REPOST：Proust’s Love. From Paris to Los Angeles

https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/prousts-love-paris-los-angeles
Proust’s Love. From Paris to Los Angeles. by Donatien Grau
March 10th, 2014

最近在網路上找到的這一篇文章大概有 3000 多字，作者是一位研究普魯斯特的學者，如果要簡單摘要本文的話，內容大概是說：在他去年參訪美國洛杉磯的時候，突然發現在這座城市裡，普魯斯特總是成為話題並蔚為風潮。
What struck me in Los Angeles is how different his role, his involvement in human lives, actually was. He helped people live, they told me, and nurtured their own work.

事實上，2013 年是普魯斯特的小說 Swann’s Way 出版百週年，相關的出版品、讀書會或各種活動都很熱絡。作者在洛杉磯遇到不少朋友，其中包含了藝術家 Thomas Houseago、Richard Hawkins、甚至還有知名樂手 Paul McCarthy、建築師 Frank Gehry，大家都不約而同聊到了普魯斯特。
文章裡頭還提到了一部電影《小太陽的願望》（Little Miss Sunshine），雖然這和普魯斯特具有的關聯性不高 (其中一名角色設定為研究普魯斯特的同性戀學者以及某個海邊場景對於普魯斯特的生平評論了一番藉以激勵一個 18 歲的高中生…)，但電影的劇情安排十分精彩，主演的小女孩及家人的表現則是情感真摯，讓人熱淚盈眶，頗值得推薦。

又或者，諸位實在沒有時間看完這篇網路文章，我想特別摘要最後這一段讓大家感受一下在美國西岸洛城點燃的普魯斯特之愛吧！

And Proust, while written in French, and being read in English in Los Angeles, represented a link between an end that was not one and a form of life in which death was already present.

What I sensed in Paris was the importance of history — that Proust was a national museum, in which anyone could enter, and celebrate the language and the culture of the community. The past, while being lived, was still present, and could help conceive the future.

What I sensed in Los Angeles was the predominance of life — of living the text fully, as a form of life, used in order to live life better, with more knowledge, and therefore, perhaps, enjoyment. Using fiction to seize our real — our fictional — lives.

There was certainly life and fiction in Paris, history and language in Los Angeles. That is true. Eventually, the most fascinating of all is the fact that a literary text has been so instrumental in shaping the spirit of two cities, of two worlds, leading them, throughout what they unexpectedly shared and what made them so radically different, to construct themselves, and, humanly, to communicate, the one with the other, in Proust’s love.