Those who write and those who read---Episode 2

                                             REREADING 

   Curiously enough, one cannot read a book : one can only reread it.  A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. Here's why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work on upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous masterpiece of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is --- a work of fiction or a work of science(the boundary line between the two is not as clear as it is generally believed) --- a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book. 
   Now, this being so, we should ponder the question how does the mind work when the sullen reader is confronted by the sunny book. First, the sullen mood melts away, and for better or worse the reader enters into the spirit of the game. The effort to begin a book, especially if it is praised by people whom the young reader secretly deems to be too old-fashioned or too serious, this effort is often difficult to make ; but once it is made, rewards are various and abundant. Since the master artist used her/his imagination in creating the book, it is natural and fair that the consumer of a book should use her/his imagination too.
   There are at least two varieties of imagination in the reader's case. So it's important to decide which of the two to use in reading a book. First, there is the comparatively lowly kind which turns for support to the simple emotions and is of a definitely personal nature. (There are various subvarieties here, in this first section of emotional reading.) A situation in a book is intensely felt because it reminds us of something that happened to us or to someone we know or knew. Or, again, a reader treasures a book mainly because it evokes a country, a landscape, a mode of living which she/he nostalgically recalls as part of her/his own past. Or, and this is the worst thing a reader can do, she/he identifies herself/himself with a character in the book. This lowly variety is not the kind of imagination scholars like Robert Penn Warren wanted readers to use.

   So what is the authentic instrument to be used by the reader, according to scholars such as RPW ? It is impersonal imagination and artistic delight. What should be established, according to many literary scholars, is an artistic harmonious balance between the reader's mind and the author's mind. RPW believed we ought to remain a little aloof and take pleasure in the aloofness while at the same time we keenly enjoy--- passionately enjoy with tears and shivers --- the inner weave of a given masterpiece. To be quite objective in these matters is of course impossible. Everything that is worthwhile is to some extent subjective. For instance, you sitting there may be merely my dream, and I may be your nightmare. But what is important is that the reader must know when and where to curb her/his imagination and this she/he does by trying to get clear the specific world the author places at her/his disposal. We must see things and hear things, we must visualize the rooms, the clothes, the manners of an author's people. The color of Fanny Price's eyes in Mansfield Park and the furnishing of her cold little room are important.