One Year In Search of Lost Time ~ 2015 discussion

Our reading this week ends here:
“It was after nightfall, and the columns of stone had been desolidified by the moonlight, which, by turning them into cardboard cut-outs, and reminding me of a stage set for Orpheus in the Underworld, gave me my very first glimpse of beauty” (~11.3%).

Near the end of this week's reading, the narrator uses the phrase "at the mercy of a burn or a blow" after describing Berma's features while looking at her photograph. This is the Moncrieff translation and I'm wondering how other translators have interpreted what sounds to me like an aphorism. Here's the whole sentence:

The innumerable admiration which that artist excited gave an air almost of poverty to this one face that she had to respond with, unalterable and precarious as are the garments of people who have not a 'change,' this face on which she must continually expose to view only the tiny dimple upon her upper lip, the arch of her eyebrows, a few other physical peculiarities always the same, which, when it came to that, were at the mercy of a burn or a blow.

Teresa, in my translation, which is almost identical, the word "change" becomes "spare" which I think I like a bit better. I have the MKE edition. My thought is that all of Berma's fame is stored in this face. There is no other to be used if anything happens to her. Everything depends on the all too fragile flesh. Am I being too simplistic?

No, Sue, I don't think you are. Your thoughts have helped me understand what is meant at the end of the sentence. Thank you.

I have another question. Also near the end of this week's section is this:

At the thought that it was, no doubt, at that very moment being caressed by those men whom I could not prevent from giving to Berma and receiving from her joys superhuman but vague, I felt an emotion more cruel than voluptuous, a longing that was aggravated presently by the sound of a horn, as one hears it on the nights of the Lenten carnival and often of other
public holidays, which, because it then lacks all poetry, is more saddening, coming from a toy squeaker, than "at evening, in the depth of the woods."

Here, I am wondering why the phrase at the end of the sentence is in quotation marks. My guess is that it's a quote, but by whom? Anyone have any notes on this?

Oddly, my book substitutes "tavern" for "toy squeaker" (which is an odd expression). The phrase at the end is identical in my edition and not footnoted. Could it simply be that the sound of the horn in the city, from a tavern, is a more unhappy or bleak sound than if it is heard in the country where it might signal something different. He is alone while others are celebrating. I'm getting lost now...Proust has left me behind (or somewhere!)

The last part of the quote in Penguin is:

...sounds more mournfully from a drinking-den than when it 'haunts the heart of the evening woods.'

And it has a note that says the quoted section is an 'allusion to the opening and closing lines of Alfred de Vigny's poem Cor ('Horn')'.

This is one advantage of the Penguin edition; it has loads of notes.

Jonathan, I definitely plan to switch back to the Penguin editions after this book. Even after just 80+ pages, I miss the experience I had in Swann's Way. Somehow the prose does not seem to be flowing the same either though that can be partly this part of the story.

Sue wrote: "Jonathan, I definitely plan to switch back to the Penguin editions after this book. Even after just 80+ pages, I miss the experience I had in Swann's Way. Somehow the prose does not seem to be flow..."

I ended up switching between the MKE & Penguin versions. I read vols 1,4 & 5 in MKE and 2,3 & 6 in Penguin. I switched to Penguin with vol.2 and thought it was pretty good but vol.4 Penguin really annoyed me so I went back to MKE.

After vol.1 though, whichever one I was 'reading' I had the other one, usually a library copy, to hand so I had the best of both worlds. I think if (when?) I read it again I'll just stick to the MKE until the last volume where I'd switch to the Penguin.

Jonathan wrote: "... it has a note that says the quoted section is an 'allusion to the opening and closing lines of Alfred de Vigny's poem Cor ('Horn')'."

Thanks so much, Jonathan. That is exactly what I was looking for.

Sue wrote: "Jonathan, I definitely plan to switch back to the Penguin editions after this book. Even after just 80+ pages, I miss the experience I had in Swann's Way. Somehow the prose does not seem to be flow..."

Sue, I have nothing to compare it to, since I'm only reading the MKE, but so far I'm enjoying Vol. 2 even more than 1.

Glad to read that, Teresa! It gets even better in the second part in my opinion.

Jonathan wrote: "Sue wrote: "Jonathan, I definitely plan to switch back to the Penguin editions after this book. Even after just 80+ pages, I miss the experience I had in Swann's Way. Somehow the prose does not see..."

Thanks for all of this Jonathan. I'm glad, I think, that there is no easy answer.

After reading all these comments, I'm thinking it may not matter as much about the translation. Rather than being concerned about it, I will continue reading. And enjoying. (I think having some headaches this week probably interfered with following Proust's sentences as well!)

In the end it's a personal choice and it's not worth getting too hung up about it as both have their pros and cons. That's why, once I got used to the benefits of each, I sort of used both. In the end, Proust's style shines through in both translations.

BTW I slightly preferred vol2 to vol.1. Vol.3 gets a bit tiresome, but persevere because it improves after that one.