【Paintings in Proust】 Standing Cavalier Wearing a Cape (L’Indifferent), Antoine Watteau, 1716 (p.151)

Antoine Watteau 是普魯斯特相當喜愛的畫家之一，他曾經寫過一篇有關 Watteau 的評論文章。
而當普魯斯特曾經被問到羅浮宮裡頭他最喜愛的畫作時，Watteau 的這幅畫以及另一幅 Embarkation for cythera，可說是在他心目中難分軒輊，面對這兩幅看似風格迴異的作品，您的選擇是什麼呢？







【TEXT】
I was delighted to observe, in the thick of a crowd of journalists or men of fashion, admirers of the actresses, who were greeting one another, talking, smoking, as though at a party in town, a young man in a black velvet cap and hortensia-coloured skirt, his cheeks chalked in red like a page from a Watteau album, who with smiling lips and eves raised to the ceiling, describing graceful patterns with the palms of his hands and springing lightly into (he air, seemed so entirely of another species from the sensible people in everyday clothes in the midst of whom he was pursuing like a madman the course of his ecstatic dream, so alien to the preoccupations of their life, so anterior to the habits of their civilisation, so enfranchised from the laws of nature, that it was ;is restful and refreshing a spectacle as watching a butterfly straying through a crowd to follow with ones eyes, between the flats, the natural arabesques traced by his winged, capricious, painted curvetings. (Guermantes Way)

一群記者和社交人士像在社交場合那樣抽著煙，聊著天，不停地同人打招呼。他們是女演員的朋友。我高興地發現，在他們中間有一個年輕人，戴著黑絨無沿帽，穿著繡球花色裙子，臉上塗得紅紅的，像是華托畫冊中用紅鉛筆勾勒的肖像畫；他嘴邊漾出微笑，眼裡閃著藍光，用手掌做出各種優美的動作，輕盈地蹦來跳去，同他周圍那些身穿短上衣和禮服的有理智的人好像不屬於同一類；他像一個精神病人，如醉如癡地追蹤著自己的夢幻，他的夢同周圍人的憂慮毫不相干，在周圍人的文明形成之前就久已存在，不受任何自然法則的束縛；他就像一隻塗脂施粉的迷途的蝴蝶，張著翅膀，自由自在地在天空布景中間飛來飛去，在上面畫出一幅幅自然樸素的阿拉伯裝飾圖案。看到此番情景，人們會感到心境恬靜、爽快。
(p.187~188 追憶似水年華 III蓋爾芒特家那邊 聯經版 1992)