Customer Reviews

In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 2 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

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Penguin's new translations of "In Search of Lost Time" were just the nudge I needed to read Proust's masterwork again. I was particularly impressed by the job the American writer Lydia Davis did with "Swann's Way". By contrast, I have a few complaints about James Grieves's rendering of "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower". Where Scott Moncrieff translated "petite bande" (of girls) with the expected "little band," Grieves uses "little gang," which to an American ear sounds rather tough. He mangles one of my favorite quotations. And there's a typo on the bottom of page 95: "not" instead of "now"!

Overall, though, I like the liberties Grieves takes with the text, and we were certainly overdue for a freshened-up translation of one of the most important books of the 20th century. Unlike Proust's French, Scott Moncrieff's English has come to seem dusty and overblown. (For example, he rendered the title of this volume as "Within a Budding Grove", the literal translation being too racy for his 1920s audience of post-Victorians.)

-- Dan Ford at readingproust dot com

A book of this stature hardly needs another review explaining how great it is, and, not being all that cultured, I can't provide a lot of literary context or comparisons with past translations. I can offer a recommendation, though, as a young modern lay reader who suffers the usual hesitations about approaching classic texts.

With regard to previous translations, all I know is that this volume apparently used to be called In a Budding Grove - which may be the worst literary title ever - and is now called In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, which may be the best literary title ever. As far as I can tell the translation flows very smoothly, too, and even though Proust's style, as most people probably know, features sentences which go on for a very long time and have complex constructions buried in them (sort of like this one), I thought it was more readable than the likes of Joyce and Pynchon, because the power of the first-person voice often makes the meaning clear. There were a couple of points where I thought the translator used a word that seemed too modern and idiomatic - 'hubby' was one - but it's not that much of a distraction.

Proust's habit is to spend a lot of time discussing small, specific things, but that isn't to say he describes every single event of his childhood in excruciating detail - he often skips over major events, or describes something's prelude in more detail than the event itself, summarizing the things which had the deepest emotional impact on him at the time. The result is a narrative which is very engaging because all of the details in it, however small they might be, shed light on something deeper.

With this specific volume (about the experience of youth), speaking as someone whose own adolesence isn't far behind him, I found it eerily insightful. Reading about people from a different century, I would suddenly come on an insight which might have been a direct comment on me or someone I knew, and what I think really makes Proust one-of-a-kind is that he never stoops to satire, charicature or didactics; it's just straight observation. The people he describes might be the comic relief or even buffoonish villains in the works of a lesser author, but something about the way he describes them so exactly produces sympathy, as if the reader were allied as much with them as with the narrator.

Of all the 'classic' books I've read, ISYGIF is one of my favorites, and I recommend it to anyone able to read it. Like I said, I don't think Proust's style is as hard to grasp as certain other modern authors; but if it does seem difficult, then it's certainly worth the effort of becoming accustomed to it, for the beauty which emerges from it and the uncanny human analysis.

I originally read the Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright (M/K/E) translation of "A la recherche ..." some years ago, and the new Penguin translations were an excuse to re-visit these books. I thought the Lydia Davis "Swann's Way" was serviceable, but lacked some of the poetry of the earlier version. However, when I was half way through "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower" I realised that something fundamental was missing from this translation. I took out my M/K/E translation and a copy of the original in French and compared them at a few random passages. What became clear was that the new translation is not closer to the original, but is in many respects an inaccurate representation of Proust's prose. I also found at least one instance where the translator inserted an idea which was not in the original (eg there is a quite bizarre reference to "Jansenism" in a paragraph where Proust uses no such term!). Aside from this, the new translation does not, in my opinion, read smoothly. By contrast the M/K/E translation more accurately captured both the substance of Proust's writing as well as the literal meaning. Their version also reads more naturally and is far less stilted, in my opinion. I have therefore switched back to the earlier version for this volume and will have to make a similar assessment for the subsequent volumes in the series.

I am surprised by the general criticism aimed at the Moncrieff version, particularly given that the later revisions by Kilmartin and Enright remove Moncrieff's excesses and the result is one of the most successful translation projects in history. As well as the high general quality of the translations, they are also consistent across all of the volumes. By contrast, as Penguin use a different translator for each volume, the Penguin version presents an essentially different reading experience for each volume and, if the experience of the first two volumes is any guide, a very uneven one. If I were to choose only one version of Proust to read, I would undoubtedly choose the Moncrieff version, as revised by Kilmartin and Enright, such as the Modern Library issues.

Perhaps more so than the memory of the madeleines, more so than the study of jealousy and mysteries of love, the unforgettable characters of Charlus and Swann and the last bastion of European taste, Guermantes, the epicenter of Proust's work is the image of the little band, walking along the beach, in a disorienting sunshine, observed from a distance by the narrator with a combination of awe, jealousy, love, and wonder. Each aspect of the novel, whether preceding or following this episode, points to, anticipates, or reflects upon it, directly or indirectly. The volume's title, In the shadow of young girls in flower, is itself a commentary on time's passage, perhaps even more so than the grand title itself, In search of lost time.

Grieve's translation of "A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs" is a fine follow-up to Lydia Davis's "Swann's Way." This is the first time I am reading the "Search" and, as far as the translation goes, I only have about a hundred pages of Moncrieff to compare it to. I don't feel that there is anything missing from the language, however. Other reviewers have commented on Grieve's use of English clichés to replace the French clichés (this is especially noticeable in the case of M. de Norpois) but I don't have a problem with this - I actually thought it was a good solution to a tricky problem. All in all, I am very pleased with the new Penguin translations, so far.

As for the novel itself, it is divided into two parts, which both have a "blossoming" young female characters. In Part I - "At Mme Swann's" - the young girl is Swann's daughter, Gilberte. This part of the novel was originally meant to be included in Swann's Way, and - if one reads the novels back-to-back - the story continues smoothly between the novels. Gilberte is Marcel's first great, doomed love affair.

Part II takes place in the fictional seaside resort town of Balbec. The girl in question here is Marcel's main love-interest, Albertine. Although people view Albertine as the most significant factor in the novel, I don't find this to be true - she's barely in the story. More significant is Marcel's friend, Robert Saint-Loupe.

What is striking about the novel are its undertones of homosexuality. I don't just mean the literal references to homosexuality, but the narrator's as well. This may anger some readers - they would say that, just because Marcel Proust was gay, that doesn't make his narrator gay. Taken as a character however, Marcel has many gay characteristics - he is a sensitive, sickly, delicate, young man who is obsessed theater, literature, and art. Granted, these things don't make him gay, per se - but the overall tone of the writing gives that impression.

In the midst of all my excitement in having to read M. Proust for the very first time, and looking back at how scant my review of the first Volume appears to be, notwithstanding the book still deserves all the stars in the galaxy, I had weakened the narrator's character. Like a woman who rehearses pleasing phrases prior to seeing her lover then at their present conversation he asks her questions which those rehearsed phrases are the exact answers, finds herself mute.

After the quiescent love affair with Gilberte, the narrator is now in his late adolescent years in Volume II. His infatuation in visiting the resort town of Balbec on the previous book finally materializes and he spends a whole summer there with his grandmother. Whether Proust himself had actually ventured out of his "cork lined" room to visit a place similar to this resort is far-fetched. Most of his childhood and adolescence were spent at home sick. He had to find an imaginary place where if only he was not prone to attacks of asthma such a region in France would have been ideal to spend his summer. Proust recounts a young man's pursuit of initial romance with all the emotional and physical indulgence ascribe to it in Balbec where he meets a group of girls. He toys with these exuberant girls confusing love for physical desire; altogether basking in their youthful radiance. He is like a lone bee trapped in a nursery with all the flowers to himself.

In each of these girls he finds different characteristics that suit his particular taste. He considers Andree who is sweet, intelligent, and from a prominent family but Albertine is more intriguing, alluring, playful, though she is poor and a foster child. Love thus has this perfume pleasant only to our own sense of smell. We follow where it is emanating from and once found we decide its wearer is also attractive. So Albertine and the young narrator will most probably reunite in Paris after their summer vacation in Balbec in the third Volume. Will Albertine prove to be just like Gilberte skittish and unpredictable? What is definitive is that it will be narrated with sublime eloquence by this author who though endured respiratory illness, it is the reader who will be out of breath.