In Search of Lost Time

This May, NYRB will publish a “new” translation of the first volume of Marcel Proust’s longassed novel In Search of Lost Time.

The translation, by James Grieve, is not actually new. It’s actually like half a century old.

The NYRB jacket copy states that “James Grieve began his career as a translator of Proust in the early 1970s, driven by his dismay at how many readers deemed In Search of Lost Time to be too difficult for them to take on. Grieve’s artful and celebrated version of Swann’s Way—only now available outside his native Australia—shows that this is hardly the case.”

I was unfamiliar with Grieve’s translation. As I admitted on Twitter, I’m not really a Proust Guy. I read Lydia Davis’s translation of Swann’s Way a decade ago, and thought it was Okay and decided it was also Enough. Many, many people replied to my tweet that C.K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation was the way to go. Author and translator Daniel Mendelsohn told me that I’d “read the wrong translation!” — but I’m okay with that.

Here is the I-guess famous opening line of Moncrieff’s 1922 translation:

For a long time I used to go to bed early.

Here is the Modern Library’s 1992 translation, crediting Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright:

For a long time I would go to bed early.

Here is Lydia Davis’s translation (2002) of the opening line:

For a long time, I went to bed early.

And here is James Grieve’s translation:

Time was when I always went to bed early.

There were a lot of opinions on Grieve’s rendering of this particular line floating around Twitter.

I have no dog in this race, but the voicing here strikes me as, I dunno, very, uh, colloquial? Almost like Huck Finn or something?

Proust’s original, by the way:

Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure.

I muddled my way through a few years of college French, and have no real strong opinions here, but the phrase bonne heure is the most interesting to me. When I read it in French, I read it as something like, “a good hour,” or “the right time.”

Translation is about feeling and tone and vibe and mood as much it is about (the attempt for) precision, so I suppose each translator brings their own sense of the narrator’s voice to their translation, a voice that may or may not sync with what those other translators, the readers, hear in their mind’s ear.

In his introduction to his reader’s guide to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Patrick Alexander observes that “Except for those fortunate enough to spend several years confined to a hospital bed, a federal prison, or to be stranded on a desert island with their preselected library, few modern readers have the time to tackle a novel with more than three thousand pages, a million and a half words, and more than four hundred individual characters.” Alexander goes on to point out that “Proust’s novel is increasingly read only by professional academics,” a trend he describes as a “great pity.” Alexander wants you to be able to access all the philosophical insight and rich humor of Proust, and his book Marcel Proust’s Search for Lost Time makes a great starting point for doing so.

The first of the three sections that comprise Alexander’s book, “What Happens in Proust,” summarizes the seven novels that form Proust’s great work In Search of Lost Time (sometimes translated as Remembrance of Things Past). This is easily the largest section of the book. Alexander summarizes the novels, and contextualizes their themes against their historical and social milieu. Alexander’s second section, “Who’s Who in Proust,” will likely be most useful for readers trying to keep track of the many (many, many) characters in this opus. The final section, “The World of Proust,” situates Proust’s place in Paris, French history, and modern literature. As Alexander points out himself, the book will appeal to three types of readers: those who want to read Proust but are daunted, those who are currently reading Proust and wish for a guide to keep track of all the places and names, and those who wish to return to Proust.

Alexander’s project is ambitious, and guidebooks are always an iffy business of course. I found Harry Blamires’s The New Bloomsday Book, probably the most famous guide for James Joyce’s Ulysses, to be an interminable bore, whereas Joseph Campbell’s lectures on the same subject are indispensable. There’s really a fine balance to be achieved I suppose. I’m currently making my way through another big book (okay, not as big as Proust’s), William Gaddis’s The Recognitions, and so far,Steven Moore’s A Reader’s Guide to William Gaddis’s The Recognitions has proven to be a valuable resource when I need it. It manages to provide analytical insights and explications of all the many (many, many) allusions in Gaddis’s massive tome without ever being intrusive. Similarly, Alexander understands that a guide should never step on toes. His clean, lucid style is both humorous and realistic, and he’s never overly-reverential of Proust, but respectful at all times toward both his favorite author and his readers. Alexander’s real goal is not to paraphrase Proust, but, like all good critics, to try to get you to read the material. I never got past the first forty pages of Swann’s Way, the first book of Lost Time, but Alexander’s book makes me want to go back and give it another shot.