Remembrance of Things Past Volume Two: Volume II (Classics of World Literature, Volume II) - Softcover

Proust, Marcel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 184022147X ISBN 13: 9781840221473

Publisher: Wordsworth Editions, 2006

Synopsis

Translated from the French by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Stephen Hudson

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) spent the last fourteen years of his life writing A la recherche du temps perdu. It is an intimate epic, an excavation of the self, and a comedy of manners by turns and all at once. Proust is the twentieth century's Dante, presenting us with a unique, unsettling picture of ourselves as jealous lovers and unmitigated snobs, frittering our lives away, with only the hope of art as a possible salvation. He offers us a form of redemption for a sober and secular age.

Scott Moncrieff's delightful translation was for many years the only access to Proust in English. A labour of love that took him nearly as many years as Proust spent writing the original. Moncrieff's translation strives to capture the extraordinary blend of muscular analysis with poetic reverie that typifies Proust's style. It remains a justly famous classic of translation.

About this title

Review

Scott Moncrieff's [volumes] belong to that special category of translations which are themselves literary masterpieces ... his book is one of those translations, such as the Authorized Version of the Bible itself, which can never be displaced --(A. N. Wilson)

For the reader wishing to tackle Proust your guide must be C K Scott Moncrieff ... There are some who believe his headily perfumed translation of À la recherche du temps perdu conjures Belle Époque France more vividly even than the original --(Telegraph)

I was more interested and fascinated by your rendering than by Proust's creation --(Joseph Conrad to Scott Moncrieff)

From the Back Cover

'There is a special kind of glance, apparently of recognition, which a young man never receives from certain women - nor from certain men'

At once intimate and epic, Proust's transformative novel follows one man's search for meaning in his life, from childhood through love affairs, jealousy, desire and loss to the discovery of his vocation - and salvation - in art. Scott Moncrieff's masterly early-twentieth-century translation of Remembrance of Things Past captures both Proust's grandeur and lyricism, and is now regarded as an immortal classic in its own right. This volume contains The Guermantes Way and Cities of the Plain, exploring the narrator's experiences of decadent Parisian society, his attraction to men and his destructive sexual jealousy.

'I was more interested and fascinated by your rendering than by Proust's creation' Joseph Conrad to Scott Moncrieff

Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff

Edition details

• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 184022147X
• ISBN 13: 9781840221473
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 1296