At Combray, each day near afternoon’s end, long before the moment came to put myself to bed and lie there, sleepless, far from my mother and grandmother, my bedroom would become once more the fixed and painful point of my preoccupations. The grownups had even devised a ruse, to distract me on evenings when I looked too unhappy, of giving me a magic lantern, with which, while waiting for dinner, they would cover my lamp; and, echoing the early architects and glass-masters of the gothic age, the lantern replaced the walls’ opacity with impalpable iridescence, with supernatural multicolored apparitions, depicting legends as if in a flickering and ephemeral stained-glass window. But my sadness only swelled at this, as the change of light could do nothing but destroy the habit I’d had in my room, habit which, apart from the torment of bedtime, had made the place tolerable to me. Now I no longer recognized it, I was anxious in it, like in a room in a hotel or “chalet” where I’d arrived for the first time, straight after stepping off a train.
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À Combray, tous les jours dès la fin de l’après-midi, longtemps avant le moment où il faudrait me mettre au lit et rester, sans dormir, loin de ma mère et de ma grand’mère, ma chambre à coucher redevenait le point fixe et douloureux de mes préoccupations. On avait bien inventé, pour me distraire les soirs où on me trouvait l’air trop malheureux, de me donner une lanterne magique, dont, en attendant l’heure du dîner, on coiffait ma lampe; et, à l’instar des premiers architectes et maîtres verriers de l’âge gothique, elle substituait à l’opacité des murs d’impalpables irisations, de surnaturelles apparitions multicolores, où des légendes étaient dépeintes comme dans un vitrail vacillant et momentané. Mais ma tristesse n’en était qu’accrue, parce que rien que le changement d’éclairage détruisait l’habitude que j’avais de ma chambre et grâce à quoi, sauf le supplice du coucher, elle m’était devenue supportable. Maintenant je ne la reconnaissais plus et j’y étais inquiet, comme dans une chambre d’hôtel ou de «chalet», où je fusse arrivé pour la première fois en descendant de chemin de fer.
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N o t e s
Fixed and painful point. Fixed point is another mathematical term.
The grownups had even devised a ruse. What Proust wrote here needed fleshing out in English: “On avait bien inventé … de me donner” / ”One had even invented … to give me.”
Magic lantern. The house of Proust’s great aunt in Combray is today a museum, which displays a magic lantern in the room where he slept as a child. In this video the lantern appears at the bottom left of the screen and then is shown in greater detail. According to the Friends of Proust Society, this lantern is of the type that would have existed during Proust’s childhood. Magic lanterns came in many sizes and have a long history.
“Chalet.” This seems most likely to refer to a hotel in a chalet style, as described in this article, although further research is warranted.