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Many-mindedness

Reading À la recherche
by
November 2023, no. 459

Marcel Proust by Michael Wood

Oxford University Press, £18.99 hb, 143 pp

Many-mindedness

Reading À la recherche
by
November 2023, no. 459

In 1981, Terence Kilmartin’s revision of C.K. Scott Moncrieff’s 1920s English translation of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu was published. Against Kilmartin’s wishes, the new edition retained the unfortunate title of Remembrance of Things Past, but in all other respects the Kilmartin version significantly corrected and enhanced the Moncrieff translation.1 This became my Proust, and I have remained loyal to it.

Every reader of Proust acquires their own Proust – not surprisingly, for À la recherche is about everything. As for the possessive relationship, given that reading is among the most intimate of human activities, after three thousand pages one cannot emerge unconnected from this great book. It is a book that can actually save lives. As a young man, the brilliant theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer was going through a very dark patch. It was Proust’s great novel that pulled him out of the mire.

Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust

by Michael Wood

Oxford University Press, £18.99 hb, 143 pp

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Comment (1)

  • When you reach that point in your life that you find much of the experience of life to be quite baffling, a reader inevitably turns to Proust for an explanation. Marcel confirms your interpretation as accurate. In that he performs an inestimable service.
    Posted by Patrick Hockey
    09 October 2023

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