On Reading: An Essay
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“It is childish to suppose that a hundred books can be named as those which are the best for each and every one. The simplest experience of the world proves that a work of great excellence may deeply move one person, while it leaves another untouched; and that a book which has influenced one strongly in one's youth may lose such influence over one's later years. There is practically nothing that every man can read at every time...” (Georg Brandes)
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On Reading - Georg Brandes
ON READING
An Essay
by
Georg Brandes
Pieffe Edizioni
Copyright
© Pieffe Edizioni, 2017
© Edited by / A cura di: Fabrizio Pinna
For this Edition: All rights reserved.
Tutti i diritti riservati; a norma di legge, senza autorizzazione è vietata la distribuzione e riproduzione anche parziale e con qualsiasi mezzo.
First published / I edizione e-Book: December / Dicembre 2017
ISBN: 978-88-99508-10-4 (ebk)
TITLE / TITOLO: ON READING
by Georg Brandes (1842-1927)
Series / Collana: MEGAMICRÓN, n. 1
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
ON READING. An Essay
On Reading(*)
Why should we read?
What should we read?
How should we read?
A whole world can thus open out for us in a single book
APPENDIX
Criticism is an art
Brandes as seen by Colleagues and Contemporaries
Brandes in New York
Notes and References
Index
The Author and Further readings
About the Editor
ON READING. An Essay
On Reading
(*)
A few years ago several European newspapers offered prizes for a list of the best one hundred books for a first-class library. The answers poured in: the Bible and Robinson Crusoe,
Homer and Horace, Dante and Shakespeare, Holberg and Oehlenschläger, Goethe and Mickiewitz, Racine and Pascal, Arany and Petöfi, Cervantes and Calderón, Bjørnson and Ibsen, Tegnér and Runeberg, — each list characteristic of the country and the individual taste of the correspondent.
It is childish to suppose that a hundred books can be named as those which are the best for each and every one.
The simplest experience of the world proves that a work of great excellence may deeply move one person, while it leaves another untouched; and that a book which has influenced one strongly in one's youth may lose such influence over one's later years. There is practically nothing that every man can read at every time.
This fact is not particularly evident, of course, for the simple reason that nowadays very few people can be said to read at all, or enjoy reading, or get any good out of it. Out of a hundred persons able to read, ninety generally read nothing but newspapers, — a species of reading which demands no exertion. Most people, for that matter, read without any particular attentiveness. Perhaps they select reading-matter which does not deserve any particular attention. What wonder, then, that they forget what they read? Everyone will recall such remarks as the following: There's no use talking to me about this book or that book, — I must have read it, I suppose, some years ago; but I have the unfortunate faculty of forgetting everything I read.
And many people, after all, are not accustomed to understand fully. They are like young people reading books in foreign languages, who neglect to refer to the dictionary for words they do not understand; they infer them from the sense, — so they say; that is, they understand half, and are content with that.
In the case of works, the nature of which is not intended to be grasped by the intellect, as, for example, in lyric poetry, readers generally relinquish beforehand all idea of understanding exactly what the author means. An acquaintance of mine, in a company of ladies, once tried the experiment of reading aloud Goethe's The God and the Bayadere, beginning each verse with the last line, and reading upwards. The rhymes fell without intermission, all the melody of the verses was retained — and every one was charmed with the following:
"Then by her