轉眼間，普魯斯特的鉅作《追憶似水年華》第一冊《斯萬之路》(Du côté de chez Swan, Swann's Way) 出版迄今已經是進入第 100 週年了，在 1913 年 11 月 14 日，普魯斯特終於經由格拉塞出版社 (Grasset) 以自費方式順利出書，結束了過去一整年苦無伯樂幫忙出版而疲於奔命的窘況。

法國作家紀德 (André Gide) 主導的《新法蘭西評論》(NRF) 在不識泰山之後亡羊補牢，積極取得第二冊《在少女們身旁》(À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, Within a Budding Grove) 的版權並進而獲得龔古爾獎 (Prix Goncourt)，終成一段文壇佳話。

從網路搜尋到《紐約時報》一篇有關今年年初在紐約 The Morgan Library & Museum 所舉辦的一場「普魯斯特及《斯萬之路》一百週年」(Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary) 特展的文章，一開頭引用普魯斯特曾經遭出版社退稿的橋段令人莞爾：
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/books/marcel-proust-and-swanns-way-at-the-morgan-library.html?_r=1&
Proust, for Those With a Memory
‘Marcel Proust and “Swann’s Way” ’ at the Morgan Library
A cosmos is compressed into cryptic hieroglyphs in the Clare Eddy Thaw Gallery of the Morgan Library & Museum. Here is an exhibition so condensed, so distilled and in some ways so abstract and well suited to the gallery’s geometric space (which is a perfect cube), that unless you arrive properly prepared, you might leave as bewildered as prospective French publishers were when they rejected Marcel Proust’s “Du Côté de Chez Swann” (“Swann’s Way”), more than a century ago.

這篇文章也讓我們再次複習了這一段經典的退稿評論：
“Perhaps I am as thick as two short planks,” reads one of those evaluations, “but I cannot understand how a man can take 30 pages to describe how he turns round in his bed before he finally falls asleep.”

哲人日已遠，典型在夙昔。
目前在摩根博物館的官網還能找到這場展覽資訊，包含連結到法國國家圖書館 (Bibliothèque nationale de France) 的一段影片及一些手稿照片。
儘管未能恭逢其盛，但透過這篇文章依舊讓人感到振奮不已；依舊讓人想要分享這一場無緣的展覽資訊啊！

http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/exhibition.asp?id=71
Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary
February 15 through April 28, 2013

Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most influential and ambitious literary works of all time. The Morgan celebrates the 1913 publication of the first of its seven volumes, Swann's Way, with a fascinating selection of the author's notebooks, preliminary drafts, galley-proofs, and other documents from the collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The works on display will provide unique insight into Proust's creative process and the birth of his masterpiece. Also on view will be period postcards with depictions of Illiers, which served as the inspiration for Proust's fictional town Combray, and Paris. Several letters between Proust and his mother, Jeanne, from the Morgan's collection, will be included.

The Bibliothèque nationale de France has prepared a video and album of images that provide a close look at several of Proust’s heavily-corrected galley sheets from a volume that is included in the exhibition. Guest curator Antoine Compagnon provides audio commentary. Visit the page »

Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary at The Morgan Library & Museum is organized by the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, with the participation of renowned Proust scholar Antoine Compagnon.

This exhibition was made possible by the Recanati-Kaplan Foundation.
Generous support was provided by Air France, Jean-Marie and Elizabeth Eveillard, Hubert and Mireille Goldschmidt, the Institut français, the Y. A. Istel Foundation, and the Leonard and Elaine Silverstein Family Foundation.