Learning to read well
To read is to translate, for no two persons’ experiences are the same. A bad reader is a like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally. In learning to read well, scholarship, valuable as it is, is less important than instinct; some great scholars have been bad translators.
W.H. Auden, The Dyer’s hand and other Essays, 4.
[x]#547 fan woensdag 19 mei 2004 @ 00:57:03
