Reading Proust 0

Getting ready to read In Search of Lost Time for the first time.

I am getting ready to start reading Swann’s Way, and I anticipate taking this slowly and tracking it in one or more ways. For some reason, I anticipate this being a journey that has significance or meaning for me right now. As someone obsessed with memory, and specifically my lack of memory and the blank hallways I see when I try to look back, already I am captivated by the bits that I have read.

Because In Search of Lost Time is a seven-volume work, one that is known for dense and lengthy sentences, I am approaching the reading more methodically than usual. I am lighting the candles, filling the coffee drawer, and setting the stage.

I plan to keep and share a written account, possibly with illustrated or sketchnote elements, of my reading.

I have moved the notes below from my weekly Sunday post into a standalone post. I know not everyone who reads Illustrated Life will be interested in this specific reading journey. But some of you might be. For now, I’m going to leave the Proust posts simply as separate posts. Depending on how the reading goes and what direction I decide to take, I may split this off into a section or even something else of its own.

🎯 Do you want to follow along? Subscribe for updates.

“But then, even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be consulted like a page in an account book or the record of a will; our social personality is a creation of the minds of others. Even the simple act that we describe as ‘seeing someone we know’ is, to some extent, an intellectual process. We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him that we compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognize and to which we listen.” — Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

Reading Proust

The groundwork for what may be a year of Proust was woven into the setup for Postcard Prompt 4, along with watching Little Miss Sunshine (which had been mentioned to me by Laura, who writes leapphrogdesign). Putting that yellow van on a postcard in preparation for that post was a whimsical highlight for me.

I am in no real hurry with this project, which feels true to life, and to the slowness that I anticipate with this reading overall, but I do want to get it underway. Some of you saw me note that I was contemplating various translations.

I think I’ve finally made a decision.

It’s been several months since I decided to read Swann’s Way, which is the first book of Marcel Proust’s seven volume In Search of Lost Time. There are multiple translations.

My initial research suggested that I should read the translation by Lydia Davis (which is book one of the Penguin Classics series). I then realized that, in that series, each volume is translated by someone different. As I am setting myself up for a (potentially) long reading process, I feel like I want to go with a single narrative voice.

I want the most beautiful voice.

I have spent a lot of time debating about the translations. I narrowed things down to the Davis, the C. K. Scott Moncrieff (revised by Terence Kilmartin, revised by D. J. Enright), and a newer translation edited by William Carter.

Initially, last fall, I just started reading the first ebook version I downloaded, testing the first few pages to see if I even wanted to pursue reading In Search of Lost Time. (I’m still not sure I will stick with it. It is, in some ways, way out of my wheelhouse. In other ways, I already feel like getting lost in Proust is exactly where I need to be right now, even if I only read a sentence a day.) I didn’t even realize initially that there were so many translations, and that they differ so significantly in their language.

I have now spent weeks trying to figure out what to read. Had Lydia Davis translated all of the books, I probably would have gone ahead with her translation without even delving into the question of translation. But since she translated only one book, I had real questions about the continuity of reading. That prompted me to dig a bit deeper.

Feedback I got at Reddit suggested, persuasively, that I should read the Carter translation (which I hadn’t even heard of before posting to Reddit). The William Carter edition is oversized and has annotations in the margins—and lots of blank space. It is also significantly more expensive than either of the other two options I have been considering.

In the first week or two of January, I spent time comparing sentences and paragraphs between Davis and Moncrieff. I went back and forth about which I felt drawn to. Then, I reached a point where there was reference to a magic lantern, and I thought, “I wonder if the Carter annotations have anything to say about this.”¹

That was enough to get me out of my chair to retrieve the Carter book from a stack. There was no annotation about the magic lantern itself, oddly, but there were two annotations about that paragraph, one which brings a poet into the timeline and another that briefly explains the story behind the scene the narrator views from the magic lantern. This magic lantern sounds something like a View-Master to me, although set atop a lamp, a whimsical projection of a story onto a wall.

“But I cannot express the discomfort I felt at such an intrusion of mystery and beauty into a room which I had succeeded in filling with my own personality until I thought no more of the room than of myself. The anesthetic effect of habit having ceased, I would begin to think and to feel, which are such melancholy occupations.”— Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

Having brought the Carter translation back into the mix, I read the full introduction. In that introduction, Carter gives several examples where he shows the original wording by Moncrieff, the edited phrasing from Enright, and then his own phrasing, and why he made the decisions he did.

Here is one sentence that I compared between the three translations:

Davis: “A sleeping man holds in a circle around him the sequence of the hours, the order of the years and worlds. He consults them instinctively as he wakes and reads in a second the point on the earth he occupies, the time that has elapsed before his waking; but their ranks can be mixed up, broken.”

Moncrieff (Enright): “When a man is asleep, he has a circle around him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly bodies. Instinctively, he consults them when he awakes, and in an instant reads off his own position on the earth’s surface, and the time that has elapsed during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused, and to break its ranks.”

Carter: “When a man is asleep, he holds in a circle around him, the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, and the order of the universe. Instinctively, when he wakes, he looks to these, and in an instant reads off his own position on the earth’s surface and the amount of time that has elapsed during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused, and to break its ranks.”

I like the Carter.

I don’t know French, and I have no way to evaluate which is closest to the original. I do have this really strong sense that whichever I read, I will be reading the prosaic voice of the translator as much as anything else. The differences are so extreme in the examples I’ve seen and compared that the whole process of translation feels like a puzzle.² If we both “quote” Proust, but we use different editions, the language will be totally different. We are quoting translators.

I find the differences in these editions and translations fascinating, but also exhausting. I just want to pick a version and read it. I feel like this is going to be a journey, and I am really tempted to annotate or “tab” the book or work in the margins. To do that, I need to own the book.

Do I need to own seven large books at this point? No. One book at a time.

I don’t know what my relationship with Proust will be, but even in the pages I have read (which I have now read several times in several versions), I feel like this discussion of memory is going to be important.

My plan right now is to read the first chunk in the Carter translation, maybe the first 30 pages or so. If I am liking the phrasing and the cadence, I’ll order it.³

Thank you for reading!

The rabbit holes have already begun opening up all around me, and I am looking forward to something very slow. I may or may not remember any of this when I finish reading, a sentence or a book, but I hope to enjoy in the moment.

---

Thank you for reading Illustrated Life. Writers need readers, and I am grateful for every reader!

Paid options are available for those who want to support Illustrated Life, the podcast, and the weekly #illustrateyourweek prompt series. Subscriptions not your thing? One-time tip jar donations or wish list treats are always appreciated.

Unless otherwise noted, all images in this post are ©️ A. Cowen. All rights reserved.

Links to books are Amazon affiliate links. Always check your library.

1. “A magic lantern you say?” Why yes, yes, indeed, a magic lantern that projects the scene of a story onto the wall of a child’s bedroom. It seems this is also often pulled out as an important metaphor for the book. I haven’t had a chance to really delve into this, but stumbling on this image so early on, and so enmeshed in a story that is, from the beginning, about the scenes we carry in memory, reeled me in. More: THE MAGIC LANTERN AND PROUST (Ali de Groot), Wikipedia, PROUST'S MAGIC LANTERN (Emily Zants)

2. When I was in graduate school, I passed my language exam by translating part of Cassandra, a book by German author Christa Wolff. I had forgotten.

3. I have started keeping digital notes using GoodNotes, but I anticipate an analog, tactile, or illustrated element.