Harold Bloom: How to Read and Why; Genius

天气越来越好, 看书的时间越来越少, 案头的好书却越来越多.怎么办,只好让书们排队.

排第一的是 Da Vinci Code, 因为是租来的,虽然一个星期只要一块钱,但无形中它的身价就高了不少,值得我快快看完. 如果你真想看完一本书,千万不能买, 一买了,放上书架,就不知要等到猴年马月了.

还有 Dickinson, 是要慢慢咀嚼,品味的, to live with her then try to understand her poetry. 了解了她之后再去读她的诗,发现感觉完全不同,她的诗, 并不是象教材里说的那样"抽象".就象海子的诗, 了解了他这个人, 也才能更好地理解他的诗. 诗固然抽象,超脱尘世,诗人的感情,却不(完全)是空穴来风.

音乐是例外吧, 因为音乐更更抽象. 莫扎特的音乐就和他在俗世的生活没有任何关连.

也不是要了解生活和诗有没有关联,只是对作者总有好奇, 尤其是女作者, 除了读她们的文字, 还想感受她们的感受(当然也是通过文字,她们的或有关她们的).

说是忙, 还是读臭书.那天看了虹影的(哈,书名都忘了),印度中国混血, 英国中国混血, 二战啊, 文革啊, 摇滚啊, 音乐人下海经商啊, 腐败啊, 爱情婚姻啊.拉拉杂杂, 作者后面还加了解释,为什么要写. 动机当然是不错,但是作者的功力显然不够, 所有"历史背景"的描写都显得苍白无力, 唯一感动的就是她对自己和自己那个女朋友的内心世界的描写,还有些令人扼腕之处, 而这,大概也就是她唯一能够胜任的.

小女子只能写小女子之作,楞摆出写史诗的架式, 也就是个架式而已.

Imaginative literature is otherness, and as such alleviates loneliness. We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies, and all the sorrows of familiar and passional life.

...

I turned to reading as a solitary praxis, rather than as an educational enterprise. The way we read now, when we are alone with ourselves, retains considerable continuity with the past, however it is performed in the academies. (Harold Bloom: How to Read and Why?)

Nabokov: The Vane Sisters: "Nabokov's story, though brief, is replete with literary allusions--to Emerson's transparent eyeball (from his Nature) and Coleridge's person from Porlock. There are also vivid manifestations of Oscar Wilde and of Tolstoy at a seance, and an extraordinary general atmosphere of literary preciosity."

He also has a lot to say about Emily Dickinson's poetry - unfortunately the "Genius" book was out from the library.

http://www.geminus.org/books/books.php?type=de&id=1516
Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds
by Harold Bloom
Warner Books, 2002
Review by Costica Bradatan on Jan 20th 2003

In general, Bloom is a master of showing how one has to approach a work of literature in order to fully enjoy it and make the most of it. In a world in which the endlessly sophisticated interpretations proposed by the secondary literature tend to overwhelm, suffocate, and ultimately destroy that which is interpreted, Bloom teaches his readers how to read the perennial works of world literature. (One of his previous books is significantly titled How to Read and Why). It happens sometimes that simplicity and commonsense are the most difficult things to attain, and Harold Bloom teaches us how to approach Shakespeare, Milton, Borges, St. Augustine, Cervantes, Plato, and even the Scriptures: without prejudices, without ideological or political lenses, without any useless sophistication and presumptuousness, but with common sense, freshness, humility.