SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH (I) By George Herbert Palmer

SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
英语学习的自我培养
By George Herbert Palmer
乔治·赫伯特·帕玛

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.

English studies have four aims: the mastery of our language as a science, as a history, as a joy, and as a tool. I am concerned with but one, the mastery of it as a tool. Philology and grammar present it as a science: the one attempting to follow its words, the other its sentence, through all the intricacies of their growth, and so to manifest laws which lie hidden in these airy products no less than in the moving stars or the myriad flowers of spring. Fascinating and important as all this is, I do not recommend it here. For I want to call attention only to that sort of English study which can be carried on without any large apparatus of books. For a reason similar though less cogent, I do not urge historical study. Probably the current of English literature is more attractive through its continuity than that of any other nation. Notable works in verse and prose have appeared in long succession, and without gaps intervening, in a way that would be hard to parallel in any other language known to man. A bounteous endowment is for every English speaker, and one which should stimulate us to trace the marvelous and close-linked progress from the times of the Saxons to those of Tennyson and Kipling. Literature, too, has this advantage over every other species of art study, that everybody can examine the original masterpieces and not depend on reproductions, as in the cases of painting, sculpture, and architecture; or on intermediate interpretation, as in the case of music. To-day most of these masterpieces can be studied as a history only at the cost of solid time and continuous attention, much more time than the majority of those I am addressing can afford. By most of us our mighty literature cannot be taken in its continuous current, the latter stretches proving interesting through relation with the earlier. It must be taken fragmentarily, if at all, the attention delaying on those parts only which offer the greatest beauty or promise the best exhilaration. In other words, English may be possible as a joy where it is not possible as a history. In the endless wealth which our poetry, story, essay, and drama afford, every disposition may find its appropriate nutriment, correction, or solace. He is unwise, however busy, who does not have his loved authors, veritable friends with whom he takes refuge in the intervals of work, and by whose intimacy he enlarges, refines, sweetens, and emboldens his own limited existence. Yet the fact that English as joy must largely be conditioned by individual taste prevents me from offering general rules for its pursuit. The road which leads one man straight to enjoyment leads another to tedium. In all literary enjoyment there is something incalculable, something wayward, eluding the precision of rule and rendering inexact the precepts of him who would point out the path to it. While I believe that many suggestions may be made, useful to the young enjoyer, and promotive of his wise vagrancy, I shall not undertake here the complicated task of offering them. Let enjoyment go, let science go, still English remains, English as a tool. Every hour our language is an engine for communicating with others, every instant for fashioning the thoughts of our minds. I want to call attention to the means of mastering this curious and essential tool, and to land everyone who hears me to become discontented with his employment of it.
学习英语的目标有四：视为科学习之，视为历史明之，视为娱乐悦之，视为工具用之。我只关注其中一点：视为工具用之。语文学和语法学将之视为一门科学，分别以词和句为研究脉络，厘清各自纷繁复杂的发展过程，发现潜于词句背后的语言规则，好比从移动的点点繁星，春日的簇锦繁花中寻求规律。此种思路固然重要而且也有趣，但在此我并不推介，因为我希望大家关注的仅仅是那类脱离群书厚册的英语学习。同理，我也不主张视其为历史明之，虽原因差强人意。现今的英语文学源远流长，可能比其他任何民族的文学都更充满吸引力。文学杰作接连涌现从未间断，此乃人类其他任何语言所难以匹敌。每个说英语的人都赋有一种天资，激励我们去追溯从撒克逊人时期一直到诗人丁尼森和吉普林时代的非凡发展历程。文学还有其胜过其他任何艺术研究的优势，即每个人都可以研究经典原作，而不用依赖于复制品，比如绘画、雕刻和建筑，也无需依靠媒介表达，比如音乐。在当下，要把经典作品视为历史来研究，大多必须投入充足的时间和持续的关注，而这对本书的大多数读者而言是无法承受的。我们大多数人不能持续地关注现今强大的文学，只有通过和早期文学的联系，后期文学的发展才显得更加有趣。如果必须碎片式地阅读文学，我们的注意力则只会停留在那些能够提供至美和允诺极乐的文学段落上。换言之，如果不是从历史的角度学习英语，或许可以从娱乐入手。在我们的诗歌、小说、散文、戏剧等创造的无尽财富中，每一部分都能找到适合自己的养分、修正和慰藉。一个人无论多忙，如果没有自己热爱的作者——他真正的朋友，那么他是不明智的。因为热爱一个作者，可以让他在工作间隙有一席避难之地，他与作者的亲密关系可以让他有限的存在得以扩充、完善，从而让他变得心平气和，大胆英勇。然而，英语作为一种乐趣主要取决于个人喜好，这样我就无法为这类人提供普适法则了，因为吾之蜜糖可能成为彼之砒霜。就文学的乐趣而言，有些无法预测，有些反复无常，它没有精准的规则可言，试图承担引路人角色的人的格言显得并不准确。虽然我相信许多建议的提出对年轻的“文学逐乐者”有所裨益，让他们游移不定的思想变得明智，但在此我并不打算着手其繁、出计献策。驱散乐趣的喧嚣，剥离科学的外衣，英语就是个工具。我们的语言无时无刻不在塑造大脑中的思维，充当与他人交流的工具。我想提请大家掌握这不同寻常的重要工具，让每一位听到我想法的人都不再满足于自己对这个工具的使用。

The importance of literary power needs no long argument. Everybody acknowledges it, and sees that without it all other human faculties are maimed. Shakespeare says that “Time insults o'er dull and speechless tribes.” It and all who live in it insult over the speechless person. So mutually dependent are we that on our swift and full communication with one another is staked the success of almost every scheme we form. He who cannot is left to the poverty of individual resource; for men do what we desire only when persuaded. The persuasive and explanatory tongue is, therefore, one of the chief levers of life. Its leverage is felt within us as well as without, for expression and thought are integrally bound together. We do not first possess completed thoughts, and then express them. The very formation of the outward product extends, sharpens, enriches the mind which produces, so that he who gives forth little after a time is likely enough to discover that he has little to give forth. By expression, too, we may carry benefits and our names to a far generation. This durable character of fragile language puts a wide difference of worth between it and some of the other great objects of desire, —health, wealth, and beauty, for example. These are notoriously liable to accident. We tremble while we have them. But literary power, once ours, is more likely than any other possession to be ours always. It perpetuates and enlarges itself by the very fact of its existence, and perishes only with the decay of the man himself. For this reason, because more than health, wealth, and beauty, literary style may be called the man. Good judges have found in it the final test of culture, and have said that he and he alone, is a well-educated person who uses his language with power and beauty. The supreme and ultimate product of civilization, it has been well said, is two or three persons talking together in a room. Between ourselves and our language there accordingly springs up an association peculiarly close. We are sensitive to criticism of our speech as of our manners. The young man looks up with awe to him who has written a book, as already half divine; and the graceful speaker is a universal object of envy.
文学的力量其重要性勿需长辩。众所周知，没有它，人类的才智就会变得残缺。莎士比亚曾说：时间只能对愚昧无言的种族猖狂。[1]文学及置身于其中之人都会藐视不会用言语表达之人。我们和文学之间相互依存，通过彼此之间敏捷充分的交流，才能使每项计划顺利完成。做不到这一点的人其个体资源就会匮乏，因为人只有在被说服之时才会做我们期望之事。因此，口才成为生活的主要手段之一。这种手段既外显于表达，又内存于心智，因为语言表达和思维能力是一个整体。我们并不是首先拥有完整的思维，然后才将其表达出来。正是因为外在语言的表达可以使心智这一形成本源变得更具延展性、敏锐性和丰富性，所以，一段时间不说话的人很有可能会发现自己无话可说。同样，借助于语言表达，我们可以使自己的价值和声名长久流传。语言是脆弱的，但它的持续性特征使得它与其他人类欲求之物，比如健康、财富、美貌等之间出现了较大的价值差异。后者即使为我们拥有，但很有可能因一些变故而被剥夺，所以我们总是惴惴不安。但是，文学的力量一旦为我们所有，就可能比其他任何东西都更加属于我们自己。凭借自身的存在，它会继续发展并不断充实，直到随着人肉身的陨灭而消散。因此，相较于健康、财富、美貌，拥有文学风格才更能被称为人。优秀的鉴赏家已经发现，终极的修养是在文学风格中，并且还说只有语言有力量有美感的人是有修养之人。有人说，文明的至高终极产物也就是二三人同处一屋交谈，让说话的我们与我们所使用的语言之间产生相应的密切联系。因而，在我们和我们的语言之间也就相应地出现了一种特别的紧密联合。我们对自己的言谈就像对自己的举止一样敏感。年轻人对著书之人充满敬畏，几乎视其为神。说话人言语优雅则会是众人钦羡的对象。

But the very fact that literary endowment is immediately recognized and eagerly envied has induced a strange illusion in regard to it. It is supposed to be something mysterious, innate in him who possesses it, and quite out of the reach of him who has it not. The very contrary is the fact. No human employment is more free and calculable than the winning of language. Undoubtedly there are natural aptitudes for it, as there are for farming, seamanship, or being a good husband. But nowhere is straight work more effective. Persistence, care, discriminating observation, ingenuity, refusal to lose heart, —tend toward it here with special security. Whoever goes to his grave with bad English in his mouth has no one to blame but himself for the disagreeable taste; for if faulty speech can be inherited, it can be exterminated too. I hope to point out some of the methods of substituting good English for bad. And since my space is brief, and I wish to be remembered, I throw what I have to say into the forms of four simple precepts, which, if pertinaciously obeyed, will, I believe, give anybody effective mastery of English as a tool.
文学天赋能迅速得到人们认可并引起艳羡，但这也造成一种奇怪的假象，似乎文学天赋是拥有者与生俱来的一种神秘特质，是不具备这种特质的人难以企及的。而事实正好相反。在人类所能中，没有哪一样能比驾驭语言更自由更可靠。毋庸置疑，有的人确实有学习语言的天资，就像有的人天生擅于耕作，有的人长于航海，有的善为人夫一样。但是，最有效的始终是后天的付出。坚持不懈、悉心谨慎、辨别观察、独出心裁、百折不挠这些品质才是其根本保障。至死英语都说不好的人要怪也只能怪自己没品，因为如果病语能被继承的话，它也就能被消灭。我希望提供一些方法，让英语说不好的人说得好。鉴于空间有限，也因为我想留名，所以我把所有我要说的归结为四个简单的准则。如果坚持遵从，那么任何人都可以有效地将英语作为一种工具掌握好。

First, then, “Look well to your speech.” It is commonly supposed that when a man seeks literary power he goes to his room and plans an article for the press. But this is to begin literary culture at the wrong end. We speak a hundred times for every once we write. The busiest writer produces little more than a volume a year, not so much as his talk would amount to in a week. Consequently through speech it is usually decided whether a man is to have command of a language or not. If he is slovenly in his ninety-nine cases of talking, he can seldom pull himself up to strength and exactitude in the hundredth case of writing. A person is made in one piece, and the same being runs through a multitude of performances. Whether words are uttered on paper or to the air, the effect on the utterer is the same. Vigor or feebleness resulted according as energy or slackness has been in command. I know that certain adaptations to a new field are often necessary. A good speaker may find awkwardness in himself when he comes to write, a good writer when he speaks. And certainly cases occur where a man exhibits distinct strength in one of the two, speaking or writing, and not in the other. But such cases are rare. As a rule, language once within our control can be employed for oral or for written purposes. And since the opportunities for oral practice enormously outbalance those for written, it is the oral which are chiefly significant in the development of literary power. We rightly say of the accomplished writer that he shows a mastery of his own tongue.
首先，“悉心留意自己的言语”。通常认为，若有人要寻求文学的力量，他会走进自己的房间，认认真真写好一篇文章去发表，但这其实是本末倒置的。动笔一回，已是言说百次。最忙碌的作家一年产出不过一卷，还不及他一周的言谈。因而，人们总是通过言语来判定一个人是否掌握好了自己的语言。如果一个人在九十九次的口头言说中都很马虎懒散，那么他在第一百次的笔头写作中也几乎不可能做到挥斥方遒、严谨正确。文如其人，人有千象。懒散懈怠导致语言无力，精力充沛则使表达充满活力。我知道顺应新领域做出调整经常是必须的。优秀的演说家伏案落笔时会感到无所适从，而优秀的作家唇口开阖时又会语无伦次。在言说和写作之中，有些人只是长于其一，不能兼攻两项。但这种情况其实是比较少见的。通常，语言一经掌握，就均可服务于言谈与写作。由于口头练习的机会远远多于书面写作，所以在培养文学功力方面，口头表达尤其重要。我们可以公正地讲，成绩斐然的作家也是巧舌如簧。

This predominant influence of speech marks nearly all great epochs of literature. The Homeric poems are addressed to the ear, not to the eye. It is doubtful if Homer knew writing, certain that he knew profoundly every quality of the tongue, —veracity, vividness, shortness of sentence, simplicity of thought, obligation to insure swift apprehension. Writing and rigidity are apt to go together. In these smooth-slipping verses one catches everywhere the voice. So, too, the aphorisms of Hesiod might naturally pass from mouth to mouth, and the stories of Herodotus be told by an old man at the fireside. Early Greek literature is plastic and garrulous. Its distinctive glory is that it contains no literary note, that it gives forth human feeling not in conventional arrangement, but with apparent spontaneity—in short, that it is speech literature, not book literature. And the same tendency continued long among the Greeks. At the culmination of their power, the drama was their chief literary form—the drama, which is but speech ennobled, connected, clarified. Plato, following the dramatic precedent and the precedent of his talking master, accepted conversation as his medium for philosophy, and imparted to it the vivacity, ease, waywardness even, which the best conversation exhibits. Nor was the experience of the Greeks peculiar. Our literature shows a similar tendency. Its bookish times are its decadent times, its talking times its glory. Chaucer, like Herodotus, is a story-teller, and follows the lead of those who on the Continent entertained courtly circles with pleasant tales. Shakespeare and his fellows in the spacious times of great Elizabeth did not concern themselves with publication. Marston, in one of his prefaces, thinks it necessary to apologize for putting his piece in print, and says he would not have done such a thing if unscrupulous persons, hearing the play at the theater, had not already printed corrupt versions of it. Even the “Queen Anne's men,” far removed though they are from anything dramatic, still shape their ideals of literature on speech. The essays of the “Spectator,” the poems of Pope, are the remarks of a cultivated gentleman at an evening party. Here is the brevity, the good taste, the light touch, the neat epigram, the avoidance of whatever might stir passion, controversy, or laborious thought, which characterize the conversation of a well-bred man. Indeed, it is hard to see how any literature can be long vital which is based on the thought of a book and not on that of living utterance. Unless the speech notion is uppermost, words will not run swiftly to their mark. They delay in delicate phrasings while naturalness and a sense of reality disappear. Women are the best talkers. I sometimes please myself with noticing that three of the greatest periods of English literature coincide with the reigns of the three English queens.
口头言说的决定性影响力在几乎所有伟大的文学时代都留有印记。荷马史诗是说给耳朵听的，不是写给眼睛看的。荷马是否会写作尚未可知，但可以肯定的是他精于口头言说，熟知它的每一个特质：精确、生动、言简、意赅、易懂，而写作往往与刻板联系在一起。在那些流畅圆润的诗句中人们随处都能听到声音的回响，所以诗人赫西奥德的格言能很自然地口口相传，历史学家希罗多德的故事也可以由炉火旁的老人讲述。早期的希腊文学富有创造力，且繁言多语。它的显著成就在于没有文学注释，从而给人感觉行文排列不按惯例，而是明显出于自发——简言之，这是口头文学，而非书面文学。这个趋势在希腊持续了很长一段时间。在其顶峰时期，戏剧是当时的主要文学形式——而戏剧的高贵、连贯与明晰都只是靠言语来实现的。柏拉图秉承了戏剧这一文学表达先例，因袭导师苏格拉底的风格，将“对话”作为探讨哲学的媒介，把哲学讲得活泼、生动，甚至任性，而这些都是最出色的对话才能显示出的特质。这一倾向并非希腊人独有，我们的文学也表现出类似的趋势。学究的时代是颓废的时代，对话的时代才是辉煌的。英国作家乔叟与希罗多德一样，是个讲故事的人。他效仿前人，在欧洲大陆上用讨人喜欢的故事取悦宫廷。在伟大的伊丽莎白扩张时期，莎士比亚和他的同伴们并不关心文学出版。马斯顿在他一部作品的前言中写道，他为刊发自己的作品致歉，若非一些无耻之徒在剧院听了剧后先行刊印了拙劣的版本，他也不会出此下策。安妮女王统治时期的文学大家虽然已经远离戏剧形式的创作，但仍旧以口头言说的形式来塑造理想的文学。《旁观者》中的文辞，蒲伯的诗篇，这些都会被参加晚宴的儒雅文士引用。这些引辞简洁明了、品味高雅、轻触浅沾、机智警世，能避免引起任何可能的情绪波动、争议辩驳或者沟通不畅，而这些正是儒雅之士的言谈特点。实际上，任何基于书本思想而非活生生话语的文学，其活力都很难持久。假如不把言说观念摆在首位，表达内容就会被延迟，会被精细的措辞耽误，从而失去它的自然和现实感。女性最擅长讲话。当我注意到英国文学史上最伟大的三个时期刚巧都是女性执政时，有时会陶然自乐。

Fortunate it is, then, that self-cultivation in the use of English must chiefly come through speech; because we are always speaking whatever else we do. In opportunities for acquiring a mastery of language, the poorest and busiest are at no large disadvantage as compared with the leisured rich. It is true the strong impulse which comes from the suggestion and approval of society may in some cases be absent, but this can be compensated by the sturdy purpose of the learner. A recognition of the beauty of well-ordered words, a strong desire, patience under discouragements, and promptness in counting every occasion as of consequence, —these are the simple agencies which sweep one on to power. Watch your speech, then. That is all which is needed. Only it is desirable to know what qualities of speech to watch for. I find three—accuracy, audacity, and range—and I will say a few words about each.
有幸的是，英语学习的自我培养主要得靠口头说，因为不管我们做什么，我们总是要讲话。就掌握好一门语言的概率来说，最穷和最忙的人与悠闲的富人相比并没有多大的劣势。的确，在一些情况下，源自于社会鼓励与认可的强大动力可能会有所缺失，但学习者坚定的目标感足以弥补这样的不足。对用词井然美的认识，强烈的欲望，挫败之时的耐心，对每一次机会及时把握，这些都是让人迅速掌握语言能力的基本特质。关注自己的言语，这就是你要做的。当然，还需要明确的是要关注你话语的哪些方面，我发现有三个方面特别重要——用词准确、胆大、词汇量。下面我来分别谈一谈。