巴黎莎士比亞書局

電影愛在巴黎日落時(Before Sunset)中男主角Jesse在新書發表會時,

與相隔九年,錯失姻緣的女主角Celine重逢的場景,就是在莎士比亞書局!

位在距離聖母院不遠的左岸邊,

莎士比亞書局,與其說是一家書局,還不如說是間藏書庫;

而老老闆喬治惠特曼則不像個生意人,而是個愛書成癡的理想主義者!

過去在第六區那間讓海明威寫下流動的盛宴(Movable Feast)的書局,

已在二戰中遭到納粹查禁,卻深深影響著喬治惠特曼,

他知道有非常多的人,憧憬一切來到巴黎,夢想能成為一名作家,

卻因為都會居,大不易,昂貴的物資使得他們生活陷入困頓,

於是他開了一扇門給這些失落的一代,讓他們有一個免費的地方可以安頓!

就像他在書局所寫的家訓一樣:

"要善待每個陌生人,因為他們都可能是潛入凡間的天使!"

老先生剛於前年底過世,享年98歲,

現在的書局已由女兒接手了,但就像黑板上寫的,

(Paris, Shakespeare & Co. Antiquarian Books)

Paris Wall Newspaper, January 1st 2004

Some people call me the Don Quixote of the Latin quarter because my head

is so far up in the clouds that I can imagine all of us are angels in paradise.

And instead of being a bonafide bookseller I am more like a frustrated novelist.

Store has rooms like chapters in a novel. And the fact is Tolstoi and Dostoyevski

 are more real to me than my next door neighbors, and even stranger is the fact

 that even before I was born Dostoyevski wrote the story of my life in a book called

 ‘The Idiot’ and ever since reading it I have been searching for the heroine, a girl

called Nastasia Filipovna. One hundred years ago my bookstore was a wine shop

 hidden from the Seine by an annex of the hotel Dieu Hospital which has since been

 demolished & replaced by a garden. And further back in the year 1660 our whole

building was a monastery called La Maison du Mustier. In medieval times each

monastery had a frere lampier whose duty was to light the lamps at nightfall.

I have been doing this for fifty years now it is my daughter’s turn.

-GW

巴黎莎士比亞書局,最靠近全國公路零公里點的聖母院;

喬治惠特曼是個痴人,也是個最永遠為追夢人點燈的人!