August 1963 — VOL. 44, No. 8 — Adventuring into
Old Books
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Some people read to get away from life;
others read to get into life, to experience it more abundantly.
There are virtues in both purposes. For escape from the
vexation of events, we may immerse ourselves in books of our
choice; we may read for information, to stimulate thought,
to help our personal development, or because we enjoy reading.
No purpose requires us to analyze and parse the prose and
poetry and tear it to pieces in search of hidden meanings.
We profit most when we read with enjoyment, just as we look
at the soft beauty of a flower without putting it under a
microscope.
Our approach to books can be influenced by this undoubted
truth: books are the sole means of communication with great
minds of the past, and the only means most of us have to commune
with the first—rate minds of our own day. In our books
are recorded all the thoughts, feelings, passions, visions
and dreams that have stirred the human mind.
Books are not inanimate masses of wood pulp with black marks
on them; they are dynamic, vital things, capable of informing
and enlivening our minds. This Letter is about books which
have enriched human life over the centuries.
Children's books
The obvious place to start a discussion is in the happy
realm of children's books, not only because that is where
we start in real life but because most of us like to go back
to them in later years. Just as many a man buys an electric
train for his son so that he himself may live or relive the
joy of playing with it, so many a woman reads the old stories
to her children or grandchildren with a sense of renewed youth
and enjoyment.
Note, first, that children's books remain international
in their appeal, so that we are one with all the world while
we read them. The Frenchman Perrault, the German Grimm Brothers,
the Dane Andersen, the United States Mark Twain, the Italian
Collodi, the Swede Selma Lagerlöf, the Englishmen Lewis Carroll
and Kipling: these have become the common property of children
all over the world.
In the second place, note that these children's books are
well done. Children accept their style as a matter of course,
so easily do the stories move along and so quietly does the
picture take shape before their eyes. Look at the first page
of Andersen's "The Ugly Duckling": "The country was very lovely
just then — it was summer. The wheat was golden and the
oats still green. The hay was stacked in the rich low meadows,
where the stork marched about on his long red legs, chattering
in Egyptian, the language his mother had taught him." Here
is no striving for effect or pretentiousness, just a wealth
of soft colour.
Books are, apart from the work and influence of the teacher,
the chief instruments in education. It is principally through
books that a child explores the richness of human experience
and knowledge. Every child born in Canada is born into a democracy
which stands committed to a high responsibility at home and
internationally. How is he to learn the basis of that way
of life except by reading?
The most important room in any school is the library, and
the most important mind—forming aid in any home is the
selection of books it makes available to its children.
Novels
Many novels are merely costume pieces that entertain us
at the time we read them, but there are thousands of novels
that have flesh and blood inside their costumes. Samuel Johnson
once asked: "Was there ever yet anything written by mere man
that was wished longer by its readers, excepting 'Don Quixote',
'Robinson Crusoe' and 'The Pilgrim's Progress'?"
What is the basis of our love for romance except this: that
everybody is romantic who admires a fine thing or does one.
Merely to copy life, as some novelists do today, is to produce
nonsense, something utterly useless. They give us a mass of
detail of trivial happenings, or witless cruelty, stupid evil,
blind fate.
Go to a well written novel and see the difference. What
is the argument, for example, pertinent to our times to be
extracted from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables published
a hundred years ago? Hugo's impeachment is not of men but
of man—administered institutions which, he suggests,
have become a source of fearful peril by weakening the individual's
sense of responsibility.
Or take the more personal narratives which put on record
the struggles of men within themselves: Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark, whose inward turmoil lasted for two and a half months;
Henry Faust, for whom the ordeal stretched over fifty years;
and Robinson Crusoe. As J. O'D. Bennett says about Crusoe
in Much Loved Books, (a Premier book published in 1959):
"we are on the Island of Despair ... for eight and twenty
years. It is an epic of competent man, refusing to go mad,
refusing to lose the power of speech; ever patient, ingenious,
hoping on and on, not for rescue merely, but for the best
as God shall order it, be it rescue or endless waiting, and
at the last finding his own soul."
John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, published in 1678,
ran into eleven editions and many pirated issues in ten years.
It has spread to the remotest corners of the earth. It is
not only a guide to a way of life— much sought after
in these days — but a gripping novel full of dramatic
incidents. As for Don Quixote, published in 1605, it
can be read as a tale of adventure but it is also a manual
of tolerance and indulgent pity.
The Swiss Family Robinson has an average of three
things happening on every one of its 500 pages (Everyman edition).
The happenings have to do with life as it must be lived if
a man is to get through it with decency, comfort, usefulness,
and a fair degree of distinction.
All of these books display the individuals in courageous
roles. We might sum them up in the sentence used by young
Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island: "I began to be horribly
frightened, but I kept my head, for all that."
Poetry
Poetry is not to be neglected, whatever our purpose in reading
may be. The poets saw things through the centuries in perfect
clarity. No man can have any just conception of the greatness,
the fullness and the possibilities of life who has not read
some of the great poetry.
We sang and chanted long before we reasoned and persuaded,
and poetry expresses ideas and emotions that run true to the
common experience of humanity. It was said of Keats that his
spirit "went flaming through the cluttered world for a few
brief years, leaving a cleared path for men's souls to walk
in."
A book of poetry is not a collection of flowery and vague
words put together in an undisturbing way. The value of a
poem lies in the intensity with which the writer has encountered
an experience and the accuracy with which its consequences
have been recognized and expressed.
This criterion is substantiated by a poll designed to find
the most popular poet of the United States. The leading three
were: Longfellow, "A Psalm of Life"; Foss, "The House by the
Side of the Road"; and Bryant, "Thanatopsis". No one can read
these without feeling his horizon widened, his spirit broadened,
and his mind stirred.
Plays
Some people look upon plays as something to be seen on the
stage, and not read, but they are missing one of the great
pleasures of reading.
That there are many more people with different views is
indicated by the fact that the greatest single author to spin
money for publishers, booksellers and other authors all over
the world has been William Shakespeare.
His plays continue to be best sellers because of the intensity
of the life in them and because of their inexhaustible wealth
of perception of how people talk and act and think. We quote
his lines, read him for pleasure, and study him for ideas
applicable to our time.
And so with Molière, Marlowe, Shaw, and Ibsen: they
mirrored their times and scrutinized the spirits of men and
women as truthfully as did Aristophanes, Euripides, Aeschylus
and Sophocles. Re—reading them in the light of life experience,
one comes upon flashes of inspiration that make one want to
squeeze the very type for pleasure.
History and biography
It may seem strange to put forward as a recommendation for
reading history that it destroys the urgency of such words
as "now, today, this year". It does so by widening our horizon
and increasing our sense of perspective. It makes us part
of the thousands of years past and to come.
In our histories lies the soul of past time. The material
substance of nations, cities and people may have vanished,
but here is their audible voice. In reading Toynbee's A
Study of History it is as if Time had rebuilt his ruins
and were re—enacting the lost scenes of existence.
Some historians write for historians, but those who have
written for the man in the street have shown the possibility
of making the facts of life clear. Macaulay's History of
England outsold the best—selling novel of its day.
The history of the world is the biography of great men.
This is the literature of superiority, just as surely as journalism
is the literature of mediocrity.
It is necessary for us to read great lives, because in every
one of them there is something to learn. Collectively, they
give a measure of what human life may become.
In reading biography we come upon some depressing pages.
An epigram of Wilde's ran to the effect that all great men
have their disciples but sometimes it is Judas who writes
the biography.
There is a phase in biography writing during which it is
the style to prove that great men are small. The writer brings
his subject down to his own level, shifting the lens from
the vital to the trivial. He dwells upon Shakespeare's bequeathing
his second—best bed to his wife, and George Washington's
well restrained interest in Mrs. Sally Fairfax. The vital
thing is that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet and King
Lear, and that Washington established the American Republic.
One great biographer, Plutarch, spoke out against writing
irrelevant detail about a man "lest, by trifling away time
in the lesser moments we should be driven to omit those greater
actions and fortunes which best illustrate his character."
Philosophy
Reading philosophy, like reading biography and history,
helps to give us a sense of proportion. To the old—time
Greek the unforgivable sin, whether in art or in morals, was
the violation of proportion. An overbearing man, a man who
was presumptuous, or vainglorious: these men were brassy offenders.
Philosophy, besides keeping us in our place, broadens our
taste and makes us more ready to recognize that even our favourite
beliefs may have flaws. It deals in principles, the most hardy,
convertible and portable of all literary property.
Consider The Prince. It cannot be dissociated from
the period in which Niccolo Machiavelli wrote it, and yet
it contains lessons for all times. And what of Machiavelli
himself? He wrote in a letter: "I go to my study; I pass into
the ancient courts of the men of old where, being lovingly
received by them, I am fed with that food which is mine alone;
where I do not hesitate to speak with them, and to ask for
the reason of their actions, and they in their benignity answer
me."
One may go to the philosophers for answers to questions,
or for thoughts that are pertinent to the pressures of life,
or merely to enjoy being with men of stature who took the
trouble to write down their thoughts for us.
Myths
At one time every myth was a valid truth, the most accurate
statement possible on the basis of the facts then known. Mythology
is an intuitive way of apprehending and expressing universal
truths. It is a dramatic representation of the inward or outward
experience of the men who fashioned it. The great feature
about reading a myth is not what wild hunter dreamed the story,
or what childish race first dreaded it, but what strong people
first lived by it and what wise man first perfectly told it.
A myth perceives, however darkly, things which are for all
ages true, and we understand and enjoy it only in so far as
we have some perception of the same truth.
That truth illuminated the human mind when there was no
other light. It set man upon his feet and taught him to walk
by himself. It enticed man forward out of his brutishness,
breaking down to a useful current the terrible high tension
he feared in life all around him. It spoke persuasively to
men and women about good and evil, cultivating their humanity
foot by foot.
Some of the myths are dead because they have performed their
evolutionary task and are needed no more, but others still
provide answers to the riddles of life.
Variety in reading
Part of the splendour of our literature lies in its infinite
variety.
A person who wishes to read profitably, and to avoid becoming
a one—subject or one—author bore, might make a schedule
whereby he read a book of philosophy, then a novel, followed
in succession by history, biography, drama, sociology, religion,
fine arts and science. He might like to reserve poetry and
the great Victorian essayists for bedtime reading. Both poetry
and essays delight us with quick turns of speech or the use
of an old word in a new and exactly fitting sense that gives
a thrill of pleasure.
Or, if a person does not wish to make up his own list, he
may join one of the groups reading Great Books.
The great books deal with the knowledge of all time and
with problems which are problems for everybody today. They
provide bridges by which their readers may communicate agreeably
across the barriers of specialization with other men and women
who are looking for the same opportunity.
These books are not too hard to read. They were not too
difficult for the school children of former ages or for the
people who are leaders today. They are, in fact, so truly
basic that no deep or specialized knowledge is needed in order
to understand them.
No one who reads the great books will find in them the way
to make or ban the bomb, but he will find an explanation of
the thought processes which make bombers or banners. The root
problems of good and evil, of love and hate, of happiness
and misery, and of life and death, have not changed very much.
By learning about these things one approaches in some measure
the knowledge of the common heritage that underlies the one
world men and women dream about.
The classics
Some of the great books are classics, a term which frightens
some people. "Classic" is not a word for something that is
dry with age, but for something that has worn well.
When we read a classic we are likely to be surprised by
learning that truths that we think modern have been glimpsed
by the ancients, and sometimes grasped firmly and examined
on all sides.
Classics are not dull. The Agamemnon of Aeschylus is twenty—four
centuries old, but it opens with excitement that is unsurpassed
in modern writing: the troops are coming home from the Trojan
war ... along the Grecian coast from peak to peak the
fire signals fly, giving news of victory and home—coming
on their wings ... it is the wireless of Homer's men.
Read about Alexander the Great in Plutarch's Lives.
When his officers brought him a very precious casket seized
among other booty from the defeated King Darius, he asked
those about him what they thought fittest to be laid up in
it. When they had delivered their various opinions, he told
them he should keep Homer's Iliad in it.
And what is the Iliad? It and the Odyssey are
ancient Greek narrative poems, the first as well as the greatest
epics of our civilization, and two exciting stories. Every
time we refer to a siren or to Achilles' heel or compare a
lovely woman to Helen of Troy we are borrowing from these
poems of three thousand years ago.
There is, in the classics, none of the morbid, diseased
and maudlin we come upon in much of today's literature, called
by Joseph Wood Krutch, writer and professor of dramatic literature,
"among the most unhappy which the whole art of imaginative
writing has ever produced." The bookstands carry books in
which pathology has usurped the place of art, and the writer
has become a specialist in diseases of the nerves, filling
his pages with people who are unhappy, blundering and defeated.
Why we read
After reading a good book we feel well above our normal
best. Lifted on the shoulders of great writers, we catch a
glimpse of new worlds which are within reach of the human
spirit. A luminous hole has been knocked in the dusk of our
knowledge, and we rise from the book with wider horizons,
broader sympathies and greater comprehension.
To learn from a book one does not have to agree with the
author's judgments and valuations, but it is interesting and
useful to know what they are and that such opinions are held.
The book has enabled us to identify and nurture our individual
thoughts; it has enlarged our stock of ideas; we have caught
some of the magic, the power and the glory attached to study.
It is sometimes said by business men that life is so full
of many things to do that there is no time for reading. But
the business mind that lays plans for building, buying, selling
and distributing goods and performing services needs all the
creative talents of philosopher, poet, historian and novelist.
Books throw new light on old problems and give insight into
values. They make the difference between becoming an expert
and remaining a tyro. They provide the antidote of panic and
over—confidence.
Sometimes the statement that a man has no time to read sounds
like a boast. Its maker means to say that he is too important
and too occupied with big affairs to fritter away time in
reading. But reading is a legitimate business activity, designed
to provide the mental food which maintains the intellectual
life so greatly needed in business.
Reading is one of the true pleasures of life. In our age
of mass culture, when so much that we encounter is abridged,
adapted, adulterated, shredded and boiled down, and commercialism's
loud speakers are incessantly braying, it is mind—easing
and mind—inspiring to sit down privately with a congenial
book.
The great debate
Reading is not a passive experience, but one of life's most
lively pleasures. It has been said that the great books constitute
a transcript of a great conversation across the ages, and
we share the thoughts, emotions and observations of the writers
as if we were sitting with them around the fire.
Here are friends whose society is delightful. They are persons
of all countries and of all ages, distinguished in war, government
and letters, easy to live with, never out of humour, answering
all questions with readiness. We can invite to sit with us
the ablest and sprightliest of all times, the most learned
philosophers, the wisest counsellors. All we need do is give
them a chance to tell us what they have of value to say, and
then meet their ideas with ideas of our own.
We may, if we wish, take issue with Sophocles about Oedipus
and Electra and the complexes named after them; split hairs
with Plato over his proposed republic; quarrel with Lord Bacon,
called by Pope "the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind";
be instructed by Leonardo, that remarkable painter, sculptor
and inventor, and perhaps form an opinion about the smile
he gave Mona Lisa; and smoke a pipe with Sir Walter Raleigh
over his histories and poems, his adventures at sea and his
quarrels with the first Queen Elizabeth.
There is another point about sitting down in this circle
of an evening. What these men say may be provocative, discussing
as they do the persistently nagging problems of men and bringing
forward many conflicting thoughts concerning their solution.
But the conversation will be clear, deep and diverse. And
it will, in times of crisis, conflict and confusion, serve
our nostalgic yearning for the old civilities.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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