普魯斯特解釋《在斯萬家那邊》

Swann Explained by Proust
〔Published November 1913〕

中譯：魏柯玲
英譯：John Sturrock

1.“我即將發表的是全稱為《追憶似水年華》的小說中的一卷《在斯萬家那邊》。我本想一次全部帶來；但分成幾卷的作品已不再發表了。就好像我有一幅對現在的寓所來說太大的掛毯，不得不將之剪開。
‘I am publishing only one volume, Du côté de chez Swann, of a novel whose general title will be A la recherche du temps perdu. I would like to have brought the whole of it out at once; but works in several volumes are no longer being published. I am like someone who has a tapestry too large for present-day apartments, and who has been obliged to cut it up.

2.”年輕作家們——我在其他方面倒與他們頗為投契——卻與此相反，鼓吹簡潔的情節，少量的人物。那並非我的小說觀。怎樣對你解釋呢？你知道有平面幾何和立體幾何。那麼，對於我，小說並不僅只是平面心理，而是時間中的心理。我曾試圖分離出時間這不可見的物質，但為此必須進行長久的實驗。我希望在我的書的結尾處，某個微不足道的社交事件，比如兩個在第一卷中屬於完全不同世界的人的婚姻能夠表明，時間流逝了，它會呈現出如凡爾賽宮綠繡斑斑的鉛製品之美，那是時間將其封存於綠寶石般的外殼之中。
‘Young writers, with whom I am otherwise in sympathy, advocate on the contrary a succinct plot with few characters. That is not my conception of the novel. How to put it to you? You know that there is plane geometry and solid geometry. Well, for me, the novel is not only plane psychology, but psychology in time. I have attempted to isolate the invisible substance of time, but to do that the experiment had to be able to be long-lasting. I hope that at the end of my book, some minor social event of no importance, some marriage between two persons who in the first volume belong to very different worlds, will indicate that time has passed and will take on the beauty of certain patinated leadwork at Versailles, which time has encased in an emerald sheath.

3.”那麼，就像你乘著一列沿著彎曲軌道行駛的火車，外面的城市時現於左、時現於右，某個人物在另一個人的眼中會呈現出多個側面，甚至像是不同而連續的幾個人物，這會帶來——但只是因此帶來——時間流逝的感覺。特定的人物到後來會表現得與在當前這一卷中完全不同，也會異於人們認為他們將要成為的樣子，就像生活中常常發生的那樣。
‘Then, like a town which, as the train follows a curve in the track, appears now on our right hand and now on our left, the various aspects that a single character has taken on in someone else’s eyes, to the extent of being like different and successive characters, will convey－but only by this－the sensation of time having elapsed. Particular characters will later reveal themselves as different from what they are in the present volume, and different from what they will be believed to be, as very often happens in life for that matter.

4.”這並不是同樣的人物在作品進程中會以不同的面貌重新出現，像在巴爾扎克的某些系列中那樣，而是，”普魯斯特先生對我們說，”在單個人物當中某些深刻的、幾乎是無意識的印象。
‘It is not only the same characters who will reappear in the course of the work under different aspects, as in certain cycles by Baizac, but, ‘M. Proust tells us, ‘certain profound, almost unconscious impressions within a single character.

5.”以這個觀點來看，”普魯斯特先生接著說，”我的書也許看起來像是’無意識小說’的嘗試，如果我相信這一點的話我會毫無愧色地稱之為‘柏格森式的小說’，因為在每一個時代都是如此，文學總是試圖將自己——當然是後知後覺——與流行的哲學思潮聯繫起來。但這麼說並不準確，因為主宰我作品的是無意識回憶和有意識回憶之間的區別，這一區別在柏格森先生的哲學中不但不曾出現，而且與之相牴觸。”
‘From this point of view, ’M. Proust goes on, ‘my book would perhaps be like an attempt at a sequence of “Novels of the Unconscious would not be at all ashamed to say “Bergsonian novels” if I believed that, for it happens in every age that literature attempts to attach itself－post hoc, of course－to the prevailing philosophy. But that would not be accurate, for my work is dominated by the distinction between involuntary and voluntary memory, a distinction which not only does not appear in M. Bergson’s philosophy but is even contradicted by it.’

6.”您如何驗證這一區別？”
‘How do you substantiate this distinction?’

7.”對我，有意識的回憶首先是理智和視覺的回憶，它僅僅帶來過去的一些方面，其中並無真相；但當我們在完全不同的場合再次與一種氣息或味道邂逅，不自覺地將這去喚醒，我們便能感到這過去與我們以為還記得的過去是多麼不同，後者被我們的有意識回憶用錯誤的色彩去描繪，就像一個拙劣的畫家一樣。就在這第一卷裡，你會發現自稱‘我’(他並不是我) 的敘述者突然間，在啜飲著浸過一點兒瑪德琳蛋糕的茶水時，重新找回了他久已忘卻的年代、花園、人物；無疑他也能有意識地想起它們，但並無其神采；我借他之口說，就像那小小的日本遊戲，你把一團團薄薄的紙浸入水碗中，它們便開始伸展、卷曲，形成花朵和人物，同樣，他花園裡的所有花朵，維弗納的睡蓮，村子裡的好人們，他們小小的房子和教堂，還有整個貢布雷及其周遭環境，所有能夠產生形狀與質地的東西，城鎮與花園，都在他的茶杯中浮現。
‘For me, voluntary memory, which is above all a memory of the intellect and of the eyes, gives us only facets of the past that have no truth; but should a smell or a taste, met with again in quite different circumstances, reawaken the past in us, in spite of ourselves, we sense how different that past was from what we thought we had remembered, our voluntary memory having painted it, like a bad painter, in false colours. Already, in this first volume, you will find the character who tells the story and who says “I” (who is not me) suddenly recovering years, gardens, people he has forgotten, in the taste of a mouthful of tea in which he has soaked a bit of madeleine; he could have remembered them no doubt, but without their colour or their charm; I have been able to make him say that, as in that little Japanese game where you soak flimsy bits of paper which, the moment you immerse them in the bowl, spread out and writhe and turn into flowers and characters, all the flowers in his garden, and the water-lilies of the Vivonne, and the good people of the village and their little houses and the church, and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, whatever can take on shape and solidity, has emerged, town and gardens, out of his cup of tea.

8.”你看，我相信藝術家唯有求助於無意識回憶才能找到其作品的原材料。首先，正因為它們是無意識的，完全憑自己的心意形成，源於一些同樣時刻的相似性，它們本身便帶著真實性的標記。其次，它們所帶來的事物仍以原來精確的記憶與遺忘的比例呈現。最後，因為它們讓我們領略到的是在完全不同的場合下同樣的感受，這感受便脫離了偶然性，貝有了超時間的本質，而這便是優秀風格的內涵，是唯有風格之美才能揭示的普遍必然的真理。
‘You see, I believe that it is really only to involuntary memories that the artist should go for the raw material of his work. First, precisely because they are involuntary and take shape of their own accord, drawn by the resemblance of some identical moment, they alone bear the hallmark of authenticity. Then, they bring things back to us in exact proportions of memory and oblivion. And finally, since they give us to enjoy the same sensation in quite other circumstances, they release it from all contingency, they give us its extratemporal essence, which is the very content of good style, that general and necessary truth that the beauty of a style alone can reveal.

9.”如果我允許自己這樣理性地分析我的書，”普魯斯特先生接著說道，”那是因為它在任何程度上都不是理性的產物，它最細微的元素均由我的感性帶來，我首先以內在自我的深處覺察到它們，並不理解並且很難將它們轉變成某種理智的東西，就如同——我該怎麼說呢——音樂動機一般與理智世界格格不入。我猜你覺得這一切太高深莫測了。但你放心，正好相反，它是現實。我們無需為自己澄清的東西，早已經明晰的東西 (比如邏輯概念)，並不真正屬於我們，我們甚至不知道它是否真實。它是我相任意選擇的‘可能性’的一部分。此外，你知道，你從風格上立刻就能辨別出來。
‘If I permit myself to rationalize about my book like this,’ M. Proust continues, ‘that is because it is not in any degree a product of the reason, for its least elements were supplied to me by my sensibility, I perceived them first deep inside myself, without understanding them and had as much difficulty converting them into something intelligible as if they had been as alien to the world of the intellect－as what shall I say－a musical motif. You are thinking I imagine that this is over-subtle. But I assure you, on the contrary, that it is a reality. What we have not had to elucidate for ourselves, what was clear already (the ideas of logic for example), is not truly ours, we do not even know whether iris the real. It is a part of the “possible” that we select arbitrarily. Besides, you can tell that right away, you know, by the style.

10.”風格絕非某些人認為的是一種修飾，它甚至不是技術同題，它是——就像畫家手中的色彩——視相的特質，是僅我們每個人自己所見、不為他人得見的隱秘宇宙的顯現。藝術家為我們帶來的愉悅就是引領我們進入另一個宇宙。”
‘Style is not at all an embellishment as certain people think, it is not even a matter of technique, it is－like colour with painters－a quality of vision, the revelation of the private universe that each one of us can see and which others cannot see. The pleasure an artist affords us is to introduce us to one Universe the more.’