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how to learn to understand more and forget less - Knife

Slow (close) reading is a practice that opposes passive and thoughtless consumption of information. Unlike speed reading, which promises to teach us to read 100, 200, 300 books a year, or school reading, which distributes ready-made formulas and answers to all questions, slow reading involves deep, comprehensive immersion in the text and independent, responsible work with it.

The birth of this practice is often associated with the slow movement that appeared at the end of the 20th century. Its supporters seek to slow down the pace of life, which has greatly accelerated in recent times, in all its areas - from food and travel to fashion and science. However, the phenomenon of slow reading arose much earlier.

Around 200 AD, Judaism developed a method of oral commentary on the Torah, which was accompanied by meticulous reading of the sacred texts. Starting from the smallest details, phrases and phrases, the rabbis-interpreters tried to discover new, previously unnoticed and at the same time more accurate meanings in the words given by God. Subsequently, this occupation became a tradition and received the name Midrash ; the verb "darash", which is part of the root of this word, means "to demand, find out, inquire. " Later, Neoplatonists began to interpret the texts in this way: philosophers like Proclus or Damascus wrote huge, sometimes thousands of pages, commentaries on individual dialogues of Plato. Their research became an example for philosophers, philologists and theologians for a long time.

Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the first to notice the lack of thoughtful reading in an era of increased speed of life. In 1881, in his pivotal work Dawn, he wrote:

crazy, not sparing the forces of haste - an age that wants to do everything and cope with everything, with every old and every new book. Philology does not do everything so quickly - it teaches to read well, that is, slowly, peering into the depth of meaning, following the connection of thought, catching hints, seeing the whole idea of ​​the book as if through an open door ... "

In the 20th century, the practice of slow reading gained a second wind, becoming an indispensable component of many literary criticism. For example, the formal school appeared in Russia , insisting that formal, stylistic elements are important in literature, which must be carefully analyzed. In France, Marcel Proust took a similar position: in his essay "Against Sainte-Beuve" he wrote that the text is primary, and not the personality of its author. Later, this idea was picked up and developed by his compatriot Roland Barthes in the essay "Death of the Author" (1967).

In England, Thomas Stearns Eliot spoke of the same thing.

The same view was held in the United States by the so-called new critics, including Clint Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, who published Understanding Poetry in 1939 and Understanding Prose in 1943. The methods of close reading proposed in these works defined American education for decades to come.

One of the brightest American professors who taught slow reading to his students was Vladimir Nabokov. “Literature,” he said in his famous lectures, “real literature should not be swallowed in one gulp, like a drug useful for the heart or mind, this “stomach” of the soul. Literature should be taken in small doses, crushed, crumbled, ground - then you will feel its sweet fragrance in the depths of your palms.

At the turn of the 20th-21st centuries, slow reading practices faded into the background in literary criticism. However, readers continue to gather in book clubs and organize reading groups, where they parse classic texts for different fields (and some even earn big money from this). However, such group reading gives a good result only if each participant carefully read and worked through the text, otherwise such meetings turn out to be superficial. And slow reading is an activity that deserves a responsible approach.

In 1924, the brochure "How to read books" was published in the Soviet Union. Its author, pre-revolutionary professor of logic and philosophy Sergei Innokentyevich Povarnin, wrote about the dangers of quick, superficial reading as follows:

“The habit of ‘swallowing’ books can cause headaches. It can contribute to the development of neurosis, neurasthenia and other diseases of the nervous system, and also be one of the causes of various bodily diseases derived from disruption of the normal functioning of the nervous system. Bad reading sometimes interferes with the normal development of abilities and often spoils them, for example, it weakens the ability to concentrate attention, memory, etc. It weakens the will and the ability to think.

Today, some of Povarnin's statements can be questioned, but one of them remains indisputable:

What is this benefit?

First, slow reading is active activity . We are accustomed to treating fiction and philosophical literature as another source of information that is automatically recorded in our brain while we are reading. Therefore, it seems to us that the more books we swallow, the more information we use, the smarter we become - hence all these speed reading courses and lists of "50 main books". Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

Slow reading develops critical thinking and the ability to think. Actively working with the book, the reader independently searches for additional information, checks sources, finds keywords, compares ideas, evaluates the author's judgments and thinks through his arguments. All this is a wonderful school of thought. The greatest European intellectual of the 20th century, Jacques Derrida, who was critical of the foundations of all European culture, admitted in one interview that he had read three or four books from his entire huge library. “But I read them very, very carefully,” he said.

Jacques Derrida shows his library

Secondly, serious and thoughtful work with a book sometimes leads to real insights. Slow reading makes us concentrate on a piece of text for a long time, perceive it as a problem that needs to be solved, and select keys to it. When our brain switches to passive mode after such intense activity, creative insights happen.

Looking at literature as a source of ready-made information also strengthens school education. Recall how often teachers demanded "knowledge of the text" and "content" from you, and in doing so, they usually meant the plot. But as early as the beginning of the 20th century, one of the predecessors of structuralism, Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp, in his work Morphology of a Fairy Tale, showed that, by and large, all stories consist of 31 varying functions, and even the most intricate of them are built according to the same schemes.

Does this mean that the plot doesn't matter? No, it's just not just about him. The authors waste paper and ink for a reason, choosing the right epithets and expressions and correcting the same paragraph a hundred times.

Tolstoy wrote about "Anna Karenina" in a letter to Nikolai Strakhov: "If I wanted to say in words everything that I had in mind to express in a novel, then I would have to write a novel - the very one that I wrote, first ".

A work of art fully reveals its meaning only when it is considered as an integral aesthetic object, consisting of a system of images, correspondences and interweaving. Each branch of lilac, a dissected frog, a grammatically incorrect phrase of the hero or his description play a role in the works of the great author. Skipping them or not attaching importance to them is the same as flipping through two paragraphs in a mathematics textbook. But in order for these details to play with colors and be filled with meanings, you need to use your imagination while reading. Do not be lazy to think about the state of mind of the hero, grab a wide oak tree with him or paint the missing colors on the wallpaper - all this will develop your emotional intelligence and empathy and give you the precious experience of thousands of unlived lives.

Theory and practice of slow reading in literature, cinema and art from the Eshkolot project

Thirdly, slow reading of literary and philosophical texts changes our sensibility and forms a different view of the world. If Leo Tolstoy were read attentively in our schools, many of the students would become anarchists. Therefore, the literary critic Dmitry Petrovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky, in his work "On Conservatism" at the beginning of the 20th century, was surprised that the authorities, teaching Tolstoy's children, want to rely on him as one of the pillars of statehood.

Finally, deep and prolonged work with text trains memory and concentration. A book read in one sitting is forgotten in a week. If the book was read slowly, analyzed and asked questions, it will stick in the memory for a long time. This is because during the time we spend on reading with this approach, not just associative connections, but whole bunches and clusters manage to form in our head.

“In self-education,” Sergey Povarnin wrote in his brochure, “work on a book must be the most serious, persistent, difficult, and often very long. But there is nothing to regret about it: it will pay off in abundance. Even if you later forget the book, work on it will not be lost: it will remain in the form of useful skills, advanced development, accumulated skills and strength.

General advice: before reading, turn off your mobile phone and other devices. Or don't turn it off, but put them on silent mode and put them away. The fact is that social media alerts stimulate the production of dopamine in our brain, and this prevents us from enjoying activities that require attention, including leisurely reading a well-written text.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the German philosopher and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher introduced the term "hermeneutical circle" into scientific use.

At the first reading, we do not notice many details, because we are not yet fully familiar with the work. When we read the text again, we already have a general impression of it, and we begin to notice the details that the first time they didn’t tell us anything. As a result, our understanding of the meaning of the text becomes more voluminous and more accurate. Therefore, rereading is a necessary stage of slow reading, which, moreover, gives a separate pleasure.

In the preface to his lectures on European literature, Vladimir Nabokov said: “Let it seem strange, but you can’t read a book at all - you can only re-read it. A good reader, a select reader, co-participant and creative, is a re-reader.

You can't slowly read a long piece - fortunately, this is not necessary. You need to practice your ability to read the text in small fragments.

The Soviet philologist Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev recalled his studies at the university in the following way: “Academician Shcherba was the promoter of slow reading. He and I managed to read only a few lines from The Bronze Horseman in a year. Each word seemed to us like an island that we had to discover and describe from all sides.

The same island, on which all attention is concentrated, should become a separate paragraph or line.

That is why it sometimes seems to us that a short poem contains more meaning than some thick novel. The Russian formalist Yuri Nikolayevich Tynyanov associated this effect with the so-called tightness of the verse row - the close proximity to each other of words with an increased meaning, forcing us to move deeper.

The most "shocking" passages in any work are its title, beginning and end. If everything is obvious with the title, then with the beginning and end - not quite. Try to match the beginning and end of the book you are reading. For example, Gogol's "Inspector General" begins with the Governor telling his subordinates "unpleasant news" and one of them, Luka Lukich, exclaims: "Lord God!" - and ends with the Governor being "in the middle in the form of a pillar, with arms outstretched and his head thrown back." (Recall that Christ was crucified for the good news of the coming Kingdom of God.)

In the story, one should also pay attention to the first and last appearance of the hero, to the description of his appearance, manners, clothes, room. Memories and dreams are no less significant - why did the author put them here? If a motive appears several times in a work, stop and think about what it can mean, remember where you met it for the first time. Some writers have marker words: Dostoevsky, for example, these are phrases like “I don’t know why he said that”, followed by key monologues of characters.

However, the most important passages in any work are those that are of personal interest to you. If you stumble upon something incomprehensible, do not rush, do not run forward - try to understand what exactly puzzled you and why.

Each author has his own voice: someone, like the aristocratic Turgenev, writes quietly and delicately, trying not to get into the soul of the characters, someone like Gogol, who loved to read his works to friends , adds ridiculous and sonorous words, someone, like Dostoevsky, hurriedly dictating a text to his stenographer wife, writes crookedly and unevenly. The way the author builds sentences, what metaphors he resorts to and for what purpose he uses them, reflects his view of the world. Chasing the plot, swallowing five books a week, means not seeing a person with an individual manner and temperament behind the printed letters.

It's bad when we don't hear the author's voice in a hurry, but it's even worse when we don't notice that there are more than one or two such voices in the book. “A novel,” wrote Russian culturologist of the 20th century Mikhail Bakhtin, “is a multi-style, contradictory, discordant phenomenon,” and not every recorded word necessarily belongs to the author.

Everyone read Chekhov's story "The Man in the Case" at school. His hero, the Greek teacher Belikov, "was remarkable in that he always, even in good weather, went out in galoshes and with an umbrella, and certainly in a warm coat with wadding." We laughed at this man in unison, condemned him for his "disgust for the present", and praised Chekhov for bringing out such an absurd and pitiful type. But wait, did Chekhov tell us this story? Let's go back to the beginning.

“On the very edge of the village of Mironositsky, in the barn of Prokofy the belated hunters settled down for the night. There were only two of them: the veterinarian Ivan Ivanovich and the teacher of the gymnasium Burkin.

The story of the "case man" is told to us (or rather, to the veterinarian) by a provincial gymnasium teacher named Burkin. By all appearances, Burkin is a classic representative of the 19th century intelligentsia, who was carried away by the tendentious "democratic" literature that looked for "types" and denounced people for "inaction."

“Under the influence of people like Belikov,” says Burkin, “over the past ten or fifteen years, everything has become fearful in our city. They are afraid to speak loudly, to send letters, to make acquaintances, to read books, they are afraid to help the poor, to teach them to read and write…”

Who is Chekhov really laughing at here - the teacher of the Greek language (whom we know about only from the words of Burkin) or his colleague - a "thinking, decent" man of his time? And which of them is really "in the case"? It is good to ask such questions as often as possible. Are you sure that Humbert Humbert, the pedophile from Lolita, is completely frank with you? Do you remember who exactly told his literary friend Oblomov's whole life? But could not the narrator from "Poor Lisa" in the thirty years that have passed since the story described in the story, confuse or embellish something? How did Belkin in "The Station Agent" peep into the scene between Minsky, Dunya and Vyrin in the former's house? Does the author lead readers by the nose?

Tip 6. Look in the dictionary

Train yourself to check the meanings of all unfamiliar words, especially adjectives: over time, they will significantly enrich your speech. Refer to the dictionary and when a word seems familiar to you, but you cannot give an exact definition. Do not be lazy to look at the origin of words that seem significant to you in the text. For this, you can use the Fasmer dictionary or other etymological dictionaries.

The ancient Greek language provides a particularly rich ground for reflection. In particular, Russian writers liked to resort to him. So, the surname "Stavrogin" was formed by Dostoevsky from the ancient Greek word σταυρός ("cross"). According to Tolstoy's original plan, Karenin was supposed to have the surname Stavrovich, but the writer changed his mind. His son Sergei Lvovich recalled this as follows: “Once he told me:“ Karenon - Homer has a head. From this word I got the surname Karenin.

Another easy way is to use a search engine.

In Dostoevsky's "Notes from the Underground" there is the following fragment: "I am told that the climate of St. Petersburg is becoming harmful to me and that with my insignificant means it is very expensive to live in St. Petersburg. I know all this, I know better than all these experienced and wise advisers and nods. But I remain in Petersburg; I will not leave Petersburg!”

Usually, under the word “nodder” there is a note with a reference to Dahl: “This word, obviously, was formed by Dostoevsky from the colloquial “nod”; this was the name of a person who nods his head, winks or gives secret signs to someone.

Does this interpretation clarify the meaning of the passage? Not really. However, on the net you can find out that the word “nodding” is a reference to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, to those scenes in which Jesus was persuaded to come down from the cross: “And those who pass by blaspheme him, nodding their heads and saying: build up today: save yourself, and bring down from the cross” (Mark 15:29-30). It turns out that Dostoevsky's text refers the reader to the Bible: the "underground man" compares himself to Jesus Christ.

Notes in the margins of a book or in a separate notebook teach us not only a critical, active approach to the text, but also the ability to accurately and concisely formulate our thought. Intuitions and guesses that are not fixed on paper or electronic media will remain vague impressions and disappear into oblivion.

Until then, we are ordinary listeners or guests.

The creation of plans and schemes can be of no less service. In his lectures on Anna Karenina, Vladimir Nabokov, with the help of graphs and comparisons, showed that the line of Anna and Vronsky chronologically forges ahead; reading Dickens or Proust, he drew plans of London or Paris in the margins. Lev Semenovich Vygotsky, having drawn the composition of Bunin's story "Light Breath", explained how art interacts with consciousness. Every reader can do this.

Let's take a scene from the eighth chapter of "Fathers and Sons", in which Pavel Petrovich examines the room of Fenechka, a girl who recently gave birth to a child from his brother Nikolai Petrovich:

"Chairs with backs in the form of lyres stood along the walls; they were bought by a dead general in Poland during a campaign; in one corner there was a bed under a muslin canopy, next to a wrought-iron chest with a round lid. In the opposite corner a lamp was burning in front of a large dark image of Nicholas the Wonderworker; a tiny porcelain testicle hung on a red ribbon on the saint's chest, attached to the radiance; on the windows, jars of last year's jam, carefully tied up, shone through with green light; on their paper covers, Fenechka herself wrote in large letters: “circle-maker” <...> In the wall, over a small chest of drawers, hung rather poor photographic portraits of Nikolai Petrovich in various positions, made by a visiting artist.

Just skimming the text with our eyes, we are unlikely to notice that something is missing in the description of the room. If you sketch out the plan of the room, it becomes clear that Pavel Petrovich does not mention Fenechka's bed, although there is definitely a place for her in the room. Could this bed be located in another room? No: the baby sleeps here. Can Pavel Petrovich be reproached for inattention? Hardly. Pavel Petrovich consciously does not look at the bed on which his brother recently conceived a child with Fenechka. With the same Fenechka, because of which Pavel Petrovich will soon shoot with Bazarov. Such a trick is called a transfer from one sign system to another - from verbal to graphic. And how much more information about the Kirsanov family can be taken from this fragment?

A good critical article is always the result of a slow, thoughtful reading of the text. It helps us expand our own understanding of the book. Journalistic criticism will evaluate its quality and reveal its relevance, philological criticism will show how the text is arranged and what influences its author has experienced, a scientific monograph will offer a new interpretation and explain its significance for culture. Especially valuable is the criticism of classical works, written "in hot pursuit", after the release of the book from the press: it is useful to see how differently contemporaries perceived the text, which seems to us canonical.

However, the Russian philosopher of the 20th century Vladimir Bibikhin, in his courses on reading philosophy, warned students against being "captured" by someone else's concept. Any thought must first of all be allowed to be itself, without "placing" it in a certain era, direction or style. This also applies to fiction: before you get acquainted with criticism, read the work yourself.

Slow reading methods:

• David Meeks Slow Reading in a Hurried Age - more practical tips for slow reading;
• Boris Eikhenbaum "How Gogol's Overcoat" is made - about how to be attentive to the author's stylistic features;
• Vladimir Nabokov "On Good Readers and Good Writers" and his lectures on Russian and foreign literature - your impression of school classics may noticeably change;
• Yuri Lotman “The Structure of a Literary Text. Analysis of the poetic text" - about the method of rigorous scientific analysis of the text;
• Sergey Povarnin "How to read books" - about the method of analytical reading;
• Harold Bloom "Western Canon" and Brodsky's list - about those books that should be read slowly.

Examples of slow poetry reading:

• Iosif Brodsky — an essay on Tsvetaeva, Rilka, Akhmatova, Pasternak, Mandelstam, Robert Frost and Wisten Hugh Auden;
• Thomas Stearns Eliot - articles and lectures "The Purpose of Poetry" and "Selected";
• Wystan Hugh Auden - collection of essays "Reading. Letter. About Literature";
• Olga Sedakova - essay.

Theoretical texts on slow reading:

• Marcel Proust Against Sainte-Beuve,
• Roland Barthes Death of an Author,
• Vladimir Bibikhin — course of lectures "Reading Philosophy".

A separate type of slow reading is the comments:

• Nabokov and Lotman to "Eugene Onegin",
• by the Russian philosopher Gustav Shpet to The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club by Charles Dickens,
• linguist Yuri Shcheglov to the novels of Ilf and Petrov,
• literary historian Alexander Dolinin to Vladimir Nabokov's novel "The Gift",
• a group of philologists led by Oleg Lekmanov to the "Egyptian stamp" by Osip Mandelstam,
• Soviet literary critic Alexander Anikst to Goethe's Faust, Hamlet and the rest of Shakespeare's plays,
• by the modern poet Vsevolod Zelchenko to the poem "Monkey" by Vladislav Khodasevich,
• by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben to the Epistle to the Romans,
• Proclus and Damascus to Plato's Parmenides,
• Jacques Derrida to the entire Western European philosophical tradition.

And the last piece of advice. Behind all the close attention to the text, behind all the practices of slow reading, it is important not to forget the words of the Georgian philosopher Merab Mamardashvili: “Literature is not a sacred cow, but only one of the spiritual tools of movement towards discovering oneself in the real test of life, unique, which only you experienced, and except for you and for you, no one will be able to extract the truth from this test.

How to learn to read quickly? Methodology of Peter Kamp — Kuzbass State Scientific Library VD Fedorova

How to learn to read quickly? Methodology of Peter Kamp

Today we will talk about the book of the American writer Peter Kamp “Speed ​​Reading. How to remember more by reading 8 times faster? and share our impressions.

The book tells how to learn to read faster and remember more information in six weeks. The author promised that thanks to the self-learning methods that have been developed over 4 years, we will learn "how to become one of the world's fastest readers in this endless world of words" .

Careful implementation of the recommendations of the book will benefit people with an average level of reading speed - 180 words per minute or more. The book includes exercises that must be performed daily and preferably in the morning. You can mark your progress in a progress report.

What materials will I need to complete the exercises?

- time control device: pocket or wall clock, stopwatch or any timer;
- books: non-fiction, biographies, fiction, etc.;
- pen (pencil), A4 sheets or you can create a text document on a computer and work with it.

In the book, the author highlights a lot of useful tips to follow when reading:

- Before reading, determine a specific goal, and answer yourself two questions: how significant is this material and what is important to remember? You can’t read with the goal of remembering the material, because the opposite happens - less is absorbed than when reading with the task of understanding.
- If you are reading a book with incomprehensible words, it is better to start with easy books on a certain topic, build up vocabulary in this area, and move on to complex ones.
- Train the ability to determine the topic of each paragraph, to understand what is being said.
- Get rid of the misconceptions that prevent you from learning to read effectively: read everything the same way, word by word, understand and remember everything from cover to cover.
- Visualization helps to memorize and retain material for a long time. There are various memorization schemes, for example, the "magic line".

- Try to avoid pronouncing words to yourself and read without backtracking, because this reduces the speed of reading.
- Develop peripheral vision. Looking at the text once, you can get the most information. To train peripheral vision, Schulte tables are used, in which specific objects need to be found in a short time. Training on online simulators at the link.

- Speed ​​will increase if you learn to read with your hands. Use your index finger as a tool and master hand movements: “underlining”, “dust erasing” and “circling paragraphs”, mastering ways to quickly turn pages.

In conclusion, Peter Kamp advises to maintain the achieved results and, of course, to improve in the future. To do this, you need to exercise regularly, at least 20 minutes a day for the next six weeks. Over time, if your reading drops, simply retake the course.

The book made a favorable impression. It is easy to understand, it contains many examples from the life of the author and students, and the text is accompanied by illustrative examples. When learning to read quickly, speed develops in some separation from understanding. Artistic material is more difficult to perceive. If popular science literature is a form of information transfer, where something is reported or something is taught, then fiction is a form of art. After all, writers reveal innermost thoughts, feelings and emotions through characters.

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  Cute stories for children
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  What is a pre read
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  Social skills for children activities
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  Story in english to read
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  Upper and lower case a
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  Activities to learn colors