『失われた時を求めて』発売１００周年

The only paradise is the paradise lost.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.

上記の言葉はプルーストのものだそうですが、夏目漱石に通じるものが多いにありそうです。どちらも美術評論家のジョン・ラスキンの影響も受けていますし。。。

さて、そんなプルーストの『失われた時を求めて』の第一巻にあたる『スワン家の方へ』が発売されて今年で１００周年にあたるそうです。“À la Recherche du Temps Perdu”は、英語に直訳すると “In Search of Lost Time”ですが、英訳タイトルは “Remembrance of Things Past”でこちらの方が通りがいいそうです。グーテンベルクにあったのもこちらのタイトルでした。
　


May 2
Reading Proust: An Introduction
By SAM TANENHAUS

Over the next week, Sam Tanenhaus, Caroline Weber and John Williams are holding a conversation about “In Search of Lost Time,” and welcome readers to join their discussion by leaving comments on the right-hand side of the blog. Mr. Tanenhaus is reading the translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin revised by D. J. Enright.

One hundred years after its publication, “Swann’s Way,” the first volume in Marcel Proust’s cycle “À la Recherche du Temps Perdu” — “In Search of Lost Time,” better known to many Anglophone readers as “Remembrance of Things Past,” the Shakespearian title used by Proust’s first English translator — doubles as thematic “overture” and Michelin guide to the most captivating, ambitious and elusive of modern novels.

The glittering surface of “Swann's Way” presents a Manet-like canvas of belle époque France, a sumptuous world of fashionable salons and tranquil summer homes populated by characters — old and young, rich and poor, artists and aristocrats, footmen and physicians — who spring at us with comic ferocity: their sufferings and delusions, their petty cruelties, their self-destructive obsessions and corrosive vanities. By the end of the giant cycle (some 4,000 pages) these fictitious beings will seem realer than the members of one’s own family.

この作品は普通の人は、For a long time I used to go to bed early.という書き出しの部分と、同じく最初の章のAnd suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleineというマドレーヌで記憶がよみがえり紅茶のカップから記憶が溢れ出てくるというall the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, (…) the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of teaの箇所を抑えておけばよいのではないかと思っています。

『フリーダム』や『コレクション』などの長編小説で名高いフランゼンが今読んでいる本などを語っているときにいかのように書いていました。

Jonathan Franzen: By the Book
Published: April 25, 2013

What are you planning to read next?
For the past 20 years or so I’ve been planning to read the final four volumes of “In Search of Lost Time” next.

プルーストの本は全部で７巻ありますから、彼は３巻で挫折したことになりますね（苦笑）これだけの大作家でも挫折するような本ですから、以下のような本もあるわけです。

Proust's Way: A Field Guide to "In Search of Lost Time" (2001/07/26) Roger Shattuck 商品詳細を見る

If you have ever wanted to tackle Proust's In Search of Lost Time but find it a bit daunting, this field guide will bejust the right thing. Shattuck, who won a National Book Award in 1974 for Marcel Proust, focuses here on Proust's place in 20th-century literature. He then provides a guide through Proust's masterpiece. He explains the major settings of the work, summarizes character and plot, and discusses central themes. Shattuck acknowledges that there is no one right interpretation of In Search of Lost Time but succeeds in providing a framework to help readers get through it. He addresses readers coming to the work for the first time, although those familiar with the work who are still struggling with its various facets will appreciate Shattuck's insights. Shattuck is most helpful in placing Proust and the work in the context of his time, giving a balanced treatment to the novel as a whole. Written in a style that will appeal to both the scholar and the lay reader, Shattuck's field guide should be a standard for years to come.

先ほどご紹介した第一巻の書き出しと有名な紅茶とマドレーヌのシーンです。これを機にまずは日本語で読破を目指してみようかと思いました。

SWANN'S WAY
Remembrance Of Things Past, Volume One


By Marcel Proust


Translated From The French By C. K. Scott Moncrieff
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1922

For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say "I'm going to sleep." And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed.

＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊

And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before church-time), when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks' windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

And once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre to attach itself to the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built out behind it for my parents (the isolated panel which until that moment had been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square where I was sent before luncheon, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine. And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognisable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.