Wow!! This is so much more difficult than I had imagined it would be! Only six pages read as of today, so I’m not at all on track. But I am hoping, as I trudge on, that it will get easier. It must! I’m having to look up about every other word right now, and then try to make the sentence or phrase make sense without thinking in English. It makes my brain hurt (I’m SO glad I went to hear the Evensong service at Grace Cathedral - the music calmed and cleared my mind...) but I firmly believe that constantly translating in your mind when learning a language is a huge stumbling block. So, I keep reading over and over and over, and eventually it begins to make sense. I am even beginning to appreciate the beauty of his writing in his descriptions and choice of words...
Par exemple: around page 5-6, when he begins a long discourse on his successive memories of rooms in which he has slept and describes his rooms in summer:
“...chambres d’été où l’on aime être uni à la nuit tiède, où le clair de lune appuyé aux volets entrouverts, jette jusqu’au pied du lit son échelle enchantée, où on dort presque en plein air, comme la mésange balancée par la brise d’un rayon;"
“...rooms in summer where one enjoys being part of the warm night, where the light of the moon pressing against the half-open shutters, would throw down at the foot of the bed its enchanted ladder, where I would fall asleep as if it were almost outdoors, like a titmouse rocked by the breeze of a sunbeam;" (my poor translation)
OK. So I don’t get the titmouse part... but the description of the moonlight “throwing down at the foot of the bed its enchanted ladder....” That is such a beautiful image... I can hear Debussy's Claire de Lune playing in the distance.
May the moon's échelle enhantée fall at the foot of your bed tonight!
--Michel
Then a little later there is the vivid description of Golo on his horse riding through the walls of the room. How I loved that having seen magic lanterns in my youth.
ReplyDeleteI am just coming to that and am looking forward to it! Merci!
ReplyDeleteEdmund White makes the point that Proust revelled in interesting and memorable metaphors and similies, something he felt was always lacking in his idol Flaubert.
ReplyDelete