Proust, etc.

Alice Turner · 27 Jul 1999, 10:15 · from urth-v0028.mbox · original

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From: "Alice Turner" <akt at ibm.net>
Subject: (urth) Proust, etc.
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 10:15:32
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Okay, I got it. Page 123 of the Montcrieff-Kilmartin (1981) translation.
Your version:

  On leaving the church I knelt down before the alter, and as I stood up I
  smelled all of a sudden a bittersweet almond odour(*) escaping from the
  hawthorns, and noticed on the flowers little places whiter than the rest,
  on which I supposed this scent must be hidden like the taste of marzipan
  under a dusting of breadcrumbs(**) or like the cheeks of Mlle Vinteuil
  under their red freckles.  Despite the silent immobility of the
  hawthorns, that intermittent scent was like the murmur of an intense
  life which made the altar vibrate as a rural hedge probed by living
  antennae where, on some stamens(***) which were almost red and which
  seemed to have kept a springlike virulence, one thought to see the
  provoking power of insects now metamorphosed into flowers.(****)

(*) I get away with it this time.
(**) I haven't done very well with `comme sous les parties gratin=C3=A9es le
  go=C3=BBt d'une frangipane', but being culinary it was never really suppo=
sed
  to be translated.
(***) `=C3=A9tamines' can mean both `stamens' and `bunting'.  I have transl=
ated
  it once each way; neither really seems right.
(****) Phew.

For **, they have "as the taste of an almond cake lay beneath the burned
parts."

For ***, here's the whole sentence: "Despite the motionless silence of the
hawthorns, these gusts of fragrance came to me like the murmuring of an
intense organic life, with which the whole altar was quivering like a
hedgerow explored by living antennae, of which I was reminded by seeing some
stamens, almost red in colour, which seemed to have kept the springtime
virulence, the irritant power of stinging insects now transmuted into
flowers."

Whew, indeed! But you seem to have been right about the stamens. All this
buzzing sensuality is more or less in contrast to the Vinteuil girl,
wouldn't you say, who unlike MP himself has not apparently begun to feel the
hormonal stirrings of adolescence. Then, a few pages later, there is
Francoise's grisly murder of the chicken! And after that Legrandin's carnal
buttocks!  And then, in an ecstasy of hawthorn (and other flowers, but
mainly hawthorn)--Gilberte! My, my--bring on the smelling salts!

-alga

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