2017.9.23
台灣的新書太多了。新書發表會一場接一場。我通常只選附近的場。
然而，有時可能有些緣分。缪詠華女士今年來漢清講堂發表 (對了，阿邦轉引的殷琪的故事，應該是要轉送寫過【長眠在巴黎】的她)不忘送周保松簽名的【小王子的領悟】-- 她向作者卡油的。
我回贈一本重量級的Silverstein的書【不同的舞步】。並請她設法聽聽作者誦自己的詩的"聲優"水準。
我還說，很怕看原書數十倍篇幅的書；也不喜歡爭"馴服"、"馴化"、"親近"的翻譯。
歸檔之前，讀些，免得辜負作者、贈書者的美意。
然而，有時可能有些緣分。缪詠華女士今年來漢清講堂發表 (對了，阿邦轉引的殷琪的故事，應該是要轉送寫過【長眠在巴黎】的她)不忘送周保松簽名的【小王子的領悟】-- 她向作者卡油的。
我回贈一本重量級的Silverstein的書【不同的舞步】。並請她設法聽聽作者誦自己的詩的"聲優"水準。
我還說，很怕看原書數十倍篇幅的書；也不喜歡爭"馴服"、"馴化"、"親近"的翻譯。
歸檔之前，讀些，免得辜負作者、贈書者的美意。
感動的事：作者從("徹底改變了香港，也徹底改變了我"的)雨傘革命(2014)的喧鬧之餘， 來台北"平靜"。
"我的少年時代，大部分的人文養分都是來自台灣。....走進一個有情有義的文學世界。......我仍然清楚記得，當年讀到司馬中原的【啼明鳥】時的那份激動，.....給我前行的勇氣和希望。"
這是下月要出版的繆詠華翻譯的"小王子 狐狸篇"部分：
"「最好在同一個時間過來，」狐狸說。「比方說，要是你下午四點鐘來的話，三點鐘一到，我就會很快樂。時間越臨近，我就會越感到快樂。四點鐘一到，我就已經坐立難安，而且會很擔心；我會發現快樂是要付出代價的！可是要是你來的時間不一定，我就永遠也不會知道什麼時候該做好心理準備⋯⋯這可是需要儀式的。」～狐狸，《小王子》"
我要提議：這隻狐狸是"損失函數" (loss function)的創始人之一：
損失函數描述某些可調整的參數的不同數值下，該系統遭受的損失。損失函數的運用範圍，應侷限在損失是可加以衡量的場合。
損失函數的最重要應用是可協助我們，從只求”符合規格”的心態、觀念，轉換到透過對於流程的改善，持續地將某目標值的變異縮小。
---W. Edwards Deming 《新經濟學》台北：經濟新潮，2015
2015.9.19
2000年是Antoine Saint-Exupéry百年祭 : the French aristocrat, writer and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944).
他的所有作品似乎都有漢譯了 (台灣也如此).
*****
這可能是法國式怨偶.
一般外人很難想像如此婚姻關係:
After his disappearance, Consuelo de Saint Exupéry wrote The Tale of the Rose, which was published in 2000 and subsequently translated into 16 languages.[100]
我在舊書攤買到:《玫瑰的回憶》，黃葒譯，上海:譯文，2002
看了後面四章. 還不錯. 他們在美國也是活在名人圈和友善圈中 (外地租屋. 屋主一聽是Antoine Saint-Exupéry 自願免費.....)
英文本: Saint-Exupéry, Antoine (Consuelo de); and/tr. by Esther Allen. The Tale of the Rose: The Love Story Behind The Little Prince. New York: Random House, 2000.
The Tale of the Rose:
The Love Story Behind The Little PrinceConsuelo and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry met in Buenos Aires in 1930—she a seductive young widow, he a brave pioneer of early aviation, decorated for his acts of heroism in the deserts of North Africa. He was large in his passions, a fierce loner with a childlike appetite for danger. She was frail and voluble, exotic and capricious. Within hours of their first encounter, he knew he would have her as his wife.
Their love affair and marriage would take them from Buenos Aires to Paris to Casablanca to New York. It would take them through periods of betrayal and infidelity, pain and intense passion, devastating abandonment and tender, poetic love. The Tale of the Rose is the story of a man of extravagant dreams and of the woman who was his muse, the inspiration for the Little Prince’s beloved rose—unique in all the world—whom he could not live with and could not live without.
Their love affair and marriage would take them from Buenos Aires to Paris to Casablanca to New York. It would take them through periods of betrayal and infidelity, pain and intense passion, devastating abandonment and tender, poetic love. The Tale of the Rose is the story of a man of extravagant dreams and of the woman who was his muse, the inspiration for the Little Prince’s beloved rose—unique in all the world—whom he could not live with and could not live without.
*****
有空應該重溫這小王子的天真 (2010)
Spotlight:
 | |
| 'Le Petit Prince' |
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye."— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
翻譯：王相宜
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永遠的《小王子》
閱讀2014年02月13日
摩根圖書館的「《小王子》：一個紐約故事」(The Little Prince: A New York Story) 展揭示出這部法語經典之作鮮為人知的紐約根源，探索這部看似簡單實則意味深長的童書的起源。20世紀40年代初，法國被德國佔領期間，該書作者、飛行員安 托萬·德·聖-埃克蘇佩里(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)流亡到美國。他住在曼哈頓，專心寫一個故事：一個陷入困境的飛行員與一個來自他世的小男孩之間的友誼。他在中央公園南邊和比 克曼社區的家中、長島的一個避暑地和一個朋友在第52街的工作室寫作和繪製《小王子》。那個工作室後來變成了法國餐館La Grenouille。這部簡練的中篇小說去年4月迎來了誕生70周年紀念，是法國被閱讀最多的作品。這部小說正被改編成一部即將上映的3D動畫電影，由 瑞秋·麥克亞當斯(Rachel McAdams)、詹姆斯·弗蘭科(James Franco)和瑪麗昂·歌迪亞(Marion Cotillard)配音。但是紐約對這本書不可否認的影響力卻很少被探究。聖-埃克蘇佩里在紐約的那些年很重要，因為那是他最後的日子。1943年，在 《小王子》的第一批書上架之後一周，他乘船重返戰場，回到他的偵察小組。臨走前，他匆忙地把這本書的手稿送給紐約的一個朋友，作為告別禮物。一年後，在巴 黎解放前幾周，他的飛機在地中海上空失蹤。人們一直沒有找到他的屍體。摩根的展覽展出了少數幾本有他簽名的《小王子》中的一本，以及他失蹤那段時間所佩戴 的身份腕帶，上面刻有他的名字以及他的出版商在紐約的地址。
安托萬·德·聖-埃克蘇佩里1944年在撒丁島。
John Phillips, courtesy of the John and Annamaria Phillips Foundation
這場展覽的關鍵是聖-埃克蘇佩里的原始手稿。透過有咖啡漬的草稿修 改、最初的水彩畫以及私人信件和草圖，《小王子》的構思過程被生動地呈現出來。同時展出的還有最早的素描——小王子和他的寵物狐狸這些人物就是從這些素描 演化而來的——以及聖-埃克蘇佩里最初畫的幾幅描繪小王子的小星球的素描。手稿最初有三萬字，最終被精簡到不到一半——原稿提到曼哈頓、長島和洛克菲勒中 心的部分最終都被刪除了。手稿中還列舉了一組能引起共鳴的詞句，聖-埃克蘇佩斟酌再三，最終選擇了那句成為全書中心句的話：「本質的東西用眼睛是看不見 的。」
「一個紐約故事」證明了這個童話故事的哲理對孩子和大人長久的影響 力。摩根的展覽還展出了P·L·特拉韋爾(P.L. Travers)寫的最早的一篇對《小王子》的書評。《瑪麗·波平斯》(Mary Poppins)系列的作者預見道，「《小王子》將用一道側光照耀孩子們。它將照到頭腦之外的某個地方，在那裡發光，直到他們長大後能夠理解。」
摩根圖書館&博物館，麥迪遜大道225號；1月24日至4月27日；themorgan.org。
本文最初發表於2014年1月24日。翻譯：王相宜
Time Wasted
September 18, 2015 | by Sadie Stein
From The Little Prince.
When we got married, my husband and I knew we didn’t want to do anything elaborate: we had neither the money nor the inclination and, in any case, we wanted to get the wedding over with and begin the marriage. (Proper weddings, as any bridal magazine will tell you, take months of preparation.) So: we agreed on a date, got our license, I bought a suit, and we went to City Hall with our siblings and our two dearest friends.
After the ceremony, we took the subway uptown and met our families for lunch. I’d booked the upstairs dining room of a venerable French restaurant because I knew the food would be good, and everyone would feel comfortable. Like everything else about the wedding, I must admit I didn’t give it too much thought; I knew the day would be nice no matter what and, for my life’s sake, very much hoped it would not be the most important.
But when people asked me where we were planning to have the lunch, and I told them, their eyes would light up. “But you know The Little Prince was written there!” they would say in delight. “How romantic! How perfect!” It was true: Saint-Exupery had written the iconic book while staying in what was then an artist friend’s atelier during the war—in the very space that is now the restaurant’s upstairs dining room.
And we would smile and say, yes, what luck, we weren’t even thinking of that!
Because the secret truth is, we have both always hated The Little Prince. Its whimsy and passion-play significance had always left my fiancé cold; I found the isolation of the book’s landscape deeply scary. Besides, I’ve never liked anything set in space. I’d read it as a child, of course, and later in French class, and I had watched the creepy cartoon version with a sort of horrified fervor. But my feeling had always been one of active aversion—the last theme I’d ever have chosen for a wedding. It’s not the sort of thing one takes pleasure in disliking; the love people feel for that book is pure and real, and if I could love it, I would. I think we both feel that way; we certainly laughed ruefully together about the coincidence. (To the extent that people laugh ruefully in real life, that is.)
At a certain point before the wedding, I found myself in a bookstore, and I thought, I’d better get a copy of The Little Prince. I thought it would be funny to produce it amid the toasts and read a quote aloud—the sort of cheesy quote people put on their yearbook pages or on tote bags—and we’d tell everyone about our shared aversion to the book, and it would be charming and irreverent and show how well matched we were, or something. It wouldn’t be a real reading—that would be something of great significance, and very personal and surprising, and maybe unsentimental. I bought it, and I stuck it in my bag, and I forgot about it until the day before the wedding. I read it through that night.
I had it in my bag—the bag with my makeup and my bouquet and my ID—and when I stood up, my hands were shaking. Here is the part I read:
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.“You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.”And the roses were very much embarrassed.“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you—the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.And he went back to meet the fox.“Goodbye,” he said.“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”“It is the time I have wasted for my rose—” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose …”“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
And by the end, of course, I was crying.
Sadie Stein is contributing editor of The Paris Review, and the Daily’s correspondent.