I’d tenderly press my cheeks against the lovely cheeks of the pillow which, full and fresh, are like the cheeks of childhood. I’d strike a match to read my watch. Almost midnight. The moment when the sick man, who’d been forced to set forth on a trip and to sleep in a unknown hotel, awakened by a fit, would rejoice in sighting under the doorway a sliver of sunlight. Thank heavens, it’s already morning! In a moment the servants will get up, he can ring them, someone will come to his rescue. The hope of being relieved gives him strength to bear his suffering. Just now he believed he heard steps; the steps draw close, then die away. And the daylight under his door has disappeared. It is midnight; they have just put out the gas; the last servant is gone and he must wait here all night long in such pain without a cure.
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J’appuyais tendrement mes joues contre les belles joues de l’oreiller qui, pleines et fraîches, sont comme les joues de notre enfance. Je frottais une allumette pour regarder ma montre. Bientôt minuit. C’est l’instant où le malade, qui a été obligé de partir en voyage et a dû coucher dans un hôtel inconnu, réveillé par une crise, se réjouit en apercevant sous la porte une raie de jour. Quel bonheur, c’est déjà le matin! Dans un moment les domestiques seront levés, il pourra sonner, on viendra lui porter secours. L’espérance d’être soulagé lui donne du courage pour souffrir. Justement il a cru entendre des pas; les pas se rapprochent, puis s’éloignent. Et la raie de jour qui était sous sa porte a disparu. C’est minuit; on vient d’éteindre le gaz; le dernier domestique est parti et il faudra rester toute la nuit à souffrir sans remède.
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N o t e s
Cheeks of childhood: Proust writes “les joues de notre enfance”–”the cheeks of our childhood.” I decided to omit “our” in English, since it’s not really idiomatic.
Thought and tense: In this paragraph we first see Proust run a quoted thought into the narration without any special typographic treatment, and in describing the sick man he shifts verb tenses, almost as if memories are coming at him, and therefore at the reader, from different directions, a sort of sound collage.
Some general notes: This weekly approach to translation means I’m publishing a rough draft. I’ll no doubt do dumb things and later want to fix them. Although I’m gradually building a bibliography of works about Proust, I’m not front-loading my translation with a lot of deep research about Proust.
Once I have my own translation of a paragraph nearly done, I turn to two English translations for reference as needed. These are the C. K. Scott Moncrieff version (1922) and the Lydia Davis version (2002), which are worlds apart. Scott Moncrieff takes huge leaps away from the original and often recasts Proust. The result is brilliant in its own way and brought Proust to the Anglosphere. Davis’s contrasting, very close translation grants me the freedom to focus on sound, image, and flow.