Monet From Proust’s Contre Sainte-Beuve

莫內比普魯斯特大了 31 歲，卻在普魯斯特病故 4 年之後才辭世，很可惜這兩個人在有生之年不曾有過機會碰面，但在《追憶似水年華》之中，可以肯定的是主要的小說人物之一畫家埃爾斯蒂爾 (Elstir) 的創作原型，除了惠斯勒 (James Abbott McNeill Whistler)以外，還包含了莫內的部份身影。有興趣的格友請詳以下連結之評論文章：
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Monet+in+Zola+%26+Proust.-a0140094103
Monet in Zola & Proust.

恰逢國立歷史博物館在莫內的冥誕之日舉辦「印象．經典」的莫內特展，我想就藉此機會把普魯斯特這篇有關莫內的文章轉貼給大家欣賞吧！


【NEWS】
http://www.nmh.gov.tw/zh-tw/Exhibition/Content.aspx?Para=1|21|737&unkey=21
印象．經典－莫內特展   
日期： 2013/11/14～2014/02/16

　　克勞德．莫內（1840-1926）為法國印象派畫家。印象派善於以層疊的細碎筆觸、明亮的原色，捕捉戶外光線閃爍的瞬間色彩印象。明亮愉悅的畫風、以日常生活風景人物為主題的特色，令印象派作品廣受大眾喜愛而歷久不衰。
　　本展主要展出55件來自巴黎瑪摩丹—莫內美術館的藏品，透過5大單元：朋友與肖像畫、諷刺漫畫、光影詩篇、莫內花園與永恆莫內，呈現莫內的藝術發展歷程。此外，本展特別結合臺北植物園，營造莫內花園之氛圍，提供藝術與實境融合的新體驗！ 

【TEXT】
Monet 莫奈

A lover of pictures, of Claude Monet’s landscapes, let us say, or Sisley’s, will inevitably come to know and feel a liking for rivers where a sailing boat streaks its wake between grassy banks, for the blue sea at Antibes, for various times of day, for certain aspects of Rouen where the cathedral shows among the houses, with its spire and ribbed Gothic walls standing out among flattened roofs and smooth house-fronts—just as a man who loves a singer inevitably loves the character of Juliet or of Ophelia, in which, as in the bread of the altar, the being he adores is made manifest to him. Picture lovers who will make a journey to look at a Monet painting of a poppy-field will not, perhaps, take a walk to look at a field of poppies; but meanwhile, like astrologers who had a speculum that showed them everything in the world, but which had to be consulted in some place of solitude, since astrologers did not mingle in the world’s affairs, they have hang hag on their walls mirrors of a no less magic kind called pictures, in which, if one knows how to look at them steadily, slightly withdrawing oneself the while, important constituents of reality are unveiled.
一個繪畫愛好者，比如說克洛德·莫奈的風景畫或者西斯萊畫作的愛好者，將不可避免地熟悉並愛上那些帆舟劃過水面、兩岸綠草茵茵的河流，愛上昂蒂勃一帶碧藍的大海，一天裡不同時段的光影變化，盧昂地區的某些風貌：一座火教堂自群屋中拔地而起，它的鐘樓尖頂和帶飛扶壁的哥特式牆壁屹立於一片平坦的屋頂和光鮮的房屋門臉兒之上。這就如同一個熱愛某位歌劇女演員的人必定會愛上茱麗葉和奧菲利亞這類角色一樣，因為這些角色恰似他所崇拜的那個可人兒的替身。這個繪畫愛好者會專程去觀賞一幅表現麗春花田野的莫奈畫作，但他不一定會散步前去田野觀看實際的麗春花。這就好比那些占星家用觀星儀觀看宇宙萬物，但必須在僻靜孤寂處觀看一樣，因為他們不食人間煙火，他們在房間裡掛滿同樣神奇、被稱為畫作的魔鏡，然後離開一段距離 (如果他們懂得賞畫的話)，仔細觀賞，那些重要的景物細部便層層展現昭然若揭。

There we stand, bent on the magic mirror, standing a little back from it, trying to drive out every other thought, seeking to understand the purport of each stroke of colour, each of them calling to mind past impressions which gather into a construction as atmospheric and multicoloured as the strokes of colour on the canvas, and build up a landscape in the imagination; mirrors consulted by old men with long beards who do not know that the wind parches and the sun scorches, but who are entranced to discover all these truths, which besides, are based on the real wind and the real sun. Just as the singer’s lovers know the author whom she admires and whose characters they see her playing, a picture by Monet makes us love the landscape which pleases us in it.
我們觀畫恰如俯身看魔鏡，站遠一點，努力排除一切無關的雜念，嘗試看懂每種色彩表示的含義，每種顏色在我們記憶中啟動哪些往事的瞬間，勾起什麼過去的印象；然後在腦海裡彙聚成形，同畫布上的每一觸色塊一樣縹緲和斑斕，最後在我們的想像中構成一幅風景。一些長鬍子老頭兒前來說看這些“魔鏡”，他們沒經過風吹日曬雨淋，都喜出望外地發現了那些基於實際勁風和烈日的畫中情景。正如那位歌劇女伶的粉絲瞭解她崇拜哪位作家、喜歡看她飾演其角色一樣，莫奈的一幅畫作也能使我們愛上那個在畫中令我們著迷的實際景色。

He often painted the banks of the Seine at Vernon. No doubt we can be of the opinion that he would have seen things as lovely elsewhere, and that perhaps it was his personal circumstances that took him there. Never mind. To draw out the truth and beauty of a place we must know that they are there to be drawn our, that gods are everywhere latent in its soil. Apart from those places where, on some high and holy day, we ourselves have been granted a revelation, we can only pray on consecrated ground. Certainly it is not a vain idolatry for Monet or Corot that will do our loving for us. We shall love ourselves. But on the threshold of love we are bashful. There has to be someone who will say to us, Here is what you may love; love it. And then we love.
莫奈畫過許多維爾農一帶的塞納-馬恩省河兩岸風光，這足以讓我們前去那裡實地旅遊。或許我們會認為他在別的地方也能看到同樣旖旎的風光，也許是他的生活境遇把他引到那裡去的。但這些都不重要。為了呈現一個地方的真實風貌和美，我們得明白它們其實就在那兒等著我去發掘，在其土壤裡其實到處都潛伏著蠢蠢欲動的精靈。在聖地我們只能了無生氣地禱告，而在別的地方，遇到某個晴朗和神聖的日子，我們沒準兒反而能得到神啟。顯而易見，對莫奈或柯羅畫作的偶像般崇拜不會徒勞無益，它會使我們珍愛自己。我們將 (除了愛上帝之外還) 愛我們自己。但在自愛之前，我們會害羞膽怯。需要有人點撥我們：在這裡你們可以愛了，盡情愛吧。於是我們開始愛了。

Monet’s pictures show us the magic vein in Argenteuil, in Vetheuil, in Epte, in Giverny. So we set off for these holy lands. They show us too the heavenly pasturage our imaginations can find in things less localised, islet- dotted rivers during those motionless hours of afternoon when the river is blue and white with sky and clouds, and green with trees and lawns, and pink with sunbeams already sloping on tree-trunks, and splashed with scarlet in the shadow of the garden hedges where the tall dahlias push through.
莫奈的畫作向我們展示了阿爾讓特伊、維特伊、艾普特、吉維尼等地的迷人景色。於是我們出發去這些有如神啟的福地。它們還向我們展現了天國般的田園牧景，使我們的想像力能在這些普通景物中發現某些不那麼確定的、非本地化的因素，那些小島點綴的河流在下午懶洋洋的時光裡流淌，那時的河水在白雲藍天的映襯下呈現藍白的顏色，在流經樹林和草地時呈現綠色，在夕陽西下霞光斜穿樹幹時呈現粉紅色，在沿岸盛開高大大麗花的庭院中，陰影下的灌木樹籬呈現絳紫色。

The pictures make us adore a field, a sky, a beach, a river, as though these were shrines which we long to visit, shrines we lose faith in when we see, strolling through the field, walking briskly along the shore, a lady drawing her shawl closer, a man and woman holding hands. We rank the divinities of our worship so high that whatever brings them down to the level of the already known breaks the spell for us. It is the ideal we give our hearts to. Believing that the painter is going to tell us about the place itself, a mysterious personage with a vast countenance of cliff, a sunset glance reddening through the rain into the very depths of the sea, we see a couple thrust themselves between it and us. And we who believed this personality of places to be such a mystery that we believed the painter entirely given over to calling it up amid the silence and the furrowing boom of waves on that beach, we are astounded to see that he was in the upshot no more concerned with it than with this couple, who strike us as in no way mysterious and whom he has put into his picture too.
莫奈讓我們愛上一塊田野，一片天空，一段海岸，一條河流，仿佛它們成為神聖的地方，讓我們急欲前往朝聖。可當我們實際踏上這些地方，在田野裡漫步，在海岸邊疾走，看到一個女人裹緊披肩，一對男女牽手流連，我們又大失所望。我們把心馳神往的這些聖地想像得那麼祟高，而實地卻只看到不能再普通的熟悉之物，我們便頓覺幻滅。我們把心思託付給了浪漫的理想，以為這位畫家會向我們展現這個地方的神奇，廣袤空濛的崖壁映襯某個神秘的人物，雨中的落日晚霞映紅了深邃洋面，我們看見一對情侶介於那個神秘人物和我們之間。我們如此深信這些地方有個神秘人物，乃至於我們相信這位畫家定會於海灘的寂寥與浪濤的低吼之中，全身心地將那個神秘人物呼喚出來。可是我們卻看到，他最終不過是將之與那對普通的情侶作同樣的處理，並無任何奇異之處，那對情侶於我們也並無神秘可言，他卻把他們放進畫裡，這著實令我們驚詫不已，心從崖頂墜至谷底。

We thirsted for parts of the world that are themselves and nothing but themselves, beaches that never see more than a particular corner of the cliff and hear the sea’s lament all day and all night, towns built on the slope of a hill that see only a river and in summer, lilac groves; the sight of mankind imbedded in these things irks us, since it was them only, them unbelittled, that we wanted to see. Such is the unreasonableness of our ideals. When we are children, and we try to find the moon and the stars in books we are enraptured by the moon in Picciola because it is a glistening luminary, and are disappointed by it in Colomba because it is compared to a cheese and a cheese seems vulgar to us and the moon appears divine. And in Musset’s Histoire d’un Merle blanc, so long as it is a matter of white wings and a rosy beak and little drops of water, we are charmed, but after the white blackbird has addressed the dove as Madame la Marquise, these men and women who then represent the real world to us, which we think to be ugly, to be unpoetical, irk us and take away all our pleasure. It is the period of our life when the only things we enjoy in a picture gallery are works by Gleyre or Ingres, when we require faultless symmetry, moons like silver crescents in a star-strewn heaven, and when all the colouring of the Marriage at Cana seems as far removed from the world of poetry, and as vulgar. as the coat-tails over the chair or the wine stains on the tablecloth.
我們十分嚮往地球上的那些神奇之地，那些地方而非別的地方，那些只望見懸崖一角、日夜聽到海浪哀嗚的沙灘；我們渴望見到那些建於山坡的城池，只俯瞰一灣河流，夏季丁香遍野。而把世人畫入這些地方便令我們不安，因為我們只想看到這些沒有遭到世俗貶辱的神奇之地本身。我們心目中的理想就是這麼苛求。當我們還是幼童時，我們就在書中尋找月亮和星星，《皮奇奧拉》中的月亮使我們著迷，因為它聖潔明亮；而《高龍巴》中的月亮就讓我們失望，因為它被比作乳酪：我們覺得乳酪低俗，而月亮就顯得很高潔。在德‧繆塞的《一隻白烏鶇的故事》中，但凡涉及它的雪白翅膀、朱紅鳥喙和欲滴露珠的地方，我們就心醉神迷；可自從白烏鶇能管鴿子叫“侯爵夫人”之後，我們就覺得它遭到了世俗男女的玷污，讓我們很不舒服，以往對它的好印象頃刻全無。因為對於我們而言，世俗生活就意味著醜陋，就意味著沒有詩意。這是個我們在博物館裡只喜歡格萊爾和安格爾畫作的時代，我們需要的是精緻的古典造型和優雅的勻稱，月亮在繁星點點的天上要像月牙兒狀的玉盤，《迦拿的婚宴》中的所有用色都要顯得距離朦朧詩意的世界盡可能地遙遠，並與搭在椅背上的大衣下擺或酒在桌布上的紅酒污漬同樣逼真……

【NOTE】
1. 原文並未分段，僅因閱讀方便，故自行切割為幾個段落。
2. 資料來源：
英譯：Sylvia Townsend Warner / Marcel Proust: On Art and Literature 1896-1919
中譯：冷杉 /《那地方恍如夢境》