Hermann Hesse: How and why to read books

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Most people cannot read, most do not even really know why they are reading. Some consider reading to be mostly a laborious but inevitable path to "education," and for all their erudition, these people will at best become an "educated" public. Others consider reading to be an easy pleasure, a way to kill time, in fact, they do not care what to read, as long as it is not boring.

Herr Müller reads Goethe's Egmont or the memoirs of the Countess of Bayreuth, hoping to supplement his education and fill one of the many gaps he feels there are in his knowledge. The fact that he notices gaps in his knowledge with fear and pays attention to them is symptomatic: Mr. no matter how much you learn, for himself it will remain dead and barren.

And Mr. Mayer reads "for pleasure," which means out of boredom. He has a lot of time, he is a rentier, he has plenty of leisure time, he does not know how to fill it. Therefore, writers must help him while away the long hours. Reading Balzac for him is like smoking a cigar; reading Lenau is like flipping through newspapers.

However, in other matters, Messrs. Müller and Mayer, as well as their wives, sons and daughters, are far from being so little choosy and dependent. Without good reason, they do not buy or sell securities, they know from experience that a heavy dinner is bad for their well-being, they do no more physical labor than, in their opinion, is necessary to gain and maintain vigor. Others even go in for sports, guessing about the secret sides of this strange pastime, which allows an intelligent person not only to have fun, but even to look younger and stronger.

So, Herr Müller should be read in exactly the same way as he does gymnastics or rowing. From the time devoted to reading, wait for acquisitions no less than from the time that he devotes to professional activities, and not honor the book that does not enrich him with some kind of experience, does not improve at least one iota of his health, does not give vigor …

Education in itself should have worried Herr Müller just as little as getting a professorship, and getting to know the robbers and scum from the pages of the novel would feel no less shameful than communicating with such scoundrels in real life. However, usually the reader does not think so simply, he either considers the world of the printed word to be an absolutely higher world, in which there is neither good nor evil, or internally despises it as an unreal world, invented by writers, where he comes only out of boredom and from where he cannot bear anything. apart from the feeling that I spent several hours quite pleasantly.

Despite this incorrect and low assessment of literature, Herr Müller and Herr Meyer usually read too much. They devote more time and attention to a business that does not affect their souls at all than many professional occupations. Consequently, they vaguely surmise that there is something hidden in the books that is not devoid of value. But their attitude to books is characterized by passive dependence, which in business life would quickly lead them to ruin.

A reader who wants to have a good time and relax, like a reader who cares about his education, presupposes the presence in books of some hidden forces that can revive and elevate the spirit, but such a reader does not know how to define these forces more accurately and appreciate them. Therefore, he acts like an unreasonable patient who knows that there are certainly many useful medicines in the pharmacy, and wants to try them all, searches bottle after bottle and box after box. However, both in a real pharmacy and in a bookstore or library, everyone should find the only drug he needs, and then, without poisoning himself, without overfilling the body with useless substances, everyone will find here something that will strengthen his spirit and bodily strength.

We, the authors, are pleased to know that people read so much, and it is probably unreasonable for an author to claim that they read too much. But the profession eventually ceases to please, if you see that everyone understands it wrongly; a dozen good, grateful readers, even if the monetary reward for the author diminishes, is still better and more gratifying than a thousand indifferent.

Therefore, I dare to say, nevertheless, that they read too much and excessive reading is not to literature's honor, damages it. Books do not exist to make people less and less independent. And all the more not in order to offer an unviable person a cheap deception and a fake instead of genuine life. On the contrary, books are valuable only when they lead to life and serve life, are useful to it, and every hour of reading, I believe, is thrown into the wind if the reader does not perceive at that hour a spark of strength, a drop of youth, a breath of freshness.

Reading is only a purely external reason, an incentive to concentrate, and there is nothing more false than reading with the aim of "scattering." If a person is not mentally ill, there is no need for him to be scattered, he must be concentrated, always and everywhere, wherever he is and whatever he does, no matter what he thinks about, no matter what he feels, he must, with all the forces of his being, concentrate on what he occupies. his subject. Therefore, when reading, first of all, it is necessary to feel that any worthy book is a focus, a combination and an intensive simplification of complexly interconnected things.

Every tiny poem is already such a simplification and concentration of human feelings, and if, while reading, I have no desire to participate and empathize with them, then I am a bad reader. And let the damage that I do to a poem or novel does not concern me directly. By reading poorly, I damage myself first of all. I waste time on something useless, I give my eyesight and attention to things that are not important to me, which I deliberately intend to forget soon, I tire my brain with impressions that are useless and will not even be assimilated by me.

Many say newspapers are to blame for poor reading. I think this is completely wrong. By reading one or more newspapers daily, one can be focused and active, moreover, choosing and combining news can be a very useful and valuable exercise. At the same time, one can read Goethe's "Selective Affinity" through the eyes of an educated person, a lover of entertaining reading, and such reading will not give anything valuable.

Life is short, in that world one won’t ask how many books you mastered in your earthly existence. Therefore, it is unwise and harmful to waste time on useless reading. I do not mean reading bad books, but above all the quality of the reading itself. From reading, as from every step and every sigh, one must wait for something, one must give strength in order to gain greater strength in return, one must lose oneself in order to find oneself again more deeply conscious. Knowledge of the history of literature is of no value if every book we read did not become our joy or consolation, a source of strength or peace of mind.

Thoughtless, absent-minded reading is like walking blindfolded in beautiful countryside. But one must read not in order to forget about oneself and one's daily life, but, on the contrary, in order to more consciously and maturely, firmly take in one's hands one's own life. We must go to the book not like timid schoolboys to a cruel teacher and not reach for it like a drunkard for a bottle, but go like conquerors of peaks - to the Alps, warriors - to the arsenal, not as fugitives and misanthropes, but as people with good thoughts - to friends or assistants.

If everything happened like this, today we would hardly read one tenth of what they read, but then we would all become ten times happier and richer. And if this led to the fact that our books were no longer in demand and we, the authors, in the end would write ten times less, then this would not cause the slightest harm to the world. After all, there are almost as many people willing to write as there are reading lovers.