Essays in the Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson

Keen to read more from him given my enjoyment of the 'Travels with a Donkey..', I downloaded this inviting book.

Yet to read through, but first reading the essay, "The Books which have influenced me". This essay inspires one to read better, read well. The influence is good and much welcome as the time for new year resolutions approaches. So far the way it has worked on me, I have filled up ibooks with lots of Shakespeare, Whitman, and some old classics. Hope to read a lot from these over the coming year. 

Some excerpts:

The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction.  They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, which he must afterwards unlearn.  They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular change—that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, for the nonce, struck out.  To be so, they must be reasonably true to the human comedy; and any work that is so serves the turn of instruction.  But the course of our education is answered best by those poems and romances where we breathe a magnanimous atmosphere of thought and meet generous and pious characters.

A book which has been very influential upon me fell early into my hands, and so may stand first, though I think its influence was only sensible later on, and perhaps still keeps growing, for it is a book not easily outlived: the Essais of Montaigne.

But of works of art little can be said; their influence is profound and silent, like the influence of nature; they mould by contact; we drink them up like water, and are bettered, yet know not how. 

that this old gentleman was in a dozen ways a finer fellow, and held in a dozen ways a nobler view of life, than they or their contemporaries.

come next to Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, a book of singular service, a book which tumbled the world upside down for me, blew into space a thousand cobwebs of genteel and ethical illusion, and, having thus shaken my tabernacle of lies, set me back again upon a strong foundation of all the original and manly virtues.  But it is, once more, only a book for those who have the gift of reading.  I will be very frank—I believe it is so with all good books except, perhaps, fiction.

Close upon the back of my discovery of Whitman, I came under the influence of Herbert Spencer. 

Goethe’s Life, by Lewes. 

Biography, usually so false to its office, does here for once perform for us some of the work of fiction, reminding us, that is, of the truly mingled tissue of man’s nature, and how huge faults and shining virtues cohabit and persevere in the same character. 

This brings us by a natural transition to a very noble book—the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.  The dispassionate gravity, the noble forgetfulness of self, the tenderness of others, that are there expressed and were practised on so great a scale in the life of its writer, make this book a book quite by itself. 

Such are the best teachers; a dogma learned is only a new error—the old one was perhaps as good; but a spirit communicated is a perpetual possession.  These best teachers climb beyond teaching to the plane of art; it is themselves, and what is best in themselves, that they communicate.

Travels With a Donkey in the Cevennes by Robert Louis Stevenson

A charming, delightful read. Picked it up in one of the book reccos somewhere and then found it at a second-hand book sale. Opened it yesterday. Just a third in so far. But love the country that comes alive with his writing. If one were to learn to write how to make scenery come alive, perhaps one can begin by copying some of his sentences.

I haven't read anything else from him. Except perhaps abridged versions of Treasure Island and Kidnapped ages ago. After reading this though, keen to pick up more from him. Or at least read the full versions of these novels.

"Why any one should desire to visit either Luc or Cheylard is more than my much-inventing spirit can suppose. For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints. Alas, as we get up in life, and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a gale out of freezing north is no high industry, but it is one that serves to occupy and compose the mind. And when the present is so exacting, who can annoy himself about the future?"

A description of a Trappist monastery which he visits:

"He showed me his own room, where he passed his time among breviaries, Hebrew Bibles, and the Waverley Novels.  Thence he led me to the cloisters, into the chapter-house, through the vestry, where the brothers’ gowns and broad straw hats were hanging up, each with his religious name upon a board—names full of legendary suavity and interest, such as Basil, Hilarion, Raphael, or Pacifique; into the library, where were all the works of Veuillot and Chateaubriand, and the Odes et Ballades, if you please, and even Molière, to say nothing of innumerable fathers and a great variety of local and general historians.  Thence my good Irishman took me round the workshops, where brothers bake bread, and make cartwheels, and take photographs; where one superintends a collection of curiosities, and another a gallery of rabbits.  For in a Trappist monastery each monk has an occupation of his own choice, apart from his religious duties and the general labours of the house.  Each must sing in the choir, if he has a voice and ear, and join in the haymaking if he has a hand to stir; but in his private hours, although he must be occupied, he may be occupied on what he likes.  Thus I was told that one brother was engaged with literature; while Father Apollinaris busies himself in making roads, and the Abbot employs himself in binding books."

"The monks, by special grace of their Abbot, were still taking two meals a day; but it was already time for their grand fast, which begins somewhere in September and lasts till Easter, and during which they eat but once in the twenty-four hours, and that at two in the afternoon, twelve hours after they have begun the toil and vigil of the day.  Their meals are scanty, but even of these they eat sparingly; and though each is allowed a small carafe of wine, many refrain from this indulgence.  Without doubt, the most of mankind grossly overeat themselves; our meals serve not only for support, but as a hearty and natural diversion from the labour of life.  Yet, though excess may be hurtful, I should have thought this Trappist regimen defective.  And I am astonished, as I look back, at the freshness of face and cheerfulness of manner of all whom I beheld.  A happier nor a healthier company I should scarce suppose that I have ever seen. "

*

Later - Finished reading it in December itself. A lovely read. Although I do not follow the Camisards completely and the description around the same about the Catholic-Protestant issue, still, the book is worth a reread for Stevenson's language and thoughts interspersed throughout. 

Have downloaded a few of his essays and other travel writings too to stay close to the voice.