The Art of Reading

Johan Japardi's Private Library.

Indonesian version.

Reading or the enjoyment 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 a 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 into 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 looked like and what type of person he was.

Both Mencius and Sima Qian, China's greatest historian, have expressed the same idea. Now to be able to live two hours out of twelve in a different world and take one's thoughts off 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 is 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 then the events always assume the quality of a 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 with the report of events. The tremendous amount of time spent on newspapers I regard as not reading at all, for the average readers of papers are mainly concerned with getting reports about events and happenings without contemplative value.

The best formula for the object of reading, in my opinion, was stated by Huang Shangu, a Song poet and friend of Su Dongpo. He said, "A scholar who hasn't read anything for three days feels that his talk has no flavor (becomes insipid), and his own face becomes 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 the 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 Dr. Eliot, so I can become an educated man." I'm 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 has "read" Hamlet. 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 of files and reports before he makes a speech. It is asking for business advice and information, and not reading at all.

Reading for the cultivation of personal charm of appearance and flavor in speech is then, according to Huang, the only admissible kind of reading. This charm of appearance must evidently be interpreted as something other than physical beauty. What Huang 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 who is nevertheless always a pleasure to see. The most beautiful face among Western authors, so far as I have seen them in pictures, was that of G. K. Chesterton.

There was such a diabolical conglomeration of mustache, glasses, fairly bushy eyebrows and knitted lines where the eyebrows met! One felt there were a vast number of ideas playing about inside that forehead, ready at any time to burst out from those quizzically penetrating eyes. That is what Huang would call a beautiful face, a face not made up by powder and rouge, but by the sheer force of thinking. As for flavor of speech, it all depends on one's way of reading.

Whether one has "flavor" or not in his talk, depends on his method of reading. If a reader get the flavor of books, he will show that flavor in his conversations, and if he has flavor in his conversations, he cannot help also having a flavor in his writing.

Hence I consider flavor or taste as the key to all reading. It necessarily follows that taste is selective and individual, like the taste for food. The most 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 may be another's poison. A teacher cannot force his pupils to like what he likes in reading, and a parent cannot expect his children to have the same tastes as himself. And if the reader has no taste for what he reads, all the time is wasted. As Yuan Zhonglang says, "You can leave the books that you don't like alone, and let other people read them. "

There can be, therefore, no books that one absolutely must read. For our intellectual interests grow like a tree or flow like a river. So long as there is proper sap, the tree will grow any how, and so long as there is fresh current from the spring, 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 some day.

There are no books in this world that everybody must read, but only books that a person must read at a certain time in a given place under given circumstances and at a given period of his life. I rather think that reading, like matrimony, is determined by fate or yinyuan.

Even if there is a certain book that every one must read, like the Bible, there is a time for it. When one's thoughts and experience have not reached a certain point for reading a masterpiece, the masterpiece will leave only a bad flavor on his palate. Confucius said, "When one is fifty, one may read Yijing (the Book of Changes)," (this I do not agree -- Johan Japardi) which means that one should not read it at forty-five. The extremely mild flavor of Confucius' own sayings in Lunyu (the Analects) and his mature wisdom cannot be appreciated until one becomes mature himself.

Furthermore, the same reader reading the same book at different periods, gets a different flavor out of it. For instance, we enjoy a book more after we have had a personal talk with the author himself, or even after having seen a picture of his face, and one gets again a different flavor sometimes after one has broken off friendship with the author. A person gets a kind of flavor from reading the Book of Changes at forty, and gets another kind of flavor reading it at fifty, after he has seen more changes in life.

Therefore, all good books can be read with profit and renewed pleasure a second time. I was made to read Westward Ho! and Henry Esmond in my college days, but while I was capable of appreciating Westward, Ho! in my 'teens, the real flavor of Henry Esmond escaped me entirely until I reflected about it later on, and suspected there was vastly more charm in that book than I had then been capable of appreciating.

Reading, therefore, is an act consisting of two sides, the author and the reader. The net gain comes as much from the reader's contribution through his own insight and experience as from the author's own. In speaking about the Confucian Analects, the Song Confucianist Cheng Yichuan said, "There are readers and readers. Some read the Analects and feel that nothing has happened, some are pleased with one or two lines in it, and some begin to wave their hands and dance on their legs unconsciously."

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 with 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. Who is one's favorite author, no one can tell, probably not even the man himself. It is like love at first sight. The reader cannot be told to love this one or that one, but when he has found the author he loves, he knows it himself by a kind of instinct.

We have such famous cases of discoveries of authors. Scholars seem 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. In Chinese phraseology, we speak of these kindred spirits as reincarnations of the same soul, as Su Dongpo was said to be a reincarnation of Zhuangzi or Tao Yuanming and Yuan Zhonglang was said to be the reincarnation of Su Dongpo.

Su Dongpo said that when he first read Zhuangzi, he felt as if all the time since his childhood he had been thinking the same things and taking the same views himself. When Yuan Zhonglang discovered one night Xu Wenchang, a contemporary unknown to him, in a small book of poems, he jumped out of bed and shouted to his friend, and his friend began to read it and shout in turn, and then they both read and shouted again until their servant was completely puzzled. George Eliot described her first reading of Rousseau as an electric shock. Nietzsche felt the same thing about Schopenhauer, but Schopenhauer was a peevish master and Nietzsche was a violent-tempered pupil, and it was natural that 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, everything is right. She is of 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 need 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 cast 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 in love, 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 ancient author is talking to him, he should just go to bed. No amount of sticking an awl in his calf or of shaking him up by a maid will do him any good. Such a man has lost all sense of the 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 cannot help themselves. With this question solved, the question of time and place for reading is also provided with an answer. There is no proper time and place for reading. When the mood for reading comes, one can read anywhere. If one knows the enjoyment of reading, he will read in school or out of school, and in spite of all schools. He can study even in the best schools. Ceng Guofan, in one of his family letters concerning the expressed desire of one of his younger brothers to come to the capital and study at a better school, replied that: "If one has the desire to study, he can study at a country school, or even on a desert or in busy streets, and even as a woodcutter or a swine-herd. But if one has no desire to study, then not only is the country school not proper for study, but even a quiet country home or a fain island is not a proper place for study."

There are people who adopt a self-important posture at the desk when they are about to do some reading, and then complain they are unable to read because the room is too cold, or the chair is too hard, or the light is too strong. And there are writers who complain that they cannot write because there are too many mosquitos, or the writing paper is too shiny, or the noise from the street is too great.

The great Song scholar, Ouyang Xiu, confessed to "three on's" for doing his best writing: on the pillow, on horseback and on the toilet. Another famous Qing scholar, Gu Qianli, was known for his habit of "reading Confucian classics naked" in summer. On the other hand, there is a good reason for not doing any reading in any of the seasons of the year, if one does not like reading:

To study in spring is treason;
And summer is sleep's best reason;
If winter hurries the fall,
Then stop till next spring season.

What, then, is the true art of reading? The simple answer is to just take up a book and read when the mood comes. To be thoroughly enjoyed, reading must be entirely spontaneous. One takes a limp volume of Lisao, or of Omar Khayyam, and goes away hand in hand with his love to read on a river bank.

If there are good clouds over one's head, let them read the clouds and forget the books, or read the books and the clouds at the same time. Between times, a good pipe or a good cup of tea makes it still more perfect. Or perhaps on a snowy night, when one is sitting before the fireside, and there is a kettle singing on the hearth and a good pouch of tobacco at the side, one gathers ten or a dozen books on philosophy, economics, poetry, biography and piles them up on the couch, and then leisurely turns over a few of them and gently lights on the one which strikes his fancy at the moment. Zhin Zhengtan regards reading a banned book behind closed doors on a snowy night as one of the greatest pleasures of life. The mood for reading is perfectly described by Chen Zhiru (Meigong): "The ancient people called books and paintings 'limp volumes' and 'soft volumes'; therefore the best style of reading a book or opening an album is the leisurely style." In this mood, one develops patience for everything. As the same author says, "The real master tolerates misprints when reading history, as a good traveller tolerates bad roads when climbing a mountain, one going to watch a snow scene tolerates a flimsy bridge, one choosing to live in the country tolerates vulgar people, and one bent on looking at flowers tolerates bad wine."

The best description of the pleasure of reading I found in the autobiography of China's greatest poetess, Li Qingzhao (Yi-an, 1081-1141). She and her husband would go to the temple, where secondhand books and rubbings from stone inscriptions were sold, on the day he got his monthly stipend as a student at the Imperial Academy. Then they would buy some fruit on the way back, and coming home, they began to pare the fruit and examine the newly bought rubbings together, or drink tea and compare the variants in different editions. As described in her autobiographical sketch known as Postscript to Zhinshilu (a book on bronze and stone inscriptions):

I have a power for memory, and sitting quietly after supper in the Homecoming Hall, we would boil a pot of tea and, pointing to the piles of books on the shelves, make a guess as to on what line of what page in what volume of a certain book a passage occurred and see who was right, the one making the correct guess having the privilege of drinking his cup of tea first. When a guess was correct, we would lift the cup high and break out into a loud laughter, so much so that sometimes the tea was spilled on our dress and we were not able to drink. We were then content to live and grow old in such a world! Therefore we held our heads high, although we were living in poverty and sorrow...

In time our collection grew bigger and bigger and the books and art objects were piled up on tables and desks and beds, and we enjoyed them with our eyes and our minds and planned and discussed over them, tasting a happiness above those enjoying dogs and horses and music and dance....

This sketch was written in her old age after her husband had died, when she was a lonely old woman fleeing from place to place during the invasion of North China by the Jin tribe.

Taken from: Lin Yutang's The Importance of Living.
Updated and intentionally formatted without page number. Any way, it's just a passage.

Jakarta, 6 July 2019

Johan Japardi