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English Script Request

danghuuphuc
Complete / 1850 Words
by Velva 0:00 - 0:03:44

Chapter 11
The Art of Reading by Lin Yu Tong from The Importance of Understanding.
Reading or the enjoyments of books has always been regarded among the charms of a cultured life and is respected and envied by those who rarely give themselves that privilege. This is easy to understand, when we compare the difference between the life of a man who does no reading and that of the man who does. The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine. He is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighborhood. From this prison, there is no escape. But the moment he takes up a book, he immediately enters a different world. And if it is a good book, he is immediately put in touch with one of the best talkers of the world. This talker leads him on and carries him to a different country or a different age or unburdens to him some of his personal regrets or discusses with him some special line or aspect of life that the reader knows nothing about. An ancient author puts him in communion with a dead spirit.of long ago and as he reads along he begins to imagine what that ancient author looks like and what type of person he was. Both Menchi Su Machien and Ssu-ma Chien, China's greatest historian, has expressed the same idea. Now to be able to live two hours out of twelve in a different world and take one's thoughts of the claims of the immediate present is, of course, a privilege to be envied by people shut up in their bodily prison. Such a change of environment is really similar to travel in its psychological effect, but there is more to it than this, the reader is always carried away into a world of thought and reflection. Even if it a book about physical events there is a difference between seeing such events in person or living through them and reading about them in books. For them the events always assumes the quality of the spectacle and the reader becomes a detached spectator. The best reading is therefore that which leads us into this contemplative mood and not that which is merely occupied by the reports of events. The tremendous amount of time spent on newspapers, I regard as not reading at all for the average reader of papers are mainly concern with getting reports about events and happenings without contemplative value. The best formula for the objective reading, in my opinion, was stated by Quan Chan Ku, Asun poet, and a friend to Soon Tun Poh. He said, "A scholar who hasn't read anything for three days, feels as his talk has no flavor, becomes insipid and his own face become hateful to look at in the mirror." What he means, of course, is that reading gives a man a certain charm and flavor which is the entire object of reading. And only reading with this object can be called an art. One doesn't read to improve one's mind because when one begins to think of improving his mind, all pleasure of reading is gone. He is the type of person who says to himself, "I must read Shakespeare and I must read Sophocles and I must read the entire five-foot shelf of Doctor Eliot so I can become an educated man". I am sure that man will never become educated. He will force himself one evening to read Shakespeare's Hamlet and come away as if from a bad dream, with no greater benefit than that he is able to say that he had read Hamlet.

by Velva 0:03:44 - 0:04:54

Anyone who reads a book with a sense of obligation, does not understand the art of reading. This type of reading, with a business purpose, is in no way different from a senator's reading up on files and reports before he makes a speech. It is asking for business advise and information and not reading at all. Reading for the cultivation of personal charm of appearance and flavor in a speech is then, according to Kwuan, the only admissible kind of reading. This charm of appearance must evidently be interpreted as something other than physical beauty. What Kwan means by "hateful to look at" is not physical ugliness. There are ugly faces that have a fascinating charm and beautiful faces that are insipid to look at. I have among my Chinese friends, one whose head is shaped like a bomb; and yet she was nonetheless always a pleasure to see. The most beautiful face among Western authors, so far as I have seen them in pictures, was that of GK Chestertand, There was such a diabolical conglomeration of mustache, glasses, fairly bushes eyebrows and knitted lines where the eyebrows met.

by Velva 0:04:54 - 0:06:10

One felt that there were a vast number of ideas playing about in that forehead ready at anytime to burst out from him quizzically penetrating the eyes. That is what Kwan would call a beautiful face. a face not made up by powder and rouge but by the shear force of thinking. As for flavor of speech, it all depends on his method of reading. Whether one has flavor or not in his talk depends on his method of reading. If the reader gets the flavor for books, he will show that flavor in his conversations. And if he has flavor in his conversations, he can not help also having flavor in his writings. Hence, I consider flavor or taste as the key to all reading. It necessarily follows that taste is selective to an individual like the taste for food. The hygienic way of eating is, after all, eating what one likes, for then one is sure of his digestion. In reading, as in eating, what is one man's meat is another's poison. A teacher can not force his pupils to like what he likes in reading and a parent can not expect his children to have the same taste as himself.

by Velva 0:06:10 - 0:07:12

There can be therefore no books that one must absolutely must read. For our intellectual interest grow like a tree or flow like a river. So long as there is proper sap the tree will grow anyway. And so long as there is fresh current from the stream, the water will flow. When water strikes a granite cliff, it just goes around it. When it finds itself in a pleasant low valley, it stops and meanders there a while. When it finds itself in a deep mountain pond, it is content to stay there. When it finds itself traveling over rapids, it hurries forward, thus without any effort or determined aim, it is sure of reaching the sea someday. I regard the discovery of one's favorite author as the most critical event in one's intellectual development. There is such a thing as the affinity of spirits, and among the authors of ancient and modern times, one must try to find an author whose spirit is akin to his own. Only in this way can one get any real good out of reading. One has to be independent and search out his masters.

by Velva 0:07:12 - 08:10

Who is one's favorite author, no one can tell, probably not even the man his self. It is like love at first sight. The reader can not be told to love this one or that one, but when he has found the author that he loves, he knows it himself by a kind of instinct. we have such famous cases of discovery of authors. Scholars seemed to have lived in different ages separated by centuries, and yet their modes of thinking and feeling were so akin that their coming together across the pages of a book was like a person finding his own image. George Eliot described, about her first reading of Rousseau as an electric shock. Niche felt the same thing about Schopenhauer , but Schopenhauer was a peevish master and Niche was a violent-tempered pupil and it was natural the pupil later rebelled against the teacher. It is only this kind of reading, this discovery of one's favorite author, that will do one any good at all. Like a man falling in love with his sweetheart at first sight.

by Velva 08:10 - 09:26

Everything is right. She is at the right height, has the right face, the right color of hair, the right quality of voice, and the right way of speaking and smiling. This author is not something that a young man needs to be told about by his teacher. The author is just right for him; his style, his taste, his point of view, his mode of thinking are all right. And then the reader proceeds to devour every word and every line that the author writes. And because there is a spiritual affinity, he absorbs and readily digests everything. The author has casted a spell over him and he is glad to be under the spell and in time his own voice and manner and way of smiling and way of talking become like the author's own. Thus he truly steeps himself in his literary lover and derives from these books sustenance for his soul. After a few years, the spell is over and he grows a little tired of this lover and seeks for new literary lovers. And after he has had three or four lovers and completely eaten them up, he emerges as an author himself. There are many readers who never fall love.

by Velva 09:26 - 10:50

Like many young men and women who flirt around and are incapable of forming a deep attachment to a particular person. They can read any and all authors and they never amount to anything. Such a conception of the art of reading completely precludes the idea of reading as a duty or as an obligation. In China, one often encourages students to study bitterly . There was a famous scholar who studied bitterly and who stuck an awl in his calf when he fell asleep while studying at night. There was another scholar who had a maid stand by his side as he was studying at night to wake him up every time he fell asleep. This was nonsensical. If one has a book lying before him and falls asleep while some wise and ancient author is talking to him, he should just go to bed. No amount of sticking an awl in his calf or shaking him up by a maid will do him any good. Such a man has lost all sense of pleasure of reading. Scholars who are worth anything at all never know what is called a hard grind or what bitter study means. They merely love books and read on because they can not help themselves. What then is the true art of reading? The simple answer is to take up a book and read when the mood comes. To be thoroughly enjoyed, reading must be entirely spontaneous.

Comments

Velva
Jan. 22, 2017

The names of the Chinese historians and poets are spelled phonetically and not as they would be spelled by native Chinese speakers..

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