Den goda och den onda läsaren – Nabokov

There is in every reader a myriad of potential readers, who get activated, so to speak. by the unpredictable play of innumerable factors. Those multiple readers move between the two extremes of good and evil. The reader of good reads from compassion and understanding, the reader of evil from ridicule and mocking. Would´t it be the very incaranation of good and angel he who could read all texts as if the world depended on them. Someone who would read with a combination and devotion and gratitude, capable of the act of reading that would turn all literature into an answered prayer, a gift and a refuge? And wouldn´t it be the very incarantion of evil and demon he who would engare in reading every text as if it brought the very depths of hell into the world? Someone who would read with unrelentless distrust and contempt, in an act of reading that would turn all literature into a call to doom and failure?