【Paintings in Proust】View of Delft, Jan Vermeer, 1659─60 (p.235)

1902 年普魯斯特到荷蘭旅行，造訪了德夫特小鎮，並且到海牙的莫瑞泰斯皇家美術館 (Mauritshuis) 觀賞弗美爾的《德爾夫特小景》。
普魯斯特認為這是世界上最美的畫作，一直到 1921 年這幅作品來到巴黎的網球場美術館 (Jeu de Paume)，終於又有一次機會重溫美好的回憶。
然則他的身體已經衰弱到差點就在展覽的會場上昏厥死去，而這一段瀕死經驗也就成為小說中關於作家貝戈特之死的創作素材。




【TEXT】
The circumstances of his death were as follows. A fairly mild attack of uraemia had led to his being ordered to rest. But an art critic having written somewhere that in Vermeer’s View of Delft (lent by the Gallery at The Hague for an exhibition of Dutch painting, a picture which he adored and imagined that lit knew by heart, a little patch of yellow wall (which he could not remember was so well painted that it was, if one looked at it by itself, like some priceless specimen of Chinese art, of a beauty that was sufficient in itself, Bergotte ate a few potatoes, left the house, and went to the exhibition. At the first few steps he had to climb, he was overcome by an attack of dizziness. He walked passed several pictures and was struck by the aridity and pointlessness of such an artificial kind of art, which was greatly inferior to the sunshine of a windswept Venetian palazzo, or of an ordinary house at the sea. At last he came to the Vermeer which he remembered as more striking, more different from anything else he knew, but in which, thanks to the critic’s article, he noticed for the first rime some small figures in blue, that the sand was pink, and, finally, the precious substance of the tiny parch of yellow wall. His dizziness increased; he fixed his gaze, like a child upon on a yellow butterfly that it wants to catch, on the precious little patch of wall. ‘That’s how I ought to have written,’ he said. ‘My last books are too dry, I ought to have gone over them with a few layers of colour, made my language precious in itself, Like this little patch of yellow wail.¡¦ Meanwhile he was not unconscious of the gravity of his condition. In a celestial pair of scales there appeared to him, weighing down one of the pans, his own life, while the other contained the little patch of wall so beautifully painted in yellow, lie felt that he had rashly sacrificed the former for the late…… He repeated to himself: ‘Little patch of yellow wall, with a sloping roof, little patch of yellow wall.’ (The Captive)

他是在這樣的情況下去世的：尿毒症的輕微發作是人們建議他休息的原因。但是一位批評家在文章裡談到過的弗美爾的〈德爾夫特小景〉 (從海牙美術館借來舉辦一次荷蘭畫展的畫) 中一小塊黃色的牆面 (貝戈特不記得了) 畫得如此美妙，單獨把它抽出來看，就好像是一件珍貴的中國藝術作品，具有一種自身的美，貝戈特十分欣賞並且自以為非常熟悉這幅畫，因此他吃了幾只土豆，離開家門去參觀畫展。剛一踏上台階，他就感到頭暈目眩。他從幾幅畫前面走過，感到如此虛假的藝術實在枯燥無味而且毫無用處，還比不上威尼斯的宮殿或者海邊簡樸的房屋的新鮮空氣和陽光。最後，他來到弗美爾的畫前，他記得這幅畫比他熟悉的其他畫更有光彩、更不一般，然而，由於批評家的文章，他第一次注意到一些穿藍衣服的小人物，沙子是玫瑰紅的，最後是那一小塊黃色牆面的珍貴材料。他頭暈得更加厲害；他目不轉睛地緊盯住這一小塊珍貴的黃色牆面，猶如小孩盯住他想捉住的一隻黃蝴蝶看。「我也該這樣寫，」他說，「我最後幾本書太枯燥了，應該塗上幾層色彩，好讓我的句子本身變得珍貴，就像這一小塊黃色的牆面。」這時，嚴重的暈眩並沒有過去。在天國的磅秤上一端的秤盤盛著他自己的一生，另一端則裝著被如此優美地畫成黃色的一小塊牆面。他感到自己不小心把前一個天平托盤誤認為後一個了。……他重複再三：「帶擋雨披檐的一小塊黃色牆面，一小塊黃色牆面。」
(p.194 追憶似水年華 V 女囚 聯經版 1992)