Le Temps de Proust:
About reading In Search of Lost Time, associated Proust criticism, and other secondary literature.

1) While Robert Bononno’s translation of the book seems quite smooth and good, the title is execrable. What in French was Le cygne de Proust becomes Swan’s Way in English. Presumably it was an editorial decision, and it’s easy to understand why it might have seemed a good idea, an easy pun that captures part of the French title, but Swan’s Way is a bad choice. First of all, it relies on a standard but perhaps not optimum translation of Du Côté de chez Swann. Then, too, even the pun makes no sense. The French title indicates that the book is about Proust’s swan, Haas, but Swan’s Way indicates nothing. There was no person named Swan, and so it makes no sense. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the French title is itself a pun which has to do with the fact that Haas is German for hare, and Raczymow makes much of chasing his hare. The pun works regardless of language because it’s based on the substance of the book.

2) Raczymow’s book is wonderful because it’s a meditation on reading Proust that manages to respect the complexity of Proust’s novel. Raczymow’s reading of Proust brings up questions inevitable to him, questions not only about mortality and fame, but also much more personal and painful questions about shame and what it means to be a French jew. One of the most poignant moments in Le cygne de Proust occurs early in the bok when Raczymow is writing about Swann’s characteristic gesture, and then a gesture said to be characteristic of Haas. Raczymow admits to knowing someone who makes the same gesture described of Haas, and speculates that it’s a Jewish gesture. After discussing it further, almost in an embarrassed aside, Raczymow admits that the man he knows who makes Haas’ gesture is his own father. Within the context of his book, it’s perfectly clear why the admission is a difficult one, why the notion of a Jewish gesture in French society is fraught. What’s remarkable is that Raczymow explores these questions without reducing them to either pathos or, what is worse, identity politics.