A longer introduction to this blog

Before starting my commentary on the text of Remembrance of Things Past (RoTP), it might be helpful if I outline my personal history in relation to it.

About 40 years ago I was at some friends' house in Camberwell. Their dinner party had not been the most riveting and after the meal I had wandered into one of the bedrooms for a moment of solitude. On the bedside table was a copy of RoTP. I sat down on the bed and read the first page. By the age of 25, I had read most of the great works of literature (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Joyce, etc), but this opening grabbed me like no other. I thereupon set about reading RoTP for the first time. I bought an English version published in three volumes by Penguin. The back cover claimed it was a new translation by Terence Kilmartin (TK), but it is generally thought of as a revision of the CK Scott Moncrieff (SM) original translation.

Thirty years passed before I undertook my second reading, or first rereading. By this stage, I had managed to find in a second-hand bookshop in Beverley the 12-volume RoTP published by Chatto & Windus, with 11 volumes translated by SM and the last volume by Stephen Hudson (the literary pseudonym of Sydney Schiff). I had remembered from my first reading that every 10 or 20 pages, my mind would be lit up by a beautiful piece of writing or a novel idea. So this time, in order to be able to refind these epiphanic sections, I made notes on a slip of paper which doubled as a bookmarker. Unfortunately, as I neared the end of the whole work, I lost the paper during a hospital visit for a cataract operation. Not quite on a par with TE Lawrence leaving his Seven Pillars of Wisdom manuscript on a train at Reading station or John Stuart Mill's maid burning in error the first draft of Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution, but dispiriting nevertheless.

Now, 10 years later, my third reading will be from the SM translation but using the TK revision in place of the Hudson 12th volume, which I view as an awkward and difficult-to-read translation. I intend to use this blog as a glorified form of the earlier slip of paper.

Whilst on the subject of translations, I should say that I am unfamiliar with the DJ Enright revision, which I understand is now considered to be the standard translation cited by scholars and commentators. Although I speak and read French, I do not have the necessary expertise to evaluate the rival versions. My methodology will be to use the SM translation, and when I meet a word or sentence which does not make immediate sense, to cross-refer to both the TK version and the original French. When discussing passages, I will cite the page numbers of the SM and TK texts, and hope that the Enright text is not too disimilar to the latter as to prevent identification of the passage in question.

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