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

Proust’s two translations of Ruskin are virtually non-existent for English readers because, of course, the originals are in English. I think this leaves a curious blind spot when thinking about Proust as a writer. As I’ve been researching Proust’s translations today it’s become clear how central they were to his development. I think even a cursory introduction to Ruskin makes it clear how influential his theories were to Proust, but what’s less evident is how hard Proust worked on understanding and thinking about Ruskin.

Proust started reading Ruskin in 1895, took several trips to visit places described in his books, and started work on translating him at the very end of the 1890s. He didn’t finish working on Sesame and Lilies until 1905, which means that he spent a decade immersed in Ruskin. Some of the essays he wrote during the period, several of which were condensced into the introduction to La Bible d’Amiens, were very influential for the reception of Ruskin in France. Of course, it is strange to translate work from a language that you do not know well; Tadie, however, suggests that Proust knew written English reasonably well, but could not speak it since he learned the language during one of the worst periods of his asthma. Still, he used his mother and Marie Nordlinger to produce the first drafts which he then polished.

Proust said this about his English: “I don’t claim to know English; I claim to know Ruskin.” But what I really like is this quote about our reponsiblity to authors we love: “You know what admiration I have for Ruskin. And since I believe that each of us is responsible for those souls that he particularly loves, a responsiblity for making them known and appreciated…you know with what a scrupulous hand-but a pious one too and as gentle as I was able-I approached it.” From a letter to Georges Goyau.