SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH, by George Herbert Palmer, published 1909 by the Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston as one of the “Riverside Education Monographs.”
George Herbert Palmer （1842-1933）, American philosopher and teacher of English at Harvard University.
My third precept shall be, “Remember the other person.” I have been urging self-cultivation in English as if it concerned one person alone, ourself. But every utterance really concerns two. Its aim is social. Its object is communication; and while unquestionably prompted halfway by the desire to ease our mind through self-expression, it still finds its only justification in the advantage somebody else will draw from what is said. Speaking or writing is, therefore, everywhere a double-ended process. It springs from me, it penetrates him; and both of these ends need watching. Is what I say precisely what I mean? That is an important question. Is what I say so shaped that it can readily be assimilated by him who hears? This is a question of quite as great consequence, and much more likely to be forgotten. We are so full of ourselves that we do not remember the other person. Helter-skelter we pour forth our unaimed words merely for our personal relief, heedless whether they help or hinder him whom they still purport to address. For most of us are grievously lacking in imagination, which is the ability to go outside ourselves and take on the conditions of another mind. Yet this is what the literary artist is always doing. He has at once the ability to see for himself and the ability to see himself as others see him. He can lead two lives as easily as one life; or rather, he has trained himself to consider that other life as of more importance than this, and to reckon his comfort, likings, and labors as quite subordinated to the service of that other. All serious literary work contains within it this readiness to bear another's burden. I must write with pains, that he may read with ease. I must
Find out men's wants and wills,
And meet them there
第三条准则是“想着他人”。我一直在强调英语学习中的自我培养，这似乎只涉及一方，也就是我们自己。但实际上每一话语都涉及两方，其目标是社会性的，其目的是交流。毫无疑问，尽管说话时我们半路上会被自我表现的欲望驱使，但只有当另外一方能够从说话中有所获取时，才能够为说话找到正当理由。因此，任何言说或写作都是双向的过程，从我开始，向他渗透，双方都需要给予关注。我所说的就是我想说的吗？这是一个重要的问题。我所说的话组织得够清晰，足以让听到的人都理解吗？这个问题同样事关重大，但却更容易被人忽略。我们只顾及表现自己，而忘记了对方。我们匆忙地说出那些毫无目的的话，只为一己轻松，不去考虑它们是帮助还是阻碍听话人的理解。我们大多数人都极为缺乏想象力，无法从自己的世界走出，去接受另一种思想，而文学艺术家却一直致力于此。他能够轻松自如地把两种生活合二为一；或者说，他已经能够让自己把别人的生活看得更为重要，并且认为自己的舒适、喜好和劳动都是从属于为他人服务的。所有认真的文学作品随时都在担此重任。我必须痛苦地写作，让他人能够轻松阅读。我必须找出他人的所想所需，然后去满足他们。
As I write, I must unceasingly study what is the line of least intellectual resistance along which my thought may enter the differently constituted mind; and to that line I must subtly adjust, without enfeebling, my meaning. Will this combination of words or that make the meaning clear? Will this order of presentation facilitate swiftness of apprehension, or will it clog the movement? What temperamental perversities in me must be set aside in order to render my reader's approach to what I would tell him pleasant? What temperamental perversities in him are to be accepted by me as fixed facts, conditioning all I say? These are the questions the skilful writer is always asking.
写作时，我必须不停地审视每一行字，尽量保证这些话不遭抵触，而且还能让我的思想进入到不同的思想中去。为了做到这一点，我必须在不削弱我本意的情况下，微调我的意思。这样组词或那样组词能让意思明白吗？这种表达顺序是有助于快速理解还是会阻碍理解？为了顺从读者的阅读方式，让他感受语言的愉悦，我要搁置自己性情中的哪些任性呢？而且，我要接受读者性情中的哪些任性，并将它们作为固定的事实来进行自我调整呢？这些都是娴熟的作家一直自问的问题。
And these questions, as will have been perceived already, are moral questions no less than literary. That golden rule of generous service by which we do for others what we would have them do for us, is a rule of writing too. Every writer who knows his trade perceives that he is a servant; that it is his business to endure hardships if only his reader may win freedom from toil, that no impediment to that reader's understanding is too slight to deserve diligent attention, that he has consequently no right to let a single sentence slip from him unsocialized—I mean, a sentence which cannot become as naturally another's possession as his own. In the very act of asserting himself he lays aside what is distinctively his. And because these qualifications of the writer are moral qualifications, they can never be completely fulfilled so long as we live and write. We may continually approximate them more nearly, but there will still always be possible an alluring refinement of exercise beyond. The world of the literary artist and the moral man is interesting through its inexhaustibility;and he who serves his fellows by writing or by speech is artist and moral man in one. Writing a letter is a simple matter but it is a moral matter and an artistic; for it may be done either with imagination or with raw self-centerdness. What things will my correspondent wish to know? How can I transport him out of his properly alien surroundings into the vivid impressions which now are mine? How can I tell what I long to tell and still be sure the telling will be for him as lucid and delightful as for me? Remember the other person, I say. Do not become absorbed in yourself. Your interests cover only the half of any piece of writing; the other man's less visible half is necessary to complete yours. And if I have here discussed writing more than speech, that is merely because when we speak we utter our first thoughts, but when we write, our second, or better still, our fourth; and in the greater deliberation which writing affords I have felt that the demands of morality and art, which are universally imbedded in language, could be more distinctly perceived. Yet none the less truly do we need to talk for the other person than to write for him.
这些问题，不只是文学问题，同时也是道德问题。欲取之，必先予之。这一黄金法则同样适用于写作。每一位懂行的作家都有为仆意识。忍受艰难是他的职责，这样他的读者才能免于辛劳。不能让读者付出哪怕一点点的精力去排除理解障碍。因此他无权说出不考虑他人的言语——我是指那些不能顺理成章地被他人接受的语言。在坚持己见的同时，他把自己的与众不同搁置在一边，因为这些都是作家的道德素养，所以只要我们还活着并还在写作，它们就不可能得以充分发挥。我们可能会持续靠近这些特质，但仍然还会有更高一级的改进吸引我们。文学艺术家与道德之人的世界因无穷尽而变得有趣。那些通过写作或演讲服务于人的都是艺术家，同时也是道德之人。写信是一件简单的事情，但也包含着道德和艺术，因为我们既可以充满想象地完成它，也可以以自我为中心粗糙地去写。收信人想知道什么？我怎样才能把他从对他而言完全陌生的环境中带出来，继而进入我的生动感觉里？我怎样才能把我所有渴望讲的话讲出来，同时还能保证他和我一样明白愉悦？我想说：想着他人。不要一味专注于自己的世界。你的兴趣只能占据写作的一半；属于对方的那一半隐藏其中，是写作得以完整的必要部分。如果此处我谈写作的篇幅多过口头言说，也只是因为说话时我们发出的是最直接的思想，但写作则表达的是再思甚至是三思后更成熟的想法。深思熟虑之间，我已更加明显地感受到写作在道德和艺术方面的要求，而这是语言的普遍要求。但不是说我们说给别人听时就不用像写给别人看时那么要求严格。
But there remains a fourth weighty precept, and one not altogether detachable from the third. It is this: “Lean upon your subject.” We have seen how the user of language, whether in writing or speaking, works for himself, how he works for another individual too; but there is one more for whom his work is performed, one of greater consequence than any person, and that is his subject. From this comes his primary call. Those who in their utterance fix their thoughts on themselves, or on other selves, never reach power. That resides in the subject. There we must dwell with it, and be content to have no other strength than its. When the frightened schoolboy sits down to write about Spring, he cannot imagine where the thoughts which are to make up his piece are to come from. He cudgels his brains for ideas. He examines his pen point, the curtains, his inkstand, to see if perhaps ideas may not be had from these. He wonders what his teacher will wish him to say, and he tries to recall how the passage sounded in the “Third Reader.” In every direction but one he turns, and that is the direction where lies the prime mover of his toil, his subject. Of that he is afraid. Now, what I want to make evident is that his subject is not in reality his foe, but his friend. It is his only helper. His composition is not to be, as he seems to suppose, a mass of his laborious inventions but it is to be made up exclusively of what the subject dictates. He has only to attend. At present he stands in his own way, making such a din with his private anxieties that he cannot hear the rich suggestions of the subject. He is bothered with considering how he feels, or what he or somebody else will like to see on his paper. This is debilitating business. He must lean on his subject, if he would have his writing strong, and busy himself with what it says, rather than with what he would say. Matthew Arnold, in the important preface to his poems of 1853, contrasting the artistic methods of Greek poetry and modern poetry, sums up the teaching of the Greeks in these words: “All depends upon the subject;choose a fitting action, penetrate yourself with the feeling of its situations; this done, everything else will follow.” And he calls attention to the self-assertive and scatter-brained habits of our time. “How different a way of thinking from this is ours! We can hardly at the present day understand what Menander meant, when he told a man who inquired as to the progress of his comedy that he had finished it, not having yet written a single line, because he had constructed the action of it in his mind. A modern critic would have assured him that the merit of his piece depended on the brilliant things which arose under his pen as he went along. I verily think that the majority of us do not in our heart believe that there is such a thing as a total impression to be derived from a poem, or to be demanded from a poet. We permit the poet to select any action he pleases, and to suffer that action to go as it will, provided he gratifies us with occasional bursts of fine writing and with a shower of isolated thoughts and images.” Great writers put themselves and their personal imaginings out of sight. Their writing becomes a kind of transparent window on which reality is reflected, and through which people see, not them, but that of which they write. How much we know of Shakespeare's characters! How little of Shakespeare! Of him that might almost be said which Isaiah said of God, “He hideth himself.” The best writer is the best mental listener, the one who peers fartherest into his matter and most fully heeds its behests. Preëminently obedient is the strong writer, —refinedly, energetically obedient. I once spent a day with a great novelist when the book which subsequently proved his masterpiece was only half written. I praised his mighty hero, but said I should think the life of an author would be miserable who, having created a character so huge, now had him in hand and must find something for him to do. My friend seemed puzzled by my remark, but after a moment's pause said, “I don't think you know how we work. I have nothing to do with the character. Now that he is created, he will act as he will.”
还有第四条很重要的准则，它和第三条密不可分，即“紧靠主题”。我们讨论过语言的使用者，不管是写作还是说话，要为自己服务，也要为他人服务；但他还要服务于另外一样东西，它的影响力比任何人都大，那就是他的主题。主题产生最初的需求。那些把注意力都集中在自己或别人身上的人是绝不会达到效果的。效果依附于主题。我们必须与话题同在，并要乐意承认它无可匹敌的优势。当小学生胆战心惊地坐下来描写春天时，他根本想象不出作品需要的思路从何而来。他绞尽脑汁，寻找灵感。他一会儿瞧瞧笔尖、瞅瞅窗帘、看看墨台，看看这些东西是不是能给他带来什么想法。他猜想老师希望他说什么，并竭力想象第三读者眼中的文章会是什么样的。他尝试从各个方面去思考，唯独忘记一点，那个让他如此辛劳付出的根源：他的主题。而他畏惧主题。现在我想澄清的是，主题实际上不是敌人，而是朋友，是他唯一的助手。他的文章不是费力想象的虚构，其构成只能依靠主题。他只是出席者。现在，他挡着自己的道，烦恼于无人给他与主题相关的丰富建议，因此一个人大吵大闹。他纠结于自己的感受，纠结于自己或是他人希望他说些什么。这让他心力交瘁。如果他想让自己的作品有力，如果他着力于作品要说什么而不是他要说什么的话，他必须紧靠主题。马修·阿诺德1853年出版的诗集序言中对比了希腊诗歌和现代诗歌的艺术手法，他这样归纳希腊人的智慧：“一切依赖于主题，选择一个适宜的行为，把自己融入情境，这些做好了，其他的就水到渠成了。”他指出我们这个时代疏行专断，思想散漫。“那种思维方式与我们的时代太不相同。现在没有人能懂米南德，当有人问他的喜剧进展时，他告诉人家他已经写完了，而事实上他一个字都还没开始，他只是已经在脑海里构建出了整个故事。可能有现代评论家会向他断言，说作品的亮点都是在写作过程中才唤醒于笔下的。我真的认为我们大多数人从内心深处不相信诗歌需要源于整体印象，也不相信诗歌需要诗人有整体印象。我们允许诗人选择任何他乐意的行为，使其纵性而为，这样他才能偶尔爆发出让读者满意的作品，让读者在大量孤立的思想和意象中得到满足。”伟大的作家无视自我以及自我幻象的塑造。他们的作品是一扇玻璃窗，从中反映的就是现实。透过这面玻璃，人们看到的不是作家，而是作家的作品。我们对莎士比亚笔下的人物了解多少？我们对莎士比亚又了解多少呢？人们评论他可能就像希伯来预言家以赛亚评论上帝一样：“他隐藏了自己”。一流作家都擅于倾听思想。他们目光深远，能洞察到事物最深处，并完全听从它的指令。强势的作家都是卓越的顺从者——巧妙地积极地顺从。我曾经与一位伟大的小说家待了一整天，当时他的那部经典之作只写了一半。我称赞了书中英雄人物的伟大，但也说到这样一来作家的生活可能就悲惨了，因为他创作的角色太伟大了，手头有这样一个人物，还必须得给他找点大事去做。我的朋友满脸困惑，停顿了一下说：“我想你不懂我的工作。我本人与角色无关。既然人物已定，他就可以随心所欲了。”
