for two years this was a war blog. it's turning into a proust blog. more proust-isms:

"the translator was capable only of a mediocre book, if that book had been published as his original work. offered as a translation, it seems a masterpiece."

i have praised previously in the highest degree the translation i'm reading of remembrance... by moncrieff and kilmartin. the above fits them perfectly.

"but it is all the same a pleasant thing, and one which is perhaps exclusively french, that what is fine in all equity of judgments, what is admirable to the mind and the heart, should be first of all attractive to the eyes..."

"Like stockbrokers, doctors employ the first person singular." this was the concluding sentence in a paragraph about overhearing two men talk and hearing the doctor say about his chosen remedy, "i should prefer glycerine."

"how many they are in our memories, how many more we have forgotten--those faces of girls and young women, all different, on which we have superimposed a certain charm and a frenzied desire to see them again only because at the last moment they eluded us!"

on the same topic of the above, a girl who abruptly cancelled a dinner engagement with proust: "i began to sob. i shiverred, not only because the room was cold, but because a distinct lowering of termperature...is brought about by a certain kind of tears..."

this could be said of b, who i wrote about earlier tonight: "she to whom one gives everything is so quickly replaced by another that one is surprised to find oneself giving all that one has afresh at every moment, without any hope of future reward."


-benjamin harris