Eskişehir, Türkiye
Thursday 4 April 2024
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
From the table drawer he took out a penholder, a bottle of ink, and a thick, quarto-sized blank book with a red back and a marbled cover.
It was a peculiarly beautiful book.
Its smooth creamy paper, a little yellowed by age, was of a kind that had not been manufactured for at least forty years past.
The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary.
Winston fitted a nib into the penholder and sucked it to get the grease off.
The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had procured one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink-pencil.
Actually he was not used to writing by hand.
He dipped the pen into the ink and then faltered for just a second.
A tremor had gone through his bowels.
To mark the paper was the decisive act.
In small clumsy letters he wrote:
“April 4th, 1984.“
(George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four)
“This morning I polished up an old box I found upstairs.
It is of walnut with black and yellow inlay and a brass crest on the lid.
It makes a beautiful box for relics – so in went all the letters, pressed flowers, Niersteiner corks, handkerchiefs, Tilia platyphyllos, etc.
It will still hold a few more letters, though it is quite nicely filled.
I wonder what will happen to it.
If I were to die tomorrow I should either have it sent back to him or buried with me (probably the latter) – but as it seems not very likely that I shall, I daresay it may be in my possession for years and years, until one day it becomes junk again and the box returns to the place where I found it – perhaps with the relics still in it.
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
Above: Cemetery in China
What a great pleasure and delight there is in being really sentimental.
I thought about this as I picked flowers in the garden this morning – violets – a great patch of them smelling lovely, sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes, primroses plain and coloured, scyllas and wild celandines, so very much spring flowers.
People who are not sentimental, who never keep relics, brood on anniversaries, kiss photographs “good night” and “good morning”, must miss a good deal.
Of course it is all rather self-conscious and cultivated, but it comes do easily that at least a little of it must spring from the heart.
I could write a lovely metaphysical poem about the relics of love in a box.
Perhaps I will – for his 70th birthday (in March 1989).“
(3 April 1940, Barbara Pym)
Swift swallows and spring days were shuttling by;
Of ninety radiant ones three score had fled.
Young grass spread all its green to heaven’s rim
Some blossoms marked pear branches with white dots.
Now came the Feast of Light in the third month
With graveyard rites and junkets on the green.
As merry pilgrims flocked from near and far,
The sisters and their brother went for a stroll.
The Tale of Kiều, Nguyen Du
Above: The first page of the Tale of Kiều
The Qingming Festival or Ching Ming Festival, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day in English (sometimes also called Chinese Memorial Day, Ancestors’ Day, the Clear Brightness Festival, or the Pure Brightness Festival), is a traditional Chinese festival observed by ethnic Chinese in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
A celebration of spring, it falls on the first day of the fifth solar term (also called Qingming) of the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar.
This makes it the 15th day after the Spring Equinox, either on 4, 5 or 6 April in a given year.
During Qingming, Chinese families visit the tombs of their ancestors to clean the gravesites and make ritual offerings to their ancestors.
Offerings would typically include traditional food dishes and the burning of joss sticks and joss paper.
Above: Joss sticks / incense
Above: Stacks of joss paper for sale at a store
The holiday recognizes the traditional reverence of one’s ancestors in Chinese culture.
Above: The Classic of Filial Piety
The origins of the Qingming Festival go back more than 2,500 years, although the observance has changed significantly.
It became a public holiday in mainland China in 2008, where it is associated with the consumption of gingtuan, green dumplings made of glutinous rice and Chinese mugwort or barley grass.
Above: Qingtuan, traditional Chinese food of the Qingming festival
Above: Chapssal (glutinous rice)
Above: Barley field
In Taiwan, the public holiday was in the past observed on 5 April to honor the death of Chiang Kai-shek on that day in 1975, but with Chiang’s popularity waning, this convention is not being observed.
Above: Chinese politician / revolutionary / military leader Chiang Kai-shek (1887 – 1975)
A confection called caozaiguo or shuchuguo, made with Jersey cudweed, is consumed there.
Above: Tsukakkue or caozai guo, steamed glutinous flour dumpling with herbal wrapper
A similar holiday is observed in the Ryukyu Islands, called Shīmī in the local language.
The festival originated from the Cold Food or Hanshi Festival which is said to commemorate Jie Zitui, a nobleman of the state of Jin (modern Shanxi) during the Spring and Autumn Period.
Above: Song dynasty painting attributed to Li Tang, showing the return of Chong’er from exile to the state of Jin. He became Duke Wen and reigned from 636 to 628 BC.
Above: Temple on Mt Mian near Jiexiu, Shanxi, China
Amid the Li Ji Unrest (657 – 651 BC), he followed his master Prince Chong’er in 655 BC to exile among the Di tribes and around China.
Supposedly, he once even cut flesh from his own thigh to provide his lord with soup.
In 636 BC, Duke Mu of Qin invaded Jin and enthroned Chong’er as its duke, where he was generous in rewarding those who had helped him in his time of need.
Owing either to his own high-mindedness or to the duke’s neglect, however, Jie was long passed over.
He finally retired to the forest around Mount Mian with his elderly mother.
The duke went to the forest in 636 BC but could not find them.
He then ordered his men to set fire to the forest in order to force Jie out.
When Jie and his mother were killed instead, the duke ordered that thenceforth no one should light a fire on the date of Jie’s death.
The people of Shanxi subsequently revered Jie as an immortal and avoided lighting fires for as long as a month in the depths of winter, a practice so injurious to children and the elderly that the area’s rulers unsuccessfully attempted to ban it for centuries.
A compromise finally developed where it was restricted to 3 days around the Qingming solar term in mid-spring.
Above: Mt Mian near Jiexiu, Shanxi, China
The present importance of the holiday is credited to Emperor Xuanzong of Tang.
Above: Portrait of Tang Xuanzong Li Longji (685 – 762)
Wealthy citizens in China were reportedly holding too many extravagant and ostentatiously expensive ceremonies in honour of their ancestors.
Above: Tong’s ancestral hall, Lantern Festival offering
In AD 732, Xuanzong sought to curb this practice by declaring that such respects could be formally paid only once a year, on Qingming.
Qingming Festival is when Chinese people traditionally visit ancestral tombs to sweep them.
This tradition has been legislated by the Emperors who built majestic imperial tombstones for every dynasty.
For thousands of years, the Chinese imperials, nobility, peasantry and merchants alike have gathered together to remember the lives of the departed, to visit their tombstones to perform Confucian filial piety by tombsweeping, to visit burial grounds, graveyards or in modern urban cities, the city columbaria, to perform groundskeeping and maintenance and to commit to pray for their ancestors in the uniquely Chinese concept of the afterlife and to offer remembrances of their ancestors to living blood relatives, their kith and kin.
In some places, people believe that sweeping the tomb is only allowed during this festival, as they believe the dead will get disturbed if the sweeping is done on other days.
Above: An Chinese-Indonesian family prays for their deceased members at Sanggar Agung Temple, Surabaya
The young and old alike kneel down to offer prayers before tombstones of the ancestors, offer the burning of joss in both the forms of incense sticks (joss-sticks) and silver-leafed paper (joss paper), sweep the tombs and offer food in memory of the ancestors.
Depending on the religion of the observers, some pray to a higher deity to honour their ancestors, while others may pray directly to the ancestral spirits.
People who live far away and can’t travel to their ancestors’ tombs may make a sacrifice from a distance.
Above: Qingming Festival, Chonghe Dong Cemetery, Kolkata, India
These rites have a long tradition in Asia, especially among the imperialty who legislated these rituals into a national religion.
They have been preserved especially by the peasantry and are most popular with farmers today, who believe that continued observances will ensure fruitful harvests ahead by appeasing the spirits in the other world.
Religious symbols of ritual purity, such as pomegranate and willow branches, are popular at this time.
Above: Pomegranate
Some people wear willow twigs on their heads on Qingming or stick willow branches on their homes.
There are similarities to palm leaves used on Palm Sundays in Christianity.
Both are religious rituals.
Furthermore, the belief is that the willow branches will help ward off misfortune.
Above: Golden weeping willow
After gathering on Qingming to perform Confucian clan and family duties at the tombstones, graveyards or columbaria, participants spend the rest of the day in clan or family outings, before they start the spring plowing.
Historically, people would often sing and dance.
Qingming was a time when young couples traditionally started courting.
Another popular thing to do is to fly kites in the shapes of animals or characters from folk tales or Chinese opera.
Above: Shao opera performance of The Limestone Rhyme, a historical play set in the Ming dynasty, in Shanghai
Another common practice is to carry flowers instead of burning paper, incense or firecrackers.
Traditionally, a family will burn spirit money (joss paper) and paper replicas of material goods such as cars, homes, phones and paper servants.
This action usually happens during the Qingming festival.
Above: Imitation paper money (issued by “The Bank of Heaven and Earth“) and yuanbao burnt at ancestors’ graves around the time of the Ghost Festival. (Jiangsu Province)
In Chinese culture, it is believed that people still need all of those things in the afterlife.
Then family members take turns to kowtow three to nine times (depending on the family adherence to traditional values) before the tomb of the ancestors.
The kowtowing ritual in front of the grave is performed in the order of patriarchal seniority within the family.
After the ancestor worship at the grave site, the whole family or the whole clan feast on the food and drink they have brought for the worship.
Above: Three people ‘kowtowing‘ to an altar, one woman crying, others smoking opium in paying their last respects to a Chinese merchant’s wife
Another ritual related to the festival is the cockfight, as well as being available within that historic and cultural context at Kaifeng Millennium City Park (Qingming Riverside Landscape Garden).
Above: Cock fight
Above: Dragon Pavilion, Kaifeng, Henan Province, China
The holiday is often marked by people paying respects to those who are considered national or legendary heroes or those exemplary Chinese figures who died in events considered politically sensitive.
The April 5th Movement and the Tiananmen Incident were major events in Chinese history which occurred on Qingming.
After Premier Zhou Enlai died in 1976, thousands honored him during the festival to pay their respects.
Above: Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai (1898 – 1976)
Above: Tiananmen Incident – Crowds of mourners gathering in Tiananmen Square on 5 April 1976
Some also pay respects to politically sensitive people such as Zhao Ziyang.
Above: Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang (1919 – 2005)
In Taiwan, the Qingming Festival was not a public holiday until 1972.
Above: Flag of Taiwan
Three years later, upon the death of Chiang Kai-shek on 5 April 1975, the Kuomintang government declared that the anniversary of Chiang’s death be observed alongside the festival.
The practice was abolished in 2007.
Above: Emblem of the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party
Despite the festival having no official status, the overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asian nations, such as those in Singapore and Malaysia, take this festival seriously and observe its traditions faithfully.
Above: Flag of Singapore
Some Qingming rituals and ancestral veneration decorum observed by the overseas Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore can be dated back to Ming and Qing dynasties, as the overseas communities were not affected by the Cultural Revolution in Mainland China.
Above: Colored papers placed on a grave during Qingming Festival, Bukit Brown Cemetery, Singapore
Qingming in Malaysia is an elaborate family function or a clan feast (usually organized by the respective clan association) to commemorate and honour recently deceased relatives at their grave sites and distant ancestors from China at home altars, clan temples or makeshift altars in Buddhist or Taoist temples.
Above: Flag of Malaysia
For the overseas Chinese community, the Qingming festival is very much a solemn family event and, at the same time, a family obligation.
They see this festival as a time of reflection for honouring and giving thanks to their forefathers.
Overseas Chinese normally visit the graves of their recently deceased relatives on the weekend nearest to the actual date.
According to the ancient custom, grave site veneration is only permissible ten days before and after the Qingming Festival.
If the visit is not on the actual date, normally veneration before Qingming is encouraged.
Above: Flag of China
The Qingming Festival in Malaysia and Singapore normally starts early in the morning by paying respect to distant ancestors from China at home altars.
This is followed by visiting the graves of close relatives in the country.
Some follow the concept of filial piety to the extent of visiting the graves of their ancestors in mainland China.
Above: (in dark green) China and (in light green) Taiwan
During the Tang dynasty, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang promoted large-scale tug of war games, using ropes of up to 167 metres (548 ft) with shorter ropes attached and more than 500 people on each end of the rope.
Each side also had its own team of drummers to encourage the participants.
In honour of these customs, families often go hiking or kiting, play Chinese soccer or tug-of-war and plant trees, including willow trees.
The Qingming festival is also a part of spiritual and religious practices in China, and is associated with Buddhism.
For example, Buddhism teaches that those who die with guilt are unable to eat in the afterlife, except on the day of the Qingming festival.
Above: The Dharma Wheel, a symbol of Buddhism
The Qingming festival holiday has a significance in the Chinese tea culture since this specific day divides the fresh green teas by their picking dates.
Green teas made from leaves picked before this date are given the prestigious ‘pre-Qingming tea’ designation which commands a much higher price tag.
These teas are prized for their aroma, taste, and tenderness.
The Qingming festival was originally considered the day with the best spring weather, when many people would go out and travel.
The Old Book of Tang describes this custom and mentions of it may be found in ancient poetry.
Above: Along the River During the Qingming Festival, detail of the original version showing wooden bridge
China and those springing from Chinese culture are not unique for commemorating or communing with the dead.
All Saints’ Day (1 November) and All Souls’ Day (2 November) are two Christian observances commemorating the dead.
Above: All-Saints
Above: The Day of the Dead (1859), William-Adolphe Bouguereau
The Day of the Dead (1 November) is a a Mexican celebration similar to the Qingming Festival.
Above: Traditional Day of the Dead altar in Milpa Alta, Mexico City, Mexico
The veneration of the dead, including one’s ancestors, is based on love and respect for the deceased.
In some cultures, it is related to beliefs that the dead have a continued existence and may possess the ability to influence the fortune of the living.
Some groups venerate their direct, familial ancestors.
Certain religious groups, in particular the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church venerate saints as intercessors with God.
The latter also believes in prayer for departed souls in Purgatory.
Other religious groups, however, consider veneration of the dead to be idolatry and a sin.
In European, Asian, Oceanian, African and Afro-diasporic cultures (which includes but should be distinguished from multiple cultures and Indigenous populations in the Americas who were never influenced by the African Diaspora), the goal of ancestor veneration is to ensure the ancestors’ continued well-being and positive disposition towards the living, and sometimes to ask for special favours or assistance.
The social or non-religious function of ancestor veneration is to cultivate kinship values, such as filial piety, family loyalty, and continuity of the family lineage.
Ancestor veneration occurs in societies with every degree of social, political, and technological complexity, and it remains an important component of various religious practices in modern times.
Ancestor reverence is not the same as the worship of a deity or deities.
In some Afro-diasporic cultures, ancestors are seen as being able to intercede on behalf of the living, often as messengers between humans and God.
As spirits who were once human themselves, they are seen as being better able to understand human needs than would a divine being.
In other cultures, the purpose of ancestor veneration is not to ask for favors but to do one’s filial duty.
Some cultures believe that their ancestors actually need to be provided for by their descendants, and their practices include offerings of food and other provisions.
Others do not believe that the ancestors are even aware of what their descendants do for them, but that the expression of filial piety is what is important.
Most cultures who practice ancestor veneration do not call it “ancestor worship“.
In English, the word worship usually but not always refers to the reverent love and devotion accorded a deity (god) or God.
However, in other cultures, this act of worship does not confer any belief that the departed ancestors have become some kind of deity.
Rather, the act is a way to express filial duty, devotion and respect and look after ancestors in their afterlives as well as seek their guidance for their living descendants.
In this regard, many cultures and religions have similar practices.
Some may visit the graves of their parents or other ancestors, leave flowers and pray to them in order to honor and remember them, while also asking their ancestors to continue to look after them.
However, this would not be considered as worshipping them since the term worship may not always convey such meaning in the exclusive and narrow context of certain Western European Christian traditions.
Above: A scenic cemetery in rural Spain
My own view of remembering the dead may be specific to me only.
I was raised by foster parents who, for all their virtues, made no doubt that their desire to care for me revolved on the funding that the province provided for my maintenance.
They have long since passed away and are buried in the shadow of Mount Maple in Ogdensburg Cemetery, St. Philippe d’Argenteuil, Québec, Canada.
I have visited their grave perhaps twice since their demise from cancer.
I search for filial feelings but they lie buried beneath the surface.
I sought out my biological family in a journey that took me to the residences of my father and siblings scattered across Canada and to the birthplace and final resting place of my mother in the States.
My mother is buried in a pauper’s field in a Fort Lauderdale cemetery next to a factory painted with the slogan “Baby Love“.
No irony lost there.
It is said that blood is thicker than water, but what isn’t said is that time spent together is what creates that bond within a family.
I was separated from my biological family as a toddler and reunited for a brief time after two decades had passed.
Lost time cannot build bridges.
Filial feelings cannot be manufactured.
I envy people who have had the good fortune to have had a family worthy of reverence.
But, in spite of the imperfections of my past, I do have reverence for the past.
But the past is only relevant to me in the manner in which it makes me feel in the present.
Standing upon the graves of those who once lived should provoke within me a sense of who they were and what they meant to me and others.
Above: Kerepesi Cemetery, Budapest, Hungary
Rarely do researchers or writers “let their hair down“, revealing that they started where each of us must start:
With mere infatuation for a subject.
The messy beginnings of all serious inquiries are hidden from our view in that “foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart” where, as W.B. Yeats asserted, “all the ladders start“, so we tend to get a misleading picture of how intellectual and creative projects got started.
Finding those subjects that connect with something within you can be done by starting a journal, reconnoitering new realms of knowledge, entering a field and developing your first projects.
Before you immerse yourself in the “literature of the field” you can and should let your own imagination play and come up with some theories of your own.
This sounds presumptious to most people.
We were all taught to believe that you need to learn what other people have found and thought before knowing enough to offer your own ideas.
Of course, it makes sense to take full advantage of your predecessors.
Your own ideas should eventually take into account what is already known, but imaginative conjectures at an early stage can be exicting, harmless and occasionally rewarding.
By adding this stage to the usual scientific research procedure, you join the creative vanguard in your discipline rather than merely collect data or absorb the conclusions of other scholars.
By bringing in spontaneous thinking prior to the detailed research, the stage is set for its continuation and fruition in fresh and sound conclusions at the end of the project.
Formulate your own best spontaneous solution at that point.
Then, review and compare your solution with those advocated by others and assemble whatever additional facts now appear pertinent.
Finally, synthesize your own ideas with those of others.
Those others are both those with whom you have formed a network and with those from whom have learned from their example – our predecessors.
In most fields of endeavour, it is unlikely that you would be able to get one-to-one tuition from the people at the top.
If you wanted to be a top tennis pro, for example, even if you could afford it, how could you persuade someone like Andy Murray to give you a series of private lessons?
He is a busy man!
Above: British professional tennis player Andy Murray
The same is also true of many areas of the arts, but in the field of creative writing your perfect mentors are always available.
Your favourite writers are there, they are free, and they are present for as long as you need them.
There is absolutely nothing to stop you spending weeks locked up alone with Tolstoy (or with Philip Roth, Sharon Olds, Sylvia Plath, Jackie Collins or Woody Allen).
Above: Russian writer / activist Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910)
Find inspiration in the work of others.
Whoever your inspiration is, they are waiting for you.
Dead or alive, mad or bad, the greatest writers are available as your guides.
You don’t have to rely on YouTube or on grainy footage of long-lost champions in order to study technique.
You can bring their work home with you and focus on it in microscopic detail and in your own time.
Above: American writer Philip Roth (1933 – 2018)
Read other writers.
Make a short list of all the writers whose works you have found most inspiring.
Reacquaint yourself with your heroes.
Try asking around among your friends, family and work colleagues for examples of writing that they have found particularly impressive.
Reading, more than anything else, is what will help you improve as a writer.
Reading good work carefully is the fastest way to see visible developments in your own writing life.
Above: American poet Sharon Olds
It helps to have an open mind and a willingness to experiment in your reading tastes.
Try not to be too dismissive of work you see championed in the press or online.
On the other hand, reading something and then thinking, “I could do better than that.”, is a perfectly legitimate response.
It can be inspiring to find a writer who has legions of admirers but who in your opinion is not actually such hot stuff.
That’s fine, but I would keep that opinion to yourself for a little while!
Above: Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963)
What inspired great works that are still read decades or even centuries after they were written?
What did master writers do when they were stuck for an idea?
What methods gave some of them a never-ending flow of stories?
Above: English romance novelist / actress Jackie Collins (1937 – 2015)
It starts with someone else’s words.
Many noted authors have said they were deeply moved by what they read as youngsters. In some cases it was one partıcular book that made them want to be writers and to which they still return for inspiration years later.
Even once a writer is established, a classic author may serve as their mentor.
Above: American filmmaker / writer / actor / comedian / musician Woody Allen
“When I am stuck with a sentence that isn’t fully born, it isn’t there yet, I sometimes think:
“How would Dickens go at this sentence?
Above: English writer Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870)
How would Bellow or Nabokov go at this sentence?”
Above: Canadian-American writer Saul Bellow (1915 – 2005)
What you hope to emerge with is how you would go at that sentence, but you get a little shove in the back by thinking about writers you admire.”
(Martin Amis)
Above: English writer Martin Amis (1949 – 2023)
You don’t have to limit yourself to the greats.
“Read, read, read.
Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it.
Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master.
Read!
You will absorb it.”
(William Faulkner)
Above: American writer William Faulkner (1897 – 1962)
Make an appointment with yourself to read a book that is noted as a classic.
Revisit some of your favourites.
This time read it not only for enjoyment but to analyze what made the book so powerful for you.
What can you learn from that author’s methods that might help you make your own writing more vivid and influential?
For starters, consider:
- What is the story about, in a sentence or two?
- What is at stake for the protagonist?
- What does the story reveal about the characters, and how?
- How does the opening capture your interest?
- How do the action and the central conflict escalate?
- What are the story’s surprises?
- What emotions does it evoke in you? How does it do that?
The more active the reading the better.
One reader is better than another in proportion as he is capable of a greater range of activity in reading and exerts more effort.
He is better if he demands more of himself and of the text before him.
The art of reading is the skill of catching every sort of communication as well as possible.
The relation of writer and reader is successful only to the extent that they cooperate.
Successful communication occurs in any case where what the writer wanted to have received finds its way into the reader’s possession.
The writer’s skill and the reader’s skill converge upon a common end.
A piece of writing is a complex object.
The amount the reader catches will usually depend on the amount of activity he puts into the process as well as upon the skill with which he executes the different mental acts involved.
Your success in reading is determined by the extent to which you received everything the writer intended to communicate.
Either you understand perfectly the author has to say or you do not.
The goal a reader seeks – be it entertainment, information or understanding – determines the way he reads.
The effectiveness with which he reads is determined by the amount of effort and skill he puts into his reading.
The more effort the better.
There are four levels of reading:
- Elementary reading
We recognize the individual words on the page.
What does the sentence say?
We seek to identify the actual words.
Only after recognizing them individually can we begin to try to understand them, to struggle with perceiving what they mean.
2. Inspectional Reading
The aim is to get the most out of a book within a given time.
Inspectional reading is the art of skimming systematically.
Your aim is to examine the surface of the book, to learn everything that the surface alone can teach you.
That is often a good deal.
What is the book about?
What is the structure of the book?
What are its parts?
What kind of book is it?
Most people are unaware of the value of inspectional reading.
They start a book on page 1 and plow steadily through it, without even reading the table of contents.
They are thus faced with the task of achieving a superficial kowledge of the book at the same time that they are trying to understand it.
That compounds the difficulty.
3. Analytical reading
This is thorough reading, complete reading, good reading – the best reading you can do.
Analytical reading is the best and most complete reading that is possible given unlimited time.
The analytical reader must ask many and organized questions of what he is reading.
Analytical reading is always intensely active.
The reader grasps a book and works at it until the book becomes his own.
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” (Francis Bacon)
Above: English philosopher / statesman Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626)
Analytical reading is preeminently for the sake of understanding.
4. Syntopical reading
It is the most complex and systematic type of reading of all:
Comparative reading.
When reading syntopically, the reader reads many books, not just one, and places them in relation to one another and to a subject about which they all revolve.
With the help of the books read, the syntopical reader is able to construct an analysis of the subject that may not be in any of the books.
Therefore syntopical reading is the most active and effortful kind of reading, not an easy art, but the most rewarding of all reading activities.
We know how tongue-tied people become when asked to say what they liked about a novel.
That they enjoyed it is perfectly clear to them, but they cannot give much of an account of their enjoyment or tell what the book contained that caused them pleasure.
A critical reading of anything depends upon the fullness of one’s apprehension.
Those who cannot say what they like about a novel probably have not read below its most obvious surfaces.
However, there is more to the paradox than that.
Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches.
It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know WHY one is pleased.
Beauty is harder to analyze than truth.
Expository books try to convey knowledge – knowledge about experiences that the reader has had or could have.
Imaginative books try to communicate an experience itself – one that the reader can have or share ONLY by reading – and if they succeed, they give the reader something to be enjoyed.
Because of their diverse intentions, the two sorts of work appeal differently to the intellect and the imagination.
We experience things through the exercise of our senses and imagination.
To know anything we must use our powers of judgment and reasoning, which are intellectual.
Fiction appeals primarily to the imagination.
Don’t try to resist the effect that a work of imaginative literature has on you.
When reading a story we must let it act on us.
We must allow it to move us.
We must let it do whatever work it wants to do on us.
We must make ourselves open to it.
The imaginative writer tries to maximize the latent ambiguities of words, in order thereby to gain all the richness and force that is inherent in their multiple meanings.
He uses metaphors as the units of his construction just as the logical writer uses words sharpened to a single meaning.
Imaginative writing must be read as having several distinct though related meanings.
Imaginative writing relies as much upon what is implied as upon what is said.
Don’t look for terms, propositions and arguments in imaginative literature.
We learn from experience – the experience that we have in the course of our daily lives.
So, too, we can learn from the vicariously, or artistically created, experiences that fiction produces in our imagination.
Imaginative books teach by creating experiences from which we can learn.
Don’t criticize fiction by the standards of truth and consistently apply to communication of knowledge.
The “truth” of a good story is its versimilitude, its intrinsic probability or plausibility.
It must be a likely story, but it need not describe the facts of life or society in a manner that is verifiable by experiment or research.
“The standard of correctness is not the same in poetry as in politics.”
(Aristotle)
Above: Bust of Aristotle (384 – 322 BC)
You must classify a work of imaginative literature according to its kind.
A lyric tells its story primarily in terms of a single emotional experience.
Novels and plays have much more complicated plots, involving many characters, their actions and their reactions upon one another as well as the emotions they suffer in the process.
A play differs from a novel by reason of the fact that it narrates entirely by means of actions and speeches.
The playwright can never speak in his own person, as the novelist can, and frequently does, in the course of a novel.
All of these differences in manner of writing call for differences in the reader’s receptivity.
Recognize the kind of fiction you are reading.
You must grasp the unity of the whole work.
Whether you have done this or not can be tested by whether you are able to express that unity in a sentence or two.
The unit of a story is always in the plot.
You have not grasped the whole story until you can summarize its plot in a brief narrative.
Plot is the soul of a story.
It is its life.
To read a story well you must have your finger on the pulse of the narrative.
Be sensitive to its very beat.
You must not only reduce the whole to its simplest unity, but you must also discover how that whole is constructed out of all its parts.
The parts are the various steps that the author takes to develop his plot – the details of characterization and incident.
Don’t criticize imaginative writing until you fully appreciate what the author has tried to make you experience.
The good reader of a story does not question the world that the author creates:
The world that is re-created in himself.
“We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, his donné.
Our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it.”
(Henry James, The Art of Fiction)
Above: American – British author Henry James (1843 – 1916)
We must remember the obvious fact that we do not agree or disagree with fiction.
We either like it or we do not.
The beauty of any work of art is related to the pleasure it gives us when we know it well.
Before you express your likes and dislikes, you must first be sure that you have made an honest effort to appreciate the work.
By appreciation, we mean having the experience that the author tried to produce for you by working on your emotions and imagination.
You cannot appreciate a novel by reading it passively.
To achieve appreciation, as to achieve understanding, you must read actively.
First, read quickly and with total immersion.
Then practice…
What It Means to Read Like a Writer
1. Ask meaningful questions.
2. Articulate your opinions — and use evidence.
3. Annotate or keep a reading log.
4. Create something inspired by what you read.
5. Target specific writing skills you want to improve.
6. Examine the larger context.
7. Reread.
Above: Quotidian writer Diane Callahan
Part of a reader’s job is to find out why certain writers endure.
Writers learn to write by writing and by reading books.
Writers learn by reading the work of their predecessors.
And who could have asked for better teachers?
Generous, uncritical, blessed with wisdom and genius, as endlessly forgiving as only the dead can be?
Though writers have learned from the masters in a formal methodical way, the truth is that this sort of education more often involves a kind of osmosis.
In the ongoıng process of becoming a writer, I read and reread the authors I most love.
I read for pleasure, first.
Then I reread more analytically, conscious of style, of diction, of how sentences were formed and information conveyed, how the writer structured his plot, creating characters, employing detail and dialogue.
Writing, like reading, is done one word at a time, putting every word on trial for its life.
Reading reveals wells of beauty and pleasure.
Writers learn to write by practice, hard work, by repeated trial and error, success and failure, and from the books we admire.
Until you immerse yourself in a book, until you seek out what the writer is trying to say to you, then and only then can what they have written form the writer, the person, you will become.
Venerate the accomplishments of those who came before you.
Sweep the tombs of the past for the treasure of the tomes that form your present experience.
Above: Cemetery in Kavala, Greece
Sources
- Wikipedia
- Nineteen Eighty-four, George Orwell
- The Assassin’s Cloak: An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists, edited by Irene and Alan Taylor
- The Independent Scholar’s Handbook, Ronald Gross
- Get Started in Creative Writing, Stephen May
- Your Creative Writing Masterclass, Jurgen Wolff
- How to Read a Book, Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
- “How to Read like a Writer“, Diane Callahan, www.YouTube.com
- Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose
- Plot and Structure, James Scott Bell