Alberto Manguel is surely one of the greatest readers alive today. Reading Alberto's words have been an inspiration in my own reading of literature.
Alberto Manguel on Reading
At
one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that
string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to
you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You
became, irrevocably, a reader. Noted essayist Alberto Manguel moves from
this essential moment to explore the 6000-year-old conversation between
words and that magician without whom the book would be a lifeless
object: the reader. Manguel lingers over reading as seduction, as
rebellion, as obsession.
On Reading Aloud
“The humanist
teacher Battista Guarino, son of the celebrated humanist Guarino
Veronese, insisted that readers should not peruse the page silently “or
mumble under their breath, for it so often happens that someone who
can’t hear himself will skip over numerous verses as though he were
something else. Reading out loud is of no small benefit to the
understanding, since of course what sounds like a voice from outside
makes our ears spur the mind sharply to attention.” According to
Guarino, uttering the words even helps the reader’s digestion, because
it “increases heat and thins the blood, clean out all the veins and
opens the arteries, and allows no unnecessary moisture to stand
motionless in those vessels which take in and digest food.” Digestion of
words as well; I often read aloud to myself in my writing corner in the
library, where no one can hear me, for the sake of better savouring the
text, so as to make it all the more mine.”
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