Reading Proust - A Running Commentary

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 t...

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 ...

I am about to embark on my third reading of Remembrance of Things Past. The aim of the blog is simple: to create a community of Proust readers commenting on passages which they find interesting, beautiful, insightful or puzzling. I intend to make my own comments and analyses weekly as I proceed through Proust's 3,000 pages and I hope thereby to prompt a discussion with fellow readers. I should note that I am a slow reader, and the additional burden of blogging will make the process even slower.