I rarely read poetry so it's been slow going, just taking it in in bits and pieces for now. But I'm enjoying this #translation of Les Fleurs du mal by Nathan Brown (2021, Verso 2024). At some point, I'd like to compare it with Richard Howard's. Sample below, one of the "banned" ones. #Baudelaire

"But there always comes a time in history where he who dares to say that two and two equals four is condemned to death." The Plague, Albert #Camus, tr. Laura Marris. #Camussky (I don't like the use of "where" but whatever.)

Happy birthday, C.K. Scott Moncrieff. #Proust #Proustsky

Le temps perdu, le temps retrouvé. After #Proust, everything is Proust. #Proustsky #Camussky

He’s onto something here. 😉 #Camussky

#Cervantes has some VERY strong opinions about #translation, even if (maybe) tongue-in-cheek since the novel we are reading in Spanish is supposedly a translation from Arabic. (And so the novel I'm reading is a translation of that supposed translation.)

Maybe she's learned a thing or two about movies with "glitter" in the title. (In the first SNL after 9/11, Tina Fey joked that OBL was hiding out in remote and barren places like theatres that were showing "Glitter.") 😂😂😂 No #Proust here, please move right along.

First of seven from @nybooks.com. This one includes a discussion of a sentence from Du côté. #Proust #Proustsky

🧵1/ Happy birthday tomorrow to Claude #Debussy! #Proust #Proustsky

"…He suddenly caught the notes of a piano, and life for him stopped dead. What he was hearing was the little Saint-Saëns phrase. At first he did not recognize it, but felt a flood of freshness in himself, as though suddenly the weight of years had vanished and he was young again."—from Jean Santeuil

I got a copy of Stéphane Heuet’s À l’ombre graphic novel adaptation in French because I don’t think “Autour de Mme Swann” was ever translated to English. Some really striking images here. Also a bit of a French workout for me. #Proust #Proustsky

Happy birthday tomorrow to #ReynaldoHahn. Thanks for taking care of our boy! This is Hahn’s setting of "Si mes vers avaient des ailes" by #VictorHugo, performed by Karina Gauvin and Marc-André Hamelin, text and translation by Richard Stokes transcribed in the alt-text of the next post.

Not to forget, #AContinuation25. Paintings in Proust by Eric Karpeles is a priceless resource on the artists and paintings in the Search. Get the hardcover if you can; the colour reproduction is better. The paperback adds one painting, by Le Sidaner, which the narrator will tell you is no big loss.

It's bound to become the authoritative English translation, especially if/when ‪@oxfordacademic.bsky.social‬ publishes the entire Search in hardcover upon completion. #Proust #Proustsky

Cheers, #AContinuation25. Enjoy the read. #Proust #Proustsky

If you’re Search-ing for #Proust reading partners, this group starts Swann’s Way today. #Proustsky

Finding a near-mint used copy gives me an excuse to revisit (and finally read cover to cover) this gem by @profjoshlandy.bsky.social. Provides a rigorous, convincing framework for the philosophical content of À la recherche but in a tone that's conversational and, comment dit-on, California. 😉

It seems no more than a casual choice of #translation: not to translate. But page after page later, it’s clear that Maman is the only word that works, not Mamma or Mother or any other. #Camus #MyfirstCamus (1/3)

My new French tutor is a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. A dead one too. #comics #graphicnovels

If you want to read In Search of Lost Time at a casual pace and with company, here’s a reading group that will start on August 2nd. Details in the quoted thread. #Proust #Proustsky

Out-of-print Charlotte Mandell is my favourite Charlotte Mandell to find in the mail. Time to bring it back, @stanfordpress.bsky.social! #genet #jeangenet @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social

"And when I am dead, you will see. People will read me; yes, the whole world will read me. You will see my work grow in the public's esteem. And remember, Céleste, this article says it took a hundred years for Stendhal to become famous. It will take Marcel #Proust less than fifty."

Happy birthday tomorrow to this jerk, whom I love even though he doesn't love #Proust. "To me, that's not literature. A lot of writers who are considered good I consider strange." #CormacMcCarthy

Sodom and Gomorrah. Also, The Captive/The Fugitive? #Proust #booksky

Taking a break from my current big read (Don Quixote) with these two #Proust -adjacent books. Never taken a stab at the Czapski, never can seem to finish the Albaret. Juicy but also too fawning? Girl, he's gaaay. Not that there's anything wrong with that. @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social

And I was terrified by the thought that the stilts beneath my own feet might already have reached that height; it seemed to me that quite soon now I might be too weak to maintain my hold upon a past which already went down so far. (Time Regained, #Proust trans Scott Moncrieff, Kilmartin, Enright)

Happy birthday, Marcel! The fairies blessed you with such strange gifts, and you used them to bless us with an extraordinary one. #Proust #booksky (Thanks to @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social for the translation below.)

My first read after #Proust. #booksky

Happy birthday, #Canada! Thanks for having me.

To celebrate completing #Proust! Topped with pink "hawthorns"* and mauve buttercream, the cake itself is chocolate, which has nothing to do with Proust except that I enjoy both very much and will again every time I experience them. #booksky

…if I were given long enough to accomplish my work, I should not fail, even if the effect were to make them resemble monsters, to describe men as occupying so considerable a place, compared with the restricted place which is reserved for them in space, a place on the contrary prolonged past measure…

Rest in #pride, #EdmundWhite. In "A Race upon Which a Curse Is Laid" from The #Proust Project (ed. André Aciman), he seems to acknowledge his ambivalence regarding Proust’s views on homosexuality but also delivers this knockout one-two punch. #booksky

The Narrator has joined the party, and all I can think of is Götterdämmerung—amid society, its Gods, at their twilight, the Narrator mourns his Siegfried, his Albertine, realizes his life's failures, offers us his book, his Ring, but not until it has been cleansed by his funeral pyre, Time. #Proust

"There’s that lively pastoral song that I used to love more than anything in the world." (#Proust, Selected Letters, vol. 2 p. 275) RIP, Alfred Brendel.

"La beauté des images est logée à l'arrière des choses, celle des idées à l'avant. De sorte que la première cesse de nous émerveiller quand on les a atteintes, mais qu'on ne comprend la seconde que quand on les a dépassées." Le Temps retrouvé, Marcel #Proust (translation by Ian Patterson) #booksky

A #Proust Dictionary by Maxine Arnold Vogely provides more information about the historical, biographical, geographical, artistic, musical, etc. etc. references in À la recherche than the Carter edit. Hard to find but worth it not to be locked into his version purely for annotations. #booksky

“Like the dress a woman was wearing when we saw her for the first time, they would help me to rediscover the love I had then…" Books are alive, and one with the Narrator. #Proust #booksky (Le Temps retrouvé, trans. Ian Patterson)

“But the stranger was myself, it was the child I was then, whom the book had just brought back to life within me…It was this child that the book had immediately summoned, wanting to be looked at only by his eyes, loved only by his heart, and wanting to speak only to him.” #Proust #booksky

Happy birthday, Judy! From hardbookhabit.wordpress.com: If he had lived to a very ripe old age…there could be grainy black and white footage of him on television chat shows, talking to David Frost about a new book about to be published…He would have loved Judy Garland. #Proust

My reading of Le temps retrouvé has slowed to a deliberate saunter as I pass landmines, one after another, like this. Pure joy. #Proust #booksky

(1/2) If there was ever a reason to learn enough French so I could read and appreciate À la recherche in the original, this must be it—the pivotal paving stones moment shot with grammatical ungainliness. #Proust #booksky

A sad passing. Author of groundbreaking #gaylit and also the best #Proust biography under 900 pages. Rest in pride. #booksky #gaybooksky

Émile Zola's "J'accuse…!" in English translation by Jean-Max Guieu and Shelley Temchin. #Zola #booksky

Patterson goes all out with the gay double entendre. Referring to the title of a short story about Charlus: Proust—Gaillard d'arrière Mayor—The Jolly Sailor (Bowdlerized 😡) Enright—The Jolly Rear Admiral Patterson—The Poop Deck, or The Strapping Young Man Behind (Maybe "The Poop Deck" was enough 🤔)

No less moving for having taken this long. #Proust #booksky

Bothersome punctuation style in Patterson. I'm reading English, not French! Quirks like this are—almost—my best argument against those who say they read the Penguin #Proust and never noticed changes in style from volume to volume. (The best being the choice of Grieve, mhrip, for À l'ombre.) #booksky

Had enough of the errors in the Carter "edit," didn't want to spend USD 85+ just to proofread a book. Tried a bit of the Mayor/Kilmartin/Enright, didn't see anything special about it vs Scott Moncrieff. So I'm going with Patterson—and will be eagerly awaiting Nelson in a few years. #Proust #booksky

A fantastic #Balzac translation by Peter Bush, seemingly the first in English in 100+ years, unfortunately burdened by typos—missing punctuation; misspelled names; missing, transposed, misspelled, extraneous words—too numerous to ignore. @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social dropped the ball on this. #booksky

Happy birthday, #BobDylan! #Proust #booksky

There's sex in #Proust, but he's so coy if you blink you'll miss it. James Brown, on the other hand...