One last introductory remark: a controversial title

I am referring to the English translation as Remembrance of Things Past (RoTP), as per the CK Scott Moncrieff (SM) and Terence Kilmartin (TK) editions. I understand that it is nowadays customary to translate A la recherche du temps perdu as In Search of Lost Time (ISoLT), as per DJ Enright, in preference to SM's Shakespearean quotation.

The reasons in support of ISoLT are two-fold: it is a more direct translation of the French; and Proust himself disliked RoTP.

My own reasons for persisting with RoTP are three-fold. First, I am using the SM and TK translations for this blog. Secondly, Proust could not speak English (although that did not stop him translating in to French - word by word using an Anglo-French dictionary - Ruskin's Bible of Amiens and Sesame and Lilies). Thirdly, and most importantly, one of the biggest themes of RoTP is, as we shall see, the concept of involuntary memory and "remembrance", which can be either passive or active can thus better capture this idea of involuntariness, whereas "in search of" can only be active, ie a voluntary search for memories of past times, which is not a very Proustian preoccupation. It is for this reason that I prefer RoTP and dislike ISoLT, even though the former phrase is originally used by Shakespeare in an active context ("I summon up remembrance of things past"). The fact that the word "remembrance" can be neutral in regard to activity/passivity and voluntary/involuntary, while "in search of" is uniquely active and voluntary, gives the former the advantage in this controversy.And to be even more controversial: Proust's own French title doesn't do the job either because “à la recherche” is purely active. Maybe he should have followed SM's lead and turned to Shakespeare, perhaps using Victor Hugo's translation of the sonnet: Le souvenir des choses passées.

I hope this obstinacy of mine is not too off-putting.

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