Proust: Swann’s Way《史旺之路》
Marcel Proust（1871-1922）的名字慣例譯作普魯斯特；其實，若譯作「普斯特」可能更接近法文的讀音。普氏最有名的作品是《往事追憶》，共七巻。自第一巻 Swann’s Way（1913）至最後一巻 The Past Recaptured（1927-8），總共費時將近十五年才全部出版。也就是說，是在普氏逝世之後六年才出完全套。在人物刻繪方面，普氏强調心理的探討——作者往往滲透到一個角色的內心，剖述其鬱結或內疚。
在二十世紀前半段，普斯特與愛爾蘭的 Joyce 及德國的 Thomas Mann 齊名，可以算是本世紀最有份量的作家之一。
Swann’s Way is a prelude1 to Marcel Proust’s seven-volume novels which constitute the modern classic entitled Remembrance of Things Past2. This first volume consists of3 a novella4, "Swann in Love," preceded5 and followed by long sections of reminiscence6 by the narrator Marcel.
In Part I (“Overture”),7 Marcel recalls scenes from his childhood, especially holidays spent8 at Combray, a pleasant small town not far from Paris. He always remembers a night at Combray when Swann had come to dinner with the family. That night, Marcel recalls, he was sent to bed early, and so did not receive from his mother his accustomed goodnight kiss.9 He lay10 on his bed for hours, nervous and unhappy, until at last he heard Swann leave.11 When his mother came upstairs to comfort him, he was still upset12 and asked his mother to stay with him during the night. His mother’s concession, he believes, was responsible for confirming his habit of emotional self-indulgence and neurotic dependence.13
For a long time the memory of that night had been his chief recollection of Combray. His memories, however, are fragmentary and isolated,14 since the past cannot be recovered by the will alone.15 Years later, while drinking tea with his mother, she serves him some sweet cakes, or madeleines, which he dips in his tea to soften.16 The flavor of the cakes evokes a rush of memories.17 The past now turns active, enabling him to re-create the impressions of his old days at Combray.18
Part II (“Combray”) thus explores19 his memories of Combray. He recalls two walks into the countryside which his parents were accustomed to taking.20 Leading in different directions, each had its own character, and in Marcel’s mind, they came to represent two distinct ways of life.21 One, Swann’s way led across the plains in the direction of Swann’s estate.22 The other, the Guermantes way, led along a river to the property of a distinguished noble family named Guermantes.23 The Duchess now figures in Marcel’s imagination as24 the embodiment of aristocratic distinction.25 Finally, among other memories, he is moved to tell at greater length the story of a love affair in which Swann had been involved.26
Part III (“Swann in Love”) is the story of this romance.27 Swann is a wealthy Jew accepted into the rich and fashionable society.28 He is madly29 in love with Odette de Crécy, who becomes his mistress. Odette has met him through a mutual friend,30 and is eager to pursue the acquaintance further.31 She arranges for him to be introduced to the Verdurins. Ordinarily,32 he would have found the Verdurins not worth33 his attention, but he is intrigued by Odette’s style of beauty and joins the group to be near her.34 Hitherto,35 he has had many mistresses without being seriously in love. This time he succumbs, chiefly because she is able to make him jealous.36 The more Odette deceives him, the more passionately he is tied to37 her. Suffering all the agonies of a jealous lover, he wanders outside her windows at night to see if she has other callers.38
Swann receives an anonymous letter denouncing Odette for all sorts of vice, including lesbianism.39 In time,40 she transfers her loyalty to another man,41 a member of the Verdurin circle. In the last section of the novel, Marcel recalls that as a child he played with Swann’s daughter, Gilberte, in the park. He also realizes that Swann has married Odette for the sake of the daughter, though he is no longer in love.42 Odette is not received43 in Combray, because Marcel’s family and their circle do not accept her as one of their class. After their marriage Swann drifts more and more into the bourgeois circle44 of the Verdurins. When he visits his old friends in Combray, he goes alone. Many people think him both ridiculous and tragic.45
Years later Marcel, as a grown man, revisits the scenes where he had known Gilberte and her mother Odette.46 The automobile has replaced the stylish carriages and women wear short, shapeless dresses.47 Marcel is saddened by the changes that have taken place.48 He is saddened by the way in which people, places, and events, and even our memories of them, are swallowed up by time.49
The volumes that follow continue the reminiscences of Marcel, which expand50 to include not only Swann and Odette, but51 many others who are not mentioned in Swann’s Way. In the following volumes it is shown that the adolescent52 Marcel is still in love with his childhood playmate, Gilberte. But after a while, his pampered habits and brooding neurasthenic nature begin to bore her.53 Marcel’s family then treat him as an invalid and sends him to a seaside resort named Balbec.54 Here at Balbec, and later in Paris, Marcel is engaged in wild amorous adventures55 with several of his friends, both male and female.56 By the time he falls in love with Albertine, Marcel undergoes57 the same grief that Swann felt years before with Odette. He is tormented with jealousy58 when he suspects that she is the lover of one of the girls from the group at Balbec. He decides to marry Albertine and induces59 her to come to live with him in Paris--in order to protect her from lesbian attachments.60 Nevertheless, so jealous is Marcel that he installs her in his apartment like a prisoner.61 Albertine escapes, and is finally killed, falling from a horse.
Love in Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past is virtually synonymous with62 jealousy. It brings no happiness. It is a disease which men contract because of an inner compulsion to suffer.63 The loved ones like Odette, Gilberte, and Albertine are inferior to64 their lovers and treat them cruelly; that is their chief attraction.65 In homosexual affairs where there is no hope for conventional, domestic happiness, the element of cruelty is still more obvious.66 The one form of love that is not corrupt is filial or maternal love.67 Yet even this has its morbid side: Marcel is able to trace his later emotional instability back to the night when his mother consented to leave her husband’s bed and sleep in Marcel’s room.68
Proust’s novelistic technique69 is not exactly that of a stream-of-consciousness novel.70 His concern is with the process of remembering and forgetting.71 The past is constantly vanishing, not only materially, but in our minds as well.72 Moreover, even a recovered past is not the truth. At most, it is only a fragment of truth, since each man’s truth is relative to the beholder.73 Life for Proust is a stream of remembered moments and feelings, which shift and vanish even as we observe them.74 Only art is able to stop the flow of experience and transmute the suffering into beauty.75
注釋
1 prelude: 序曲、序幕（介系詞用to）。
2 七巻小說構成一部名叫《往事追憶》的現代文學經典。Classic 原作「古典的」，但當名詞用時，可作「名著、經典」解。entitled: 指文章或書冊的題目或名稱；此外，be entitled to；即「有……的資格」。
3 consist of: 由……組成。
4 novella: 通常 novel 指長篇小說，至於短篇小說則稱 short story。novella: 直譯作「小」小說，其長度遠比 short story 長，但是比起長篇小說則短得多了。
5 precede: 在……之前。
6 reminiscence:（名詞）)回想。本文中 recall，remember（動詞）及 recollection，remembrance（名詞）等字均作「回憶、回想」。
7 overture 專指歌劇的序曲，此處作引伸義。註 1 的 prelude 則指序文或任何前導性質的文章、事務。
8 spent 在此是被動分詞。
9 accustomed: 習慣、慣常的；good-night kiss: 吻額或吻頰道晚安。
10 lay on one’s bed: lay 是 lie（躺）的過去式。lie on one’s bed 不但是指躺在床上，而且有「輾轉不能入睡」、「不安」之意。另外，如果說 lie in bed 則是「留在床上，不下床」之謂。
11 nervous and unhappy: 神經兮兮而又不愉快。本句最後 hear someone leave-–hear 後面的動詞 leave 用原形，有時候也可以用分詞 leaving，唯後者强調「正在離開」。
12 upset: 難過，心情惡劣。
13 他相信，他母親的讓步造成他情感放肆及神經質的依賴性。Responsible for 未必經常作「負責」解。Confirm 原意是「證實」，此處指養成習癖，故 a confirmed drunkard 便是說「一個經常酗酒的人」。
14 回憶/記憶是片斷而分割的（不相連的）。
15 「過去」無法光靠志力的努力去恢復。
16 madeleines: 法文，即甜餅乾。dipping the cakes in his tea to soften: 將餅乾泡濕浸軟。
17 餅乾的味道撩起了回憶的急流。rush: 蜂湧而至。上下班時間人車擁擠叫 rush hours。
18 過去變得（在腦海裏）活躍起來，使他能夠再造往日在 Combray 的印象。re-create: 再造，重創；與 recreate 娛樂、消遣不同，請注意。
19 explore: 探討、探查。
20 to take a walk 即散步。此處 walk: 指散步的人行道。to be accustomed to … 或 to accustom oneself to …（接名詞或動名詞）: 經常做……。
21 兩條道路朝著不同的方向，各有各的特性（character），而在 Marcel 心中，它們代表了兩種截然不同的生活方式--指 Swann 與 Guermantes 兩家人的生活方式。
22 in the direction of…: 朝……的方向。estate: 所有地、財產（尤其是不動產、房地產）。
23 另一條路沿河通到一個傑出的貴族家庭 Guermantes 的所有地。
24 duchess: 公爵夫人；公爵是 duke。figure as: 當做。
25 貴族(社會)的傑出體現。Embodiment: 表現，體現。
26 moved: 感動。at greater length: 更長，更詳實；love affair: 戀愛。Involved: 涉及，捲入。
27 romance: 韻事；戀愛（言情）故事。此字與古義已不同，以往此字是指西方文學中的傳奇故事。
28 上流社會。fashionable 通常作「時髦的」。
29 瘋狂的。
30 兩人或以上都認識的一個共同的朋友。
31 熱衷地要進一步發展交往關係。Pursue: 追求。
32 ordinarily: 通常。
33 not worth: 不值得。
34 intrigue: 激起……的興趣。Swann 受到 Odette 美麗的豐采所誘惑而加入那群人，以便接近她。Style 可做「豐采、儀表」解釋。
35 hitherto: up to now，迄今為止。
36 這一次他屈服了--主要是因為她能夠引起他爭風吃醋。jealous: 嫉妒；名詞為 jealousy。
37 tie to: 依附著……，難分難捨。
38 承受了一個吃醋的戀人的各種痛苦，夜裏他在她窗外徘徊，觀看她是否有別的訪客來造訪。
39 他收到一封匿名信，指責 Odette 的種種惡習，包括她的同性戀。同性戀者通稱 gay--男性為 homosexual，女性則稱 lesbian。denounce: 告發、揭發、抨擊。
40 in time: when the time comes。
41 移情別戀。固然 loyalty 原作忠心，忠誠解。
42 Swann 娶 Odette 是迫不得已的，是因為女兒的緣故（生米已煮成熟飯）。
43 接納、歡迎。
44 愈來愈漂進中產階級的社交圏。drift: 漂流，也有被放逐之意。
45 可笑又悲壯。
46 小說中，Marcel 在成年之後重回舊地。
47 汽車取代了（往日）時髦的馬車，而婦女所穿著的服裝既短而又不成樣子。
48 take place: 發生。
49 人、地、事件，甚至我們對這些事物的回憶，都被時間所吞噬，這一點令 Marcel 黯然傷心。
50 expand: 擴大。
51 not only …but (also): also 可以省略。
52 adolescent: 青春期，青年期；少年則為 juvenile。
53 他那嬌生摜養的習癖以及神經哀弱、愛沉思的個性開始令她覺得厭煩。pampered: 蹤容嬌養的。neurasthenic: 神經哀弱的。
54 invalid: 病人；seaside resort: 海濱的避暑地。
55 be engaged in: 從事於……。wild amorous adventures: 瘋狂地尋求愛侶的冒險行徑。
56 Marcel 的愛侶中，男、女性均有。male，female 指性別的區別；feminine，masculine 指男女性特勝上的不同。
57 undergo: 經歷=go through。
58 因嫉妒而飽受折磨。suspect: 懷疑。
59 induce: 勸誘。
60 attachments: 依戀的關係。protect…from: 保護，防止。
61 install=settle。Marcel 將 Albertine 安置在公寓裏，猶如是一個囚犯。
62 在普斯特的《往事追憶》中，愛與妒幾乎是同義的。virtually: 事實上，幾乎。 Synonymous: 同義（介系詞用 with），反義是 antonymous。
63 它是一種病，男人由於一種想要受苦、受虐、受折磨的內在强迫意念而感染了它。Compulsion 是指不由自主的强迫行為。contract: 感染。
64 inferior to …: 比……不如。
65 cruel（形容詞)）: 殘酷；名詞是 cruelty。這些女人殘酷地對待愛她們的人，而她們主要的吸引力也正在於此。
66 在同性戀的韻事（戀情）中，既然没有希望得到傳統的、家庭生活的幸福，殘酷的成分則更明顯。Conventional 指按慣例上說的；traditional 則指按歷史傳統而言。 domestic: 家居的、馴服的。
67 唯一不腐敗的愛是子女的愛或母愛。
68 然而，甚至於這種愛也有它病態的一面；Marcel 可以將他後來情緒上的不穩追溯到他母親向他讓步，陪他哄他入睡的那一夜。morbid: 病態的。Trace: 追踪。Consent: 同意、答應、允許。Instability: 不穩定，形容詞是 unstable，不是instable！
69 小說的技巧。Novelistic 是 novel（小說）一字的形容詞。
70 意識流小說-這種小說在探討人物內心的活動時，偏重尚未形諸言語的想法，與普氏的追溯式、回憶式的寫法不同。
71 他的關切在於回憶及遺忘的過程。Concern 在這裏必須用介系詞 with。如果說 Have a concern for your health（注意你的健康），則為「注意」或「關心」的意思。但如果說 I am concerned with your welfare 與 I am concerned about your welfare 是相通的。
72 「過去」陸續不斷地在消逝，不但是實質上如此，而且在我們心裏也是如此。
73 透過回憶而恢復的過去亦非(全面的)真相，頂多祇能說是真相的一個片面，因為在觀者的眼裏，真相是相對的。（情人眼裏出西施: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder。）
74 對普斯特而言，生命是回憶所及的片刻及情感的流動；即使當我們在注意（觀察）它們的時候，也在變動、消逝。
75 唯獨藝術可以將經驗（現實）的流動停住，將痛苦轉化為美。Transmute: 轉變；化為……。
by Dr. Yuan-huang Tsai