The challenge for the reader is how to move forward when one is so dazzled by the prose of a single paragraph. Nonetheless, it is seven books, each with a finite number of pages. In Search of Lost Time is a mythical Mount Everest for the serious reader, a daunting challenge that promises pride of accomplishment and wide new aesthetic vistas. The translation of Swann’s Way, the first volume, by Lydia Davis, simple and clean, is in no way disappointing. But this reader chose the recent, wholly new translation called In Search of Lost Time, with different translators for each of the seven volumes of this monumental novel. Scott Moncrieff in the 1920s, with its famous title Remembrance of Things Past, is still widely admired, and has been updated by several respectful translators since. When first considering Marcel Proust’s masterpiece, the reader must choose from among several well-regarded translations.
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