Every day around the world, thousands of people with little or no scholarly training in art history walk into museums. They may or may not read noticeboards that share relevant information of the artworks or artists. Imagine, before being permitted to direct their eyeballs to the art on the walls, museum visitors were required to read a 15-or-20-page introduction to each piece or each artist. How many people would go to museums if that were the case?
Yet this seems to be the expectation when it comes to reading classic literature. Classic novels typically come with 15-or-20-page introductions, which often include spoilers, assuming that readers do not come to classic books to discover, be absorbed in, and be surprised by the story world. Also, apparently, we mustn't read classic alone, without experts guiding our experiences.
However, classic literature is in a unique position to show us that we're not alone in our pains and joys. By taking us out of our time, classic books free us to see beyond the set of beliefs we stick to and to connect human experiences that remain alive across time and place. What could be more grounding (有充分理由的), more comforting, than seeing ourselves in the battles, longings (渴望), and pleasures that have played out across hundreds, thousands of years of human history? Our personal engagement is the first step of a longer journey of discovery that deepens our knowledge and understanding of ourselves and our world. We may, for example, feel for Hester Prynne from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter though we despair of the world she lived in.
While we're letting go of things, let's stop worrying about understanding everything. We can't. It will be fun if we embrace curiosity, the pleasure of working out a mystery, and our common relationships as humans. We can feel, for example, the power of self-sacrifice in Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities even when we lack full understanding of the cultural references and languages.
