Happy birthday, Jean Racine. A lot of #Proust adjacencies here. Text by #Racine ("Verbe égal au Très-Haut"), music by #Fauré, whose piano teacher #Saint-Saëns encouraged him to compose, this chorus dedicated to #Franck being one of his earliest works. #Proustsky

Happy birthday, #JaneAusten. I love this edition of her novels from Anchor Books, annotated and edited by David M. Shapard. Text on the verso side, annotations on the recto side. As you can see, even the covers are annotated! Emma comes in at 897 pages.

Put this down a while back; seemed a bit too dense for me. But it gets prominent mention in Adam Watt's introduction to Brian Nelson's The Swann Way, alongside Malcolm Bowie's Proust Among the Stars and Chistopher Prendergast's Mirages and Mad Beliefs, so I'm picking it up again. #Proust #Proustsky

The closing sentences of Peter Brooks' wonderful introduction to The Guermantes Way, in the new translation by Peter Bush from Oxford. While waiting for my paperback I'm reading my pdf, if slowly (not a fan of ebooks). But it's hard to resist! #Proust #Proustsky

I finished this book without figuring out what "jerk" is and why it translates from "cloche," or what "marle" is and why it translates to "big shot," or if "pimp" (which translates from "mac") means what it usually does. I never so much admired a book that confused me as much. #translation #genet

A day late. Happy birthday, Benjamin #Britten. His last vocal work was the cantata Phaedra, whose libretto included a translation of Phèdre by Jean #Racine. The play, of course, figures prominently in #Proust. This recording is by #JessyeNorman, posthumously released. #Proustsky

I haven't even gotten Peter Bush's The Guermantes Way in the mail, but here it is, a release date for Helen Constantine's Sodom and Gomorrah. (The Blackwell's release date is three months earlier, for some reason.) #Proust #OxfordProust #Proustsky global.oup.com/academic/pro...

There is the religion and philosophy stuff of course but, make no mistake, Dick Wolf owes Law & Order to this. Happy birthday, #Dostoevsky.

Happy birthday, Johannes #Vermeer. #Proust #Proustsky

Happy birthday, Georges #Bizet. Husband to Geneviève, model for the Duchesse. Dad to Jacques, object of Marcel’s forthright sexual attraction. Composer of some opera about an amoral cigarette girl from Seville. Unlike discerning operaphiles, I love the #JessyeNorman version. #Proust #Proustsky

“…I let the cheap wine of this popular enthusiasm go to my head. Once the curtain had fallen, though, I still felt disappointed that the pleasure I'd so longed for hadn't been greater…” #Proust, tr. @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social. Happy birthday, Sarah Bernhardt. #Proustsky

"Their position unstable, like that of the poet one day fêted in every drawing-room and applauded in every theatre in London, and the next driven from every lodging, unable to find a pillow upon which to lay his head." Happy birthday, #OscarWilde. #Proust #Proustsky

Another reading group, this time on Reddit. This one just started yesterday and plans to take a year—about 50 pages a week, ten reasonable pages a day. There are page guides for Oxford, Modern Library, and Penguin, as well as weekly recaps and discussion questions. #Proust #Proustsky

I’ve had this for a while, a fun read after my first Search. Just found out at my local indie that it’s finally available in paperback. The Seventy-Five Folios & Other Unpublished Manuscripts, ed. Nathalie Mauriac Dyer, tr. Sam Taylor, Belknap Press of @harvardpress.bsky.social. #Proust #Proustsky

I got this #translation of The Plague by Buss after ditching Marris. I just finished Part 4 and quite like it—not prim and flowery like Gilbert, and nothing like Marris. I just don't think that in order to sound modern and plainspoken one has to indulge in so much incorrect grammar. #Camus #booksky

Happy birthday, Camille Saint-Saëns, whose Violin Sonata #1 was a possible model for the little phrase. There is no little phrase here, but a grand one at 8:03 that always gives me a thrill. To #JessyeNorman ’s Dalila, seducing is devouring. #SaintSaens #Proust #Proustsky

I wrote about Proust in translation/the new IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME for @literaryhub.bsky.social. Featuring a chat with @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social, whose stunning vol. 2 translation, IN THE SHADOW OF GIRLS IN BLOSSOM, is out now! lithub.com/on-translati... #proust #booksky

I’ve been reading #AnneTyler since my teens, off and on, and have never quite outgrown her, even if these days it’s often to humour my sister and have something to talk to her about. I’m several years late with this one. By the way, look at that gorgeous #font (Celeste, Chris Burke, 1994). #booksky

I know it has its fans but I really hate this #translation. I stopped at the end of chapter 3, bought the Robin Buss, and am waiting for it in the mail. (I had previously nixed the Stuart Gilbert.) It’s the only other available. Let’s see if it’s any better. #Camus #Camussky

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…