Proust

...

Do it now, before it's too late

Lydia Davis is the best

Moncreiff took too many creative liberties

Lydia Davis is master of the autistically sparse prose. I haven't read any of her Proust but, judging by her own writing, she seems like she couldn't be a worse match for the ol' purple-prosed rat-puncturing pederast.

There's no purple prose in Proust

I know, I was exaggerating to point out how different Lydia Davis's style is from his.

Well, it's far closer to the original.
Moncrieff's version is very interesting in its own right though.

Nah, she left all the good stuff in. She didn't start out writing those blunt Hemingway darts, she had to pare it down from something, so she knows what parts of a sentence are important, and in proust's case it's everything.

Davis' version is about 50,000 words shorter than Montcrieff's, just to show you how different it is. The original wordcount in French is closer to Montcrieff's, though I'm unsure if that means anything. I personally like Montcrieff's style better, but I couldn't tell you who is more accurate.

Wait?: No. Life's too short. Just try it now.
Best translation: the recent Viking Penguins

Anyone care to post pages to compare? Not sure what would be a key passage.

Lydia Davis has only translated Swann's Way. If I'm reading the entirety of ISoLT I'd rather just stick to the same translator throughout.

French isnt that hard lads lmao

The teacup passage from Swann's way would be a key passage to compare, but I only have the Moncrieff version on hand.

This is the Davis version

The teacup passage in my edition--C. K. S. Moncrieff revised by Terence Kilmartin revised again by D. J. Enright:

Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, except what lay in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, on my return home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called “petites madeleines,” which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shiver ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory—this new sensation having had the effect, which love has, of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature. Where did it come from? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?

I started reading it in french, and then I thought it was too hard. So I started reading it in english, and I realized it was just as hard.

I'm just gonna wait til I'm overall smarter...

wow

Second part of revised Moncrieff, to cover the extent of the Davis text which user has kindly provided:

I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first, then a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing its virtue. It is plain that the truth I am seeking lies not in the cup but in myself. The drink has called it into being, but does not know it, and can only repeat indefinitely, with a progressive diminution of strength, the same message which I cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call it forth again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down the cup and examine my own mind. It alone can discover the truth. But how? What an abyss of uncertainty, whenever the mind feels overtaken by itself; when it, the seeker, is at the same time the dark region through which it must go seeking and where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not yet exist, which it alone can make actual, which it alone can bring into the light of day.

OK, having read both, I, for one, can't decide. Davis is more condensed but some of her word choices seemed less clear. Moncrieff unwinds it slowly and analytically, he is more pedantic and poetic. We probably need the original to judge. And then there's this

Proust has good Prose

go for it

>muh descriptions
Pleb.

Moncreiff took so many creative liberties with the text many scholars believe it as actually Moncreiff's work more than it is Proust's.

Of course, with any translation, you begin and end in failure, because you can never fully and completely capture the original, but Moncreiff really used his own aesthetic and creative concoctions.

Some people even comment that Moncreiff's version is even better than Proust, it is that different.

Davis' translation is a lot more exact and actually tries to capture the complete style of Proust.

Personally, I recommend Davis if you just want to read Swann's Way. She also has a great Madame Bovary translation.

>if you just want to read Swann's Way
why would someone do that?

Well it is a very long book, and Swann's Way is a good introduction into Proust

This.

Truly underrated post.
also
>4400

post references

I have literally owned a complete Moncrieff for about 15 years and I've never tucked in past the overture. The thing is now, I am less and less interested in fiction but I want to do certain memes on general principles. At least I'm reading again the past few years, but I always go for short books that I can actually finish. ah well.

whoops. the first paragraph was meant to indicate that the above poster was citing a cartoon of a slovenly man at his computer, over-shadowed by an erudite gentleman reading Kant and pufing his purple pipe (because said intellectually activity is what the foreground man is actually doing). This is the image which was cribbed/stolen by the above user's verbage.

Learn french and read it m8.

Judging from just the fragments posted above, I don't see any of this.

i've read both the penguin/allen lane and the moncrieff and believe the latter to be superior.

Do you speak French too?

> what are dopamine receptors

durr HURR muh pholaphaziee

It is meant to be read in a lifetime, marathoning it will just bring you to exhaustion quickly, unless you're a reading virtuoso.
Try to read it in 5 years, wait some time and start reading again. The more you'll read it the more you will consider it priceless. An entire lifetime is contained in these pages: this is the closer you'll ever get to know another person.

Source: Have read it already twice in the last 9 years

Completely out of context, without any previous bias and before reading the Moncrieff version, I can say I don't like this. It's overly technical, the diction too bland.

This I really like.

>judging translated prose when he cant even speak the original language

Nobody gives a fuck about your unedcuated opinion you utter pleb

I find the Moncrieff one too clinical. In the David text I felt the emotion and passion of the narrator, I could almost taste the tea. That said, I did read the David passage first so maybe it biased me towards it.

why do you assume that, lmfao? I was born in France, pleb

Read it now.
You'll want to read it again in a few years.

Besides, it's not as "cryptic" as Ulysses but quite the opposite. Go for it.