The Infamous Proust Questionnaire

　　 著名的Proust Questionnaire（普魯斯特問卷）由一系列問題組成，問題包括被提問者的生活、思想、價值觀及人生經驗等。因著作《追憶逝水年華》而聞名的Marcel Proust並不是這份問卷的始作俑者，但這份問卷因為他特別的答案而出名，並且在當年時髦的巴黎人沙龍中也頗為流行。因此後人將這份問卷命名為“Proust Questionnaire”。
　　
　　1.你認為最理想的快樂是怎樣的？

　　2.你最希望擁有哪種才華？

　　3.你最害怕的是甚麼？

　　4.你目前的心境怎樣？

　　5.你本身最顯著的特點是甚麼？

　　6.你認為你最偉大的成就是甚麼？

　　7.你自己的哪個特點讓你最覺得痛恨？

　　8.如果你能選擇的話，你希望讓甚麼重現？

　　9.你最痛恨別人的甚麼特點？

　　10.你最珍惜的財產是甚麼？

　　11.你最奢侈的是甚麼？

　　12.你認為程度最淺的痛苦是甚麼？

　　13.你認為哪種美德是被過高的評估的？

　　14.你最喜歡的職業是甚麼？

　　15.你對自己的外錶哪一點不滿意？

　　16.還在世的人中你最欽佩的是誰？

　　17.還在世的人中你最輕視的是誰？

　　18.你最喜歡男性身上的甚麼品質？

　　19.你最喜歡女性身上的甚麼品質？

　　20.你使用過的最多的單詞或者是詞語是甚麼？

　　21.你最傷痛的事是甚麼？

　　22.你最看重朋友的甚麼特點？

　　23.你這一生中最愛的人或東西是甚麼？

　　24.何時是你生命中最快樂的時刻？

　　25.你希望以甚麼樣的方式死去？

　　26.你的座右銘是甚麼？
　　






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　　The Infamous Proust Questionnaire

　　In the back pages of Vanity Fair each month, readers find The Proust Questionnaire, a series of questions posed to famous subjects about their lives, thoughts, values and experience. A regular reference to Proust in such a major publication struck me as remarkable, and it was only until I'd read Andre Maurois's Proust: Portrait of a Genius that I understood what this was all about.

　　The young Marcel was asked to fill out questionnaires at two social events: one when he was 13, another when he was 20. Proust did not invent this party game; he is simply the most extraordinary person to respond to them. At the birthday party of Antoinette Felix-Faure, the 13-year-old Marcel was asked to answer the following questions in the birthday book, and here's what he said:
　　
　　
　　What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
　　To be separated from Mama

　　Where would you like to live?
　　In the country of the Ideal, or, rather, of my ideal

　　What is your idea of earthly happiness?
　　To live in contact with those I love, with the beauties of nature, with a quantity of books and music, and to have, within easy distance, a French theater

　　To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
　　To a life deprived of the works of genius

　　Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
　　Those of romance and poetry, those who are the expression of an ideal rather than an imitation of the real

　　Who are your favorite characters in history?
　　A mixture of Socrates, Pericles, Mahomet, Pliny the Younger and Augustin Thierry

　　Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
　　A woman of genius leading an ordinary life

　　Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
　　Those who are more than women without ceasing to be womanly; everything that is tender, poetic, pure and in every way beautiful

　　Your favorite painter?
　　Meissonier

　　Your favorite musician?
　　Mozart

　　The quality you most admire in a man?
　　Intelligence, moral sense

　　The quality you most admire in a woman?
　　Gentleness, naturalness, intelligence

　　Your favorite virtue?
　　All virtues that are not limited to a sect: the universal virtues

　　Your favorite occupation?
　　Reading, dreaming, and writing verse

　　Who would you have liked to be?
　　Since the question does not arise, I prefer not to answer it. All the same, I should very much have liked to be Pliny the Younger.


　　This questionnaire tells us much about two things, the character of petiit Marcel, and the amusement of the young in the Belle Epoque. We see Marcel as a sweet and dreamy Mama's boy, brainy, aesthetic, a young citizen of the world with much sympathy for the feminine. What he sees in Pliny the Younger, famous only for speaking and writing letters, is hard to grasp.
　　

　　What is fascinating about this questionnaire is that it was considered so great an amusement to very young people in Proust's time. It is hard to imagine a party of 13-year-olds in these times being quizzed about their favorite virtues, painters or characters of fiction and history. If the questionnaire were not to smack of exam, it would have to ask "what's your favorite TV show?" or "what's your favorite band?"
　　

　　Seven years after the first questionnaire, Proust was asked, at another social event, to fill out another; the questions are much the same, but the answers somewhat different, indicative of his traits at 20:
　　


　　
　　Your most marked characteristic?　
　　A craving to be loved, or, to be more precise, to be caressed and spoiled rather than to be admired

　　The quality you most like in a man?
　　Feminine charm

　　The quality you most like in a woman? 　　
　　A man's virtues, and frankness in friendship

　　What do you most value in your friends? 　
　　Tenderness - provided they possess a physical charm which makes their tenderness worth having

　　What is your principle defect?
　　Lack of understanding; weakness of will

　　What is your favorite occupation?
　　Loving

　　What is your dream of happiness?
　　Not, I fear, a very elevated one. I really haven't the courage to say what it is, and if I did I should probably destroy it by the mere fact of putting it into words.

　　What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
　　Never to have known my mother or my grandmother

　　What would you like to be?
　　Myself - as those whom I admire would like me to be

　　In what country would you like to live?
　　One where certain things that I want would be realized - and where feelings of tenderness would always be reciprocated. [Proust's underlining]

　　What is your favorite color?
　　Beauty lies not in colors but in thier harmony

　　What is your favorite flower?
　　Hers - but apart from that, all

　　What is your favorite bird?
　　The swallow

　　Who are your favorite prose writers?
　　At the moment, Anatole France and Pierre Loti

　　Who are your favoite poets?
　　Baudelaire and Alfred de Vigny

　　Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
　　Hamlet

　　Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
　　Phedre (crossed out) Berenice

　　Who are your favorite composers?
　　Beethoven, Wagner, Shuhmann

　　Who are your favorite painters?
　　Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt

　　Who are your heroes in real life?
　　Monsieur Darlu, Monsieur Boutroux (professors)

　　Who are your favorite heroines of history?
　　Cleopatra

　　What are your favorite names?
　　I only have one at a time

　　What is it you most dislike?
　　My own worst qualities

　　What historical figures do you most despise?
　　I am not sufficiently educated to say

　　What event in military history do you most admire?
　　My own enlistment as a volunteer!

　　What reform do you most admire?
　　(no response)

　　What natural gift would you most like to possess?
　　Will power and irresistible charm

　　How would you like to die?
　　A better man than I am, and much beloved

　　What is your present state of mind?
　　Annoyance at having to think about myself in order to answer these questions

　　To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
　　Those that I understand

　　What is your motto?
　　I prefer not to say, for fear it might bring me bad luck.


　　The second set of questions and answers give us Proust as a young man, mad for conquest, drawn to love crossing conventional sexual lines, still fixated on Mama. His aesthetic sensibilities have grown more serious (I, however, would not give up Mozart for Schumann, with all his interminable faux endings.) In these responses are early threads of character found in the narrator of Remembrance.