的信息量，都不会使我们晕头转向，不像一些低级作者那样顾左右而言他。
Thus to go from one great novelist to another — from Jane Austen to Hardy, from Peakcok to Trollope, from Scott to Meredith — is to be wrenched and uprooted; to be thrown this way and then that. To read a novel is a difficult and complex art. You must be capable not only of great finesse of perception, but of great boldness of imagination if you are going to make use of all that the novelist — the great artist — gives you.
因此从一位伟大的小说家到另一位——从简·奥斯汀到哈代，从皮科克到特罗洛普，从斯哥特到梅瑞狄斯，都是经历了痛苦和离别，行走在各个不同世界中。阅读一本小说是一项困难且复杂的艺术，如果你要阅读那些伟大的小说艺术家的作品，你必须心思缜密，天马行空。
biography n.自传
blurred adj.模糊的
hint n.暗示
imperceptible adj.细微的，难以察觉的
fineness n.美好
subdue v.删减
emphasize v.强调
solitude n.孤独，废墟
destiny n.宿命
boldness n.大胆
consistent adj.一致的
strain n.紧张，笔调
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弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫（Virginia Woolf，1882－1941），英国女作家，被誉为二十世纪现代主义与女性主义的先锋。两次世界大战期间，她是伦敦文学界的核心人物，同时也是布卢姆茨伯里派（Bloomsbury Group）的成员之一。最知名的小说包括《戴洛维夫人》（Mrs. Dalloway）、《灯塔行》（To the Lighthouse）、《雅各的房间》（Jakob's Room）。
译言古登堡计划已经电子出版了弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫的《存在的瞬间——伍尔夫短篇小说集》和《奥兰多》，欲了解详情，请登录译言古登堡计划官方网站。
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