[J. Epstein 1] 글쓰기 자체가 자기 교육 행위

 

 

 

 

 

그렇다는 생각을 갖고 있는데도, Joseph Epstein 이

그의 에세이집 The Ideal of Culture (2018)의

'Introduction' 에 쓴, 글쓰기가 배움의 기회라는

이야기가 새롭게, 그리고 즐겁게, 읽힌다.

 

하지만 나는 아직은, 글쓰기는 흉내조차 미루고(?), 글

옮기기나 하고 있다. 아래는, 위 'Introduction'에서의 인용이다.

 

 

"My friend Edward Shils held that there are four institutions

of learning in modern societies. These are the classroom,

serious magazines and newspapers, the conversation of

intelligent friends, and new and especially used bookstores.

I would add a fifth, though it is not open to everyone: writing

for the public.

 

"An example: I was perhaps thirty-years old when I

received a call from the editor ... asking if I would like to

review anew edition in four volumes of My Past and

Thoughts, the memoirs of Alexander Herzen. After

hesitating perhaps a nanosecond, I said 'Yes, I would.' ...

I asked myself, 'Who is Alexander Herzen?' I subsequently

read the four magnificent volumes of this great nighteenth-

century Russian write, read about him in books by Issiah

Berlin, E. H. Carr, and others, wrote my 1,500 or so words,...

 

"So it has been for me over the past decades, widening

my knowledge by fresh readings, an deepening it, as I like to

think, by writing about them. For the act of writing is itself

an act of education, perhaps even before it can be

considered anything so grand as an act of creation.

The way this works is that, at the outset, writing forces

the writer to realize what he doesn't know.

 

"I find I must discover a new and interesting way

to write about the subject. It is only in making the attempt

to do so that I often come to realize that I knew things

I didn't realize I knew. 'How do I know what I think

until I see what I say,' an aphorism attributed to

E. M. Forster, has long been, if not

my mantra, then my motto."