In the Shadow of Young Girls in... | Buy

Readers and reviewers in the United Kingdom have hailed the new translations of Proust as a major literary event. Soon to appear in the United States, Swann’s Way, along with the second volume of In Search of Lost Time, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, will introduce a new century of American readers to the literary riches of Proust. These superb editions—the first completely new translation of Proust’s novel since the 1920s—bring us a more comic and lucid Proust than English readers have previously been able to enjoy.In the Shadow of Young Girls in Floweris a spectacular dissection of male and female adolescence, charged with the narrator’s memories of Paris and the Normandy seaside. In it, Proust introduces some of his greatest comic inventions. As a meditation on different forms of love, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flowerhas no equal.

Marcel Proust (1871-û1922) is considered the greatest French writer of the twentieth century. James Grieve, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University, has published a translation of Proust-'s Swann-'s Way and two novels for young adults.

Introduction	p. ix
A Note on the Translation	p. xvii
At Mme Swann's	p. 1
Place-Names: The Place	p. 219
Notes	p. 535
Synopsis	p. 549
Suggestions for Further Reading	p. 558
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When it was first suggested we invite M. de Norpois to dinner, my mother commented that it was a pity Professor Cottard was absent from Paris and that she herself had quite lost touch with Swann, either of whom the former ambassador would have been pleased to meet; to which my father replied that, although a guest as eminent as Cottard, a scientific man of some renown, would always be an asset at oneis dinner table, the Marquis de Norpois would be bound to see Swann, with his showing off and his name-dropping, as nothing but a vulgar swank, ia rank outsider,i as he would put it. This statement of my fatheris may require a few words of explanation, as there may be some who remember Cottard as a mediocrity and Swann as the soul of discretion and modesty in all things social. As regards Swann, it turns out that our old family friend was now no longer only iyoung Swanni and iSwann of the Jockey Clubi; to these personalities he had added a new one, which was not to be his last, that of Odetteis husband. Adapting to her humble ambitions all the flair, desires, and industry that he had always possessed, Swann had contrived to construct a new position for himself, albeit far below the one he had formerly occupied, but suited to the wife with whom he must now share it. And in this position he had turned into a new man. Since this was the beginning of a second life for both of them, among a circle of new people (except for personal friends from his bachelor days whom he went on seeing alone, and whom he did not wish to burden with the acquaintance of Odette, unless they themselves expressed the wish to meet her), it would have been understandable if, in judging the social standing of these new people, and thereby gauging the degree of self-esteem that their company might afford him, his standard of comparison had been based at least on Odetteis former associates, if not on the exalted individuals among whom he himself had moved before his marriage. However, even when one knew that the people he now wished to associate with were unrefined civil servants, or the sort of dubious women who were fixtures of the annual ball at certain ministries, one could still be astounded to hear this man (who in former days, and even now, could show such exquisite tact in not advertising an invitation to Twickenham1 or Buckingham Palace) braying out the fact that the wife of an undersecretaryis undersecretary had returned Mme Swannis visit. It may be thought that this was because the simplicity of manners in the fashionable Swann was only a finer form of vanity, and that, after the manner of certain Jews, our old family friend had passed through the successive phases of a development observable in the breed he belonged to, going from the most guileless snobbery, the crassest caddishness, to the politest of refinements. The main reason, however, was (and it is one which holds good for all of humanity) that even our virtues are not extraneous, free-floating things which are always at our disposal; in fact, they come to be so closely linked in our minds with the actions we feel they should accompany that, if we are required to engage in some different activity, it can take us by surprise, so that we never even think that it too might entail the use of those very virtues. In his gushing ways with these new friends and his boastful citing of their exploits, Swann was like the great artist who takes up cooking or gardening late in life and who, though modest enough to be untroubled by criticism of his masterpieces, cannot bear to hear faint praise of his recipes or flower beds, and basks naOvely in the delight of hearing them lauded; or who, though generous enough to let a canvas go for nothing, will be put out by losing a few pennies at dominoes.As for Professor Cottard, we shall meet him again eventually, and at some length, at La RaspeliEre, the ch?teau of the Patronne. For the moment, let the following remark suffice. The change in Swann may well be s