43.READING & BOOKS
Reading maketh a man!
Reading good books is the chief pleasure of cultivated minds. It is indeed the prime mark of a civilized man.
"Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man", said Francis Bacon.
Reading good books connects us with the great minds of the world.It brings us in touch with our own selves. All other forms of entertainment lead us away from our core selves- make the mind flow out into phenomena of the outer world. A great book touches our inner core. It leads us into ourselves. It opens up an inner world of thoughts and reflection.
What are great books?
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It is as difficult to define a good or great book,as it is to define a cow. We can understand it only when we have read a lot. It is here we are guided by the experience and knowledge of responsible elders. Every society and its institutions have valued certain books as expressing best the foundations of their culture and civilization. In the West, this is spoken of as the Western Canon, or the Great Books of the Western World. These are essentially books that have stood the test of time, untouched by the modern 'bestseller' fad.
An educated person was expected to have a broad idea of the basic features of his own cultural traditions.Educational systems and arrangements were designed to serve this purpose.Great books aided this task. But education is now equated with institutional schooling/university studies which have their own agenda and logic. Their main characteristic is rising, narrow specialisation of academic disciplines.They are designed to lead to a job or career. A product of such academic circus is unlikely to know much, if anything, beyond his own narrow field. This trend was noticed in the US even in the 20s of the last century. It has only spread and strengthened since then.
Great Books program
Right: Dr.Mortimer Adler.
Photo from:consilientinterest.com
Adler gave three criteria to judge a book as great:
- it should be such as can be read repeatedly
- it should have relevance to contemporary problems
-it should reflect the interests and concerns of a large number of the thinking minds of the past centuries.
Based on these, they developed Great Books Program as a curriculum to be taught in the universities.
The Classics
The Western academic circles were , in the past, proud of their"classics"- bedrock of books providing their basic ideas: the Greek epics ,Greco-Roman philosophy and drama, the great literary works, history , etc. Their study formed the foundation of a well-rounded education. However with the rise of the military-industrial society,and modern technical 'culture', study of humanities has declined in importance, and people at large have lost the connect with the classics. Only the specialist students and the
diehard enthusiasts still read the classics.
Antagonistic universities
In fact, the attitude of mainline academic institutions in the West is antagonistic to the study of their own Classics. Under leftist and other modernist political- theoretical influences,which have invaded them, they are deprecating their classical literature,[ and devaluing their whole cultural heritage as the product of a dead white male superiority offensive.] This is supposed to be the "politically correct" stance. As Elizabeth Kantor notes:
"Enroll in an English class at an American university, and you might find yourself studying Marxist theory, or the history of ballet. You could be treated to an investigation of pornography through the ages. Or you might spend the semester watching foreign films. What is far too unlikely to happen is that you will be taught to understand and appreciate great literature in the English language.
"These days the English professors seem to be teaching anything and everything but classic English literature - from "gender theory" to Freud to "Latino/a popular culture." PC English professors are busy replacing the "dead white males"of the traditional literary canon with the authors of '80s bestsellers that hit all the politically correct themes. Departments of English are staffed by professors dedicated to suppressing English literature, not teaching it."
Regnery Publishing, Inc.2006.
However, it is not without its challengers, but such challenge takes place largely outside the big universities where thousands of students are indoctrinated in the current official line year after year. Majority of the students do not have a proper exposure to the ideas of their own great men of letters. It is indeed strange that in a so called "free" country like the US, young minds are enslaved to some officially upheld theories and dogma in the name of education. It is unfortunate.
Value of great books
A reviewer (Raymond Matthew Wray) of the 'Invitation To The Classics' noted:
.... the greatest benefactors of a great book curriculum will be the young. We should do our utmost, Socrates tells his interlocutors, that the first stories that they hear should be so composed as to bring the fairest lessons of virtue to their ears. Ironically, Socrates would have censored Homer's tales. Nevertheless, he understood the importance of introducing young students to right thinking. With the proper guidance, reading the primary texts allows for the student to engage the raw ideas on their own terms. What emerges are the critical thinking skills that give rise to the constituents needed in the formation of character, which is crucial both to citizenship and civility. However, there is something more important than citizenship and civility (dare we say it?): the state of the student's soul. Through reading, children can draw on the heritage of our progenitors and forge the framework of a virtuous life.
The great books provide a venue for us to explore the human experience without the risk of being all-too-human, to develop character through characters. They are the life we may never live; they are the people we may never meet. Through encounters with them we can engage the ideas we may never have. These are the forces that expand our inner world, making the world around us more meaningful. This is the experience students are being denied across the nation from colleges and universities. This is the very experience Louise Cowan and Os Guinness invite us to share.www.catholiceducation.org.1999
This sums up the matter well.
India: ignorance is bliss!
In India, we were spared the pain or pleasure of learning our classics by the colonial education system imposed by Macaulay in 1836. Indian traditional learning was bypassed, Indian subjects and themes were dropped, and youngsters were induced to take to the new system by the trick of linking English education with jobs! Even so, traditional systems prevailed in truncated forms in isolated pockets. During the course of our freedom struggle, all the national leaders were deeply attached to the national roots, though English had become the language of communication among the educated. But the deeper maladies were not addressed: our national literature was neglected, our history was distorted to suit the colonial powers, our children were made to learn not only English as a language, but English ideas, manners and alien history.
The problem became more acute after Independence. The idea of 'nation' came to be defined in the narrow political sense; political interests took over. The creation of linguistic states unleashed forces of provincial chauvinism based on language. The country has been divided by narrow linguistic walls. The central govt. is substituting Hindi imperialism for Macaulay's English imperialism. The cumulative result is that the idea of national culture has receded from the public consciousness.
Our educational system was taken over by leftist elements . The history of India is taught as interpreted by Marxists. The result very much resembles what prevails in the US: the tendency is to deny the value of our own sources and fields of knowledge, deprecate the roots and fruits of our own civilization, decry or deny the greatness of our own heroes! The story of invaders- the Muslims and Europeans- is taught as the history of India! They are shown as our saviours and modernisers! Thanks to Macaulay, whose system still prevails in tact, our students are more exposed to English and foreign literature and literary figures than to our own. But these are not taught systematically- it is like a patchwork quilt. They are out on a limbo- they neither master the foreign stuff nor learn about their own achievements! They stand alienated from their own roots.
Great literature is more than literature!
In studying the great literature of the past, we learn more than the literature. We learn about life through the literature. We learn how life was lived, viewed and experienced by past generations. We learn of their achievements and failures, their problems and frustrations, their greatness and limitations. We acquire an attitude to life and its problems. We learn to look into ourselves and examine our motives, ideas, desires which are at the base of human action and reaction in all societies at all times. All great literature propels us inward, to undertake the hardest of all enterprises- knowing ourselves! It puts us in touch with ourselves. Great literature- "where courage and cowardice, love and hate, death and justice and joy, all spring to life through the words of great writers" ( in the words of Prof. David Allen White), and through the actions of the characters- has a civilizing influence on us. No one who studies the great Greek epics- The Iliad and the Odyssey, or our own Itihasa - The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, can remain the same afterwards.When we read the ancient Greek philosophers or our own Upanishads and Darshanas, we are struck by the nature and magnitude of the questions they grappled with! And we also realise that in spite of the lapse of millennia, these questions are still with us! The reading of the epics reveals to us that human nature has hardly changed! Thus old, classical literature has proved timeless! After all, it is these same basic motives and themes that are still portrayed through movie and TV!
Great literature humanises us, elevates us, almost in spite of ourselves!
William Faulkner said in his 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech:
I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.
Disservice by the universities
Our blasted modern universities are denying our youngsters opportunities to learn about those instincts and emotions, attitudes and ideas, forces of character and courage that led their forebears to face well or ill the problems of their times. Which problems are still with us ! Instead, the youngsters are taught pet and fancy theories which are here today, gone tomorrow, displaced by a newer fancy! They are all untried opinions "dispensing absinthe morality." Great literature, of all times and peoples, deals with the basic problems of the human condition- what it means to be human, and live in the world -and hence it is timeless.It is also 'borderless' in the sense that it touches some values which have universal validity, even if clothed in local colour, and expressed in local language. No theories can take the place of the act of reading and experiencing it for ourselves.
Modern writings provide momentary excitement, but little of lasting value. They tickle our senses but leave the soul untouched. They are well crafted, but there is little true art in them. Great literature of the past slows us down deliberately and thus calms us and exerts a sobering influence. It makes us pause and reflect.
Illiteracy- no bar to appreciation
In the pre-modern days, people were largely illiterate. But that did not stand in the way of their appreciating the great literary works of the past. Epics like The Iliad were recited, accompanied by music. Even in the 19th century England, there were large sections of people who were not literate. But we are told that as and when instalments of the novels of Charles Dickens came out, illiterate people gathered in the pubs to listen to their reading ! That is how the great works reached the common man. He did not have to go to a darned university to learn them.
This is a tradition which still survives in India : our great Itihasas and puranas like the Bhagavatam are still recited , at times to huge audiences in North India. The popular entertainment through cinema and now the TV has killed many forms of indigenous cultural education and entertainment, but the tradition of oral recital of our great works continues.
“Katha is not a religious gathering; it is a conversation about life.”
MORARI BAPU
Pedagogues and politicians alike propagate literacy in the name of education but the products so raised usually end up reading nothing higher than the newspaper, magazines and cheap fiction. This is the mark of what goes on in the name of mass education.
Printed book & its competitors
Since the invention of printing, learning has mainly been through printed books.This led to the spread of literacy. However, it has not led to people reading great literature.
Literacy is now computer literacy leading to "digital natives". Modern developments like e-books, digital books, Kindle, tablets etc seek to displace the physical books. But researchers tell us that they are really no substitute for the experience of reading the physical book. A report in the Scientific American in 2013 said:
"...... evidence from laboratory experiments, polls and consumer reports indicates that modern screens and e-readers fail to adequately recreate certain tactile experiences of reading on paper that many people miss and, more importantly, prevent people from navigating long texts in an intuitive and satisfying way. In turn, such navigational difficulties may subtly inhibit reading comprehension. Compared with paper, screens may also drain more of our mental resources while we are reading and make it a little harder to remember what we read when we are done."
"In most cases, paper books have more obvious topography than onscreen text. An open paperback presents a reader with two clearly defined domains—the left and right pages—and a total of eight corners with which to orient oneself. A reader can focus on a single page of a paper book without losing sight of the whole text: one can see where the book begins and ends and where one page is in relation to those borders. One can even feel the thickness of the pages read in one hand and pages to be read in the other. Turning the pages of a paper book is like leaving one footprint after another on the trail—there's a rhythm to it and a visible record of how far one has traveled. All these features not only make text in a paper book easily navigable, they also make it easier to form a coherent mental map of the text."[www.scientificamerican.com. Ferris Jabr. April 11, 2013]
There are really no substitutes for the physical book.
Let us read the Classics
We usuallly read something or other- newspaper, magazines, etc. If we cut down on such frivolous reading, we will surely find time to read some classics- our own classics, too. Over the years, it will become a good habit. If we cut down on some spending in other areas, we can surely find money to buy our own books and can build a home library. While buying, we should avoid the temptation to buy 'mass market paperbacks'. They may be cheap, but they are cheap in quality also, and do not last.We have to buy more durable editions- in which the sections are stitched, not just glued. If we view books as life long investment, we will choose quality publications. In the metros, we usually get good used books at reasonable price.
Plutarch, ancient historian."The mind is not an empty vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”
Note:
As for the classics, it is better to buy an edition which contains introduction and notes. The introduction is usually provided by learned scholars who have devoted a lifetime to their study and reflection. The notes explain difficult terms and references which we cannot easily find in dictionaries. These enhance our pleasure and understanding. We may read them at our own pace, without external compulsions and pressures. We may discuss them with like-minded people - the 'conference' as said by Bacon! Thus will our real education begin and continue after we leave the blessed school or college!
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