Why Read the Classics?　为何阅读经典？

Why Read the Classics?

为何阅读经典？

Italo Calvino

伊塔洛·卡尔维诺

作者简介

伊塔洛·卡尔维诺（Italo Calvino，1924—1985），新闻工作者、短篇小说家、意大利当代最具世界影响力的作家，力求表达自己对人生的感悟和信念。其代表作有《我们的祖先》三部曲（Our Ancestors）、《命运交织的城堡》（The Castle of Crossed Destinies）、《通向蜘蛛巢的小径》（The Path to the Nest of Spiders）、《看不见的城市》（Invisible Cities）等。他于1985年猝然逝世，与当年的诺贝尔文学奖失之交臂，但他在国际文坛上留下了深远的影响。

本文节选自散文集《文学的作用》（The Uses of Literature: Essays）。该书由卡尔维诺编辑，帕特里克·克雷（Patrick Creagh）译为英文。全书收录36篇文章，谈论了许多经典名著在卡尔维诺人生的不同阶段给他带来的启迪。书中评述的作家从古代的荷马（Homer）、奥维德（Ovid），到近现代的丹尼尔·笛福（Daniel Defoe）、欧内斯特·米勒·海明威（Ernest Miller Hemingway）均有涉及。在本文中，作者列出了“经典”的14个定义，全面阐释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，我们要提出一些可探讨的定义。

一、所谓经典，就是我们通常说的“我在重读”而非“我正在读”的书。

至少自诩“博学”的人会这么做。年轻人处于初识世界的阶段，经典作为那个世界的一部分，重读经典不适用于他们。

有反复之意的“重”字，放在动词“读”之前，对于耻于承认自己没读过某部名著的人来说，多少显得有些虚伪。为了让这些人安心，我们必须指出，无论一个人的基础阅读量多大，都会存在大量他没有读过的经典作品。

有谁读完了希罗多德和修昔底德的全部作品？请举手。圣西门呢？红衣主教雷斯呢？但即使是关于19世纪的伟大小说，通常也是谈论者多于阅读者。法国人上学时就开始读巴尔扎克的作品，而且从各种版本的销量判断，人们毕业后还会继续读他的书。但如果在意大利做一次受欢迎程度调查，巴尔扎克恐怕会排在最后一名。意大利的狄更斯爱好者组成了一个小型精英俱乐部；俱乐部成员一见面，就开始讨论书里的人物和趣事，就像谈论熟人和身边事一样。多年前，米歇尔·布托尔1在美国教书时，人们总和他谈论埃米尔·左拉2。他从没读过左拉的书，所以对此不胜其烦。于是，他下决心读完了全套《卢贡—马卡尔家族》3，并发现这部作品和自己想象中的完全不同——书里有一套近乎神话的宏大家族谱系。他后来用一篇精彩的文章描写了这个谱系。

换句话说，心智成熟后初次阅读一部伟大作品可谓其乐无穷。这有别于年轻时的读书之乐（尽管你无法说出乐趣孰多孰少）。年轻时的阅读体验像其他体验一样，别有一番滋味，也有特殊的重要意义。但心智成熟之后，一个人会更懂得（或更应该懂得）欣赏细节、层次和深意。由此，我们引入下一定义：

二、我们用“经典”这个词指代一类书，读过且喜爱这些书的人珍视它们。有幸在绝佳条件下第一次读这些书的人，同样会将它们视若珍宝。

事实上，年轻时阅读大多难有成果，因为年轻人没有耐性、不够专注，不懂如何将书用于“指导实际”，而且生活阅历也不足。年轻时读的书可能（也许是同时）塑造一个人，影响他的未来，并提供效仿的对象、比较的条件、分类的方式、评价的标准以及美的范例。即使你几乎已忘却年轻时读过的书，却仍受到这些东西的影响。如果在心智成熟后重读此书，我们可能会重新发现这些不变的因素。这时，这些东西已成为我们内心的组成部分，尽管你已记不清它们源自何处。一部文学作品可能会被人遗忘，但会在我们心中播下种子。因此，我们可以得出如下定义：

三、经典是能发挥特殊影响力的书。它们扎根于记忆深处，拒绝被赶出头脑，将自己伪装成集体或个人的潜意识。

因此，成年后也该拿出一段时间来，重读对自己年轻时影响最大的书。即使书还是原样（尽管从历史的角度看，书本身也发生了变化），但人几乎肯定发生了变化。与旧书重逢将是一种全新的体验。

所以说，我们用的动词是“阅读”还是“重读”其实并不重要。实际上，我们可能说：

四、每次重读经典都是一次发现之旅，宛如初次阅读。

五、每次阅读经典实际上都是重读。

定义四或许是下文定义六的必然结果：

六、经典是有无限阐释余地的书。

不过，定义五需要更详尽的解释，例如：

七、经典是这样一类书，它们来到我们面前时，本身带有前人的阅读痕迹，并一路洒下它们所传承的文化（或者简单来说，这里的文化指语言和习俗）。

古代经典和现代经典都是如此。如果我读《奥德赛》，我读的是荷马写下的文本，但也不会忘记几个世纪中尤利西斯冒险的意义。我不禁会想，这些意义究竟是暗含于文本之中，还是经过覆盖、歪曲、延伸的结果。读卡夫卡4作品的时候，我无法避免对“卡夫卡式”这个形容词表示肯定或否定。这个词几乎每一刻钟就会出现一次，而且出现得很随意。如果我读屠格涅夫的《父与子》或陀思妥耶夫斯基的《群魔》，我不禁会设想，书中人物如何能轮回转世直到今日。

阅读经典应当带给我们惊喜，或引发与原有观念相反的思考。因此，我强烈建议直接阅读文本本身，尽可能把评传、注释、演绎抛在一边。学校和大学本应帮助我们理解这一点——没有哪本关于某书的书，能比原书说得更多。然而，它们尽力灌输给我们的理念恰恰相反。介绍、书评和参考书目就像烟幕一样，隐藏了文本的真实含义；事实上，只有摈弃自诩“理解比原文更深入”的中介，文本才能发出自己的声音。对这个问题，有许多颠三倒四、流传甚广的讨论。我们可以总结为：

八、经典不一定能教给我们从前不知道的东西。在经典作品中，我们有时会发现自己一直知道，或是自以为知道的东西，但不知是这位作者，或至少是他以特殊的方式，最先提出了这个说法。这也是一种惊喜，就像我们发现一个起源、一类关系、一种本质时获得的惊喜。由此，我们可以引申出这样的定义：

九、经典是这样一类书，越是我们自认为通过别人谈论已经知晓的东西，越会在阅读它们时发现更新鲜、更新奇、更意想不到的一面。

自然，只有读者与书产生共鸣，经典才会起到这种效果。如果双方没能擦出火花，那真是遗憾；但我们读经典不是出于责任或尊重，而是出于喜爱。除非是在学校。无论方式是好是坏，学校都应该让你知道一定数量的经典。接下来，你可以在这些书里选择适合自己的经典，或是参考这些书找到适合你的经典。学校应该给你提供做选择的工具，但真正算数的选择是人们置身校外或毕业之后作出的。

只有不带偏见地阅读，你才可能遇见属于你的书。我认识一位杰出的艺术史学家，一个博览群书的人。他在读过的所有书里，尤其钟情《匹克威克外传》5。他只要有机会就引用狄更斯书里的名言，并把身边的每件事都和书中的趣事联系起来。渐渐地，他的整个人、人生观乃至整个思想体系都与《匹克威克外传》趋同。基于此，我们得出了一个非常高级的、极其严格的“经典”定义：

十、我们用“经典”这个词指代一类书，它们如宇宙万物般形态各异，又如古代符咒般神秘莫测。根据这个定义，我们正不断趋近马拉美6构想的“全书”境界。

但经典能引起共鸣，同样能引起反对。让—雅克·卢梭7的言行都很亲切，但我总是有一种冲动，想去反驳他、批评他、与他争辩。气质不合引起了我对他的反感，我无计可施，只好不读他的书；但我又忍不住将他列为经典作家。所以我要说：

十一、适合你的经典作家，就是你无法置之不理的作家。即使你们存在分歧，他仍能帮助你界定自己在双方关系中所处的地位。

我认为，使用“经典”这个词无需区分作者的年龄、文风和权威性。我主张，“经典”的判断标准在于，无论是古代作品还是现代作品，都需要在文化谱系中占有一席之地。我们可以说：

十二、“经典”是位居其他经典之上的书。先读过其他经典的人，接下来读这部经典，会立刻识别其在经典谱系中的地位。

说到这里，我不能再忽视一个关键问题——如何将“阅读经典”和“阅读除了经典之外的其他作品”联系起来。这个问题牵扯到了其他问题，例如：为什么要阅读经典，而不读那些能让我们更深刻地了解当下的书？或者，当我们脑中充斥着当下事件时，去哪里寻找空闲的时间和平和的心态来阅读经典？

当然，我们可以想象有些幸运儿专门读《方法论》、卢克莱修、琉善、蒙田、伊拉斯谟、克维多、马洛、威廉·麦斯特、柯勒律治、拉斯金、普鲁斯特和瓦勒里的作品，还可以一探《源氏物语》或冰岛传奇。他们可以这么做，而无需撰写新书评论、教职论文或是即将截稿的杂志文章。为了这顿阅读大餐不受污染，这些幸运儿不能看报纸，也不能受到最新小说或社会调查的诱惑。但这么严苛的阅读条件是否合理？是否有益？最新的新闻或许充斥着陈词滥调，或许令人痛心，但它仍提供了一种回顾过去、前瞻未来的视角。要想能阅读经典，你必须知道自己所处的时代背景；否则，读者就会和书一起，迷失在永恒的云雾之中。这就是为什么，只有懂得交替阅读经典作品和了解当下事件的人，才能从阅读经典中获得最大的“益处”。这不是说你一定能获得内心的平静。阅读经典也可以让你性急难耐、气喘吁吁、意犹未尽。

或许理想的状态是，既关注窗外当下事件的嘈杂噪音，如交通堵塞和天气骤变，也聆听室内清晰的经典之声。不过对多数人而言，当生活被当下的琐事——比如聒噪的电视所淹没时，能将经典视为室外远方的噪音已经不错了。所以让我们再加上：

十三、经典是这样一类书，它们能将时下人们关注的问题降格为背景噪音8；但与此同时，人们无法离开这些背景噪音。

十四、经典像背景噪音一样顽固，即使与时下大多数人的关注点大相径庭。

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1．米歇尔·布托尔（Michel Butor，1926—），法国“新小说派”作家和诗人，曾在多个大学教授哲学和法国文学。

2．埃米尔·左拉（Emile Zola，1840—1902），法国现实主义作家，自然主义的创始人。

3．《卢贡—马卡尔家族》，左拉的代表作，被誉为“第二帝国时代一个家族的自然史和社会史”。

4．弗朗茨·卡夫卡（Franz Kafka，1883—1924），奥地利小说家，其作品大多用变形荒诞的形象和象征直觉的手法，表现孤立而绝望的个人。

5．《匹克威克外传》，讲述天真善良的有产者匹克威克和朋友漫游英国的奇趣经历，是一部既有浪漫奇想又紧贴现实的幽默讽刺小说。

6．斯特凡·马拉美（Stéphane Mallarmé，1842—1898），法国诗坛现代主义和象征主义的领袖人物。

7．让—雅克·卢梭（Jean-Jacques Rousseau，1712—1778），法国思想家、文学家，启蒙运动的代表人物之一。

8．背景噪音，指在工业测量中，与测量对象无关的一切干扰。