【Paintings in Proust】 The Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute, Venice, Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1843 (p.283)

威尼斯是普魯斯特一心嚮往的城市，英國作家羅斯金 (John Ruskin) 的《威尼斯之石》(The Stones of Venice) 應該影響甚鉅，普魯斯特曾經私淑羅斯金的作品並且進行翻譯，在 1900 年還和母親一起同遊義大利威尼斯，而在這個段落中描述的正是敘事者與其母親到威尼斯出遊的情形，從這裡似乎可以認定普魯斯特的小說與他的現實生活實在是密不可分。




【TEXT】
The sun continued to sink. My mother must be nearing the station. Soon she would be gone, and I should be alone in Venice, alone with the misery of knowing that I had distressed her, and without her presence to comfort me. The hour of the train’s departure was approaching. My irrevocable solitude was so near at hand that it seemed to me to have begun already and to be complete, For I felt myself to be alone; things had become alien to me; I no longer had calm enough to break out of my throbbing heart and introduce into them a measure of stability. The town that I saw before me had ceased to be Venice. Its personality, its name, seemed to mc to be mendacious fictions which I no longer had the will to impress upon its stones I saw the palaces reduced to their basic elements, lifeless heaps of marble with nothing to choose between them, and the water as a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, eternal, blind, anterior and exterior to Venice, oblivious of the Doges or of Turner. (The Fugitive)

太陽繼續落下去。母親現在離車站大概不會很遠了。她很快就會不在這兒了，而我將孤身一人留在威尼斯，孤身一人為惹得母親傷心而難過，卻沒有她在身旁撫慰我。開車的時刻越來越近，我的無可挽回的孤寂也即將來臨，我甚至覺得我已經開始嘗味這徹底的孤寂了。確實我感到孤獨，周圍的事物變得陌生了，我已沒有足夠的平靜去擺脫心臟的猛烈跳動，去給周圍的事物注入一點安定。我面前的這座城市已不再是威尼斯。它的特點，它的名字對於我如同騙人的虛構，我再沒有勇氣把這些虛構刻印在石頭上了。宮殿在我眼裡只不過是一個個建築物和一大堆與其他石頭沒有什麼不同的大理石，水也只不過是氮氫化合物，一種永恆的、沒有靈性的物質，威尼斯存在以前就有，威尼斯以外的地方也有，它不知總督和透納為何人。
(p.250~251 追憶似水年華 VI 女逃亡者 聯經版 1992)