Collected Works Proust, Marcel: The Remembrance of Things Past

[DMcCunney]

You may blame me for this.

I'm extravagantly fond of the collected editions MR user pynch has been creating. (His collected works of James Joyce is a read-in-progress on my tablet.) I consider his contributions prime examples of the eBook maker's art.

He previously created a collected volume of the writings of French author Marcel Proust, whose seven volume À la Recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past) is one of the classic works of literature.

Pynch's collected Proust includes À la Recherche du temps perdu. But while I took French, Spanish, and Latin long ago, I had no cause to use them and remember almost none. I am not up to reading Proust in the original French.

I asked Pynch in a PM if he'd consider doing a companion volume with an English translation. The University of Adelaide has the works in the Scott Moncrieff translation and available as ePubs, and I have the set, but I lusted after an omnibus edition.

Pynch was not enthusiastic: he thinks of translations as bastard children, and prefers to produce only electronic versions of the originals. But he then stated that the University of Adelaide did decently formatted works, and he could do a quick-and-dirty omnibus package with a cover and internal links, which he could send to me. I could upload it to MR, and it would be my bastard child, not his.

That was what I'd hoped for when I made the request, and I agreed enthusiastically.

So credit goes to the University of Adelaide for the original eBooks collected here, and to pynch for the superb packaging.

Blame goes to me as the instigator.

Meanwhile, I'm delighted to have this, and I hope you will be too.

Thanks, pynch!
______
Dennis

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[tuskin]

Hi,
thank you for this! Bastard is such a negative word - let's call this your (you and Pynch) love child

tuskin

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by tuskin

Hi,
thank you for this! Bastard is such a negative word - let's call this your (you and Pynch) love child

Call it what you like. As long as it meets a need for you, too, I'm happy, and I suspect pynch is too.
______
Dennis

[Bombur]

French is my bastard language. I was taught, but, unlike English, it did not stick. I am very delighted by this translation.
Thanks.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Bombur

French is my bastard language. I was taught, but, unlike English, it did not stick. I am very delighted by this translation.
Thanks.

You're quite welcome. My understanding is that the Moncrieff translation is considered a good one. I have to take that on faith. My French wasn't good enough back when I had any fluency to judge it.

The problem for the translator of literature is to preserve not only the meaning but the feel of the original prose.

Moncrieff's prose reads well, and appears to be doing its best to capture the rhythm of Proust's prose as well as its sense, so I'll happily settle.
______
Dennis