Another example of the spare punctuation can be seen in letter 14: “I am quite unwell as I write but I thank you deeply for the letter that has brought me I assure you a vision more enduring than a bouquet and as colorful.” And, later in the same letter: “. . . not to mention the innumerable ‘mature roses’ of two poetesses my great friends whom I no longer see alas now that I no longer get up Mme de Noailles and Mme de Régnier” — note the interpolated comment and at least five, by my count, commas missing which would be present in a more standard syntax.
We are told that Proust wrote very fast. This, too, is apparent in the letters, in the sprawling handwriting, in the tendency to abbreviate, in the occasional missing word, and perhaps, though not necessarily, in the missing punctuation.
Yet, at the same time, his syntactical agility is always in evidence, as in letter 13, in which he includes in one fairly short sentence a rather elaborate, and in this case indignant, parenthetical remark (“as I have been accused”) that manages to enclose within it yet another clause (“it seems”): “I have been so ill these days (in my bed which I have not left and without having noisily opened or closed the carriage entrance as I have it seems been accused of doing) that I have not been able to write.” Here he exemplifies, in a rougher, more urgent way, his declaration concerning his published writing that a sentence contains a complete thought, and that no matter how complex it may be, this thought should remain intact. The shape of the sentence is the shape of the thought, and every word is necessary.
Perhaps the most extreme example, in this collection of letters, of his complex syntax, and lack of punctuation, as well as his colorful and fertile imagination, comes in letter 25, which is mainly devoted to the cathedral of Reims so heavily damaged by bombardment in the first autumn of the war. Here we approach the precision, the rhetorical heights, and the luscious imagery of In Search of Lost Time (and with a reference to a Ruskin title covertly slipped in): “But I who insofar as my health permits make to the stones of Reims pilgrimages as piously awestruck as to the stones of Venice believe I am justified in speaking of the diminution to humanity that will be consummated on the day when the arches that are already half burnt away collapse forever on those angels who without troubling themselves about the danger still gather marvelous fruits from the lush stylized foliage of the forest of stones.”
The acute understanding of psychology and social behavior displayed so richly in the novel is another continuing thread in the letters, and is especially apparent in letter 21: “I always defer letters (which could seem to ask you for something) to a moment when it is too late and when consequently, they are no longer indiscreet.”
And the gentle touches of humor, so prevalent in the novel, also have their place in the letters, as in the continuation of letter 21: “Considering how little time it took to do the work on Ste Chapelle (this comparison can only I think be seen as flattering), one may presume that when this letter reaches Annecy, the beautifications of Boulevard Haussmann will be nearly done.” (With, later in the same letter, his comparison of the various noises that surround him to his Lullaby.)
How revealing letters can be, in the era when they were written by hand and rarely copied over, especially not by the suffering Proust, who so often, according to him, had barely the strength or energy to write even a short note. Unrevised, a letter may show the thread of the thought as it develops: “When it has subsided,” Proust writes, of one of his attacks, in letter 24, and then realizes it may not subside, and so goes on to add what has just occurred to him: “if it subsides.”
The letters, written over a span of years and in different moods and physical conditions, show different aspects of his personality and character. He may be gracious and flattering, as in letter 11: “At least I would have the joy of knowing that those lovely lucid eyes had rested on these pages”; or flowery and eloquent, as in letter 15: “My solitude has become even more profound, and I know nothing of the sun but what your letter tells me. It has thus been a blessed messenger, and contrary to the proverb, this single swallow has made for me an entire spring.” Or, in contrast to his poetic descriptions, he may suddenly deploy, with cool adeptness, in letter 26, a metaphor taken from the world of chemistry: “Already I carry around with me in my mind so many dissolved deaths, that each new one causes supersaturation and crystallizes all my griefs into an infrangible block.”
He is meticulous and particular not only in his requests as to when and where his upstairs neighbors might nail shut their crates, in letter 17: “Or else if it is indispensable to nail them in the morning, to nail them in the part of your apartment that is above my kitchen, and not that which is above my bedroom. I call above my bedroom that which is also above the adjoining rooms, and even on the 4th”; but also in describing the nature itself of disturbance from noise (as he continues the sentence): “. . . since a noise so discontinuous, so ‘noticeable’ as blows being struck, is heard even in the areas where it is slightly diminished.”
And in letter 19, too, he goes into detail about the effect of noise: “What bothers me is never continuous noise, even loud noise, if it is not struck, on the floorboards, (it is less often no doubt in the bedroom itself, than at the bend of the hallway). And everything that is dragged over the floor, that falls on it, runs across it.” I think we readers, peering over Mme Williams’s shoulder, may find his precision amusing, but he himself, though so likely at other times to see the humor in a situation, here seems in deadly earnest. And the same earnestness must be present in another letter, letter 22, as he describes one of his weekly torments (again, with a somewhat eccentric placement or omission of commas): “Yet tomorrow is Sunday, a day which usually offers me the opposite of the weekly repose because in the little courtyard adjoining my room they beat the carpets from your apartment, with an extreme violence.”
Proust’s style, in these letters, then, is a mix of elegance and haste, refinement and convolution, gravity and self-mockery, marked by abbreviations and mistakes, very little punctuation, and no paragraphing to speak of, or almost none, as he shifts from topic to topic.
My approach to translating this style has been to hew very close to it, not supplying missing punctuation or correcting mistakes, but at the same time trying to retain as much of its grace, beauty, sudden shifts of tone and subject, and distinctive character as I could. It was a pleasurable challenge to attempt to reproduce his non ¬sequiturs, his flowery constructions, his literary references, and his meticulous instructions for lessening the intrusions of noise. One is bound to feel compassion — as his neighbors did — for the beleaguered Proust, pushing ahead, against all odds and in the worst of health, with his vast project; it is certainly impossible, in any case, for anyone with neighbors to blame him for being so fussy about their noise.
One particular challenge in the translation was to create a passable version of Proust’s pastiche in letter 21, of the sonnet by Félix Arvers. This poem became so famous in its day that Arvers has been dubbed a “one-poem poet,” so famous that it inspired a contemporary American poet to translate it. One would not immediately associate Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with Proust, and yet, for a time — not at the same time — they were both concentrating their attention, and their literary abilities, on “My Secret.” We may gain yet another idea of the original from reading Longfellow’s version, from which I had hoped to steal some phrases but managed only to take the last line:
My Secret
My soul its secret hath, my life too hath its mystery,
A love eternal in a moment’s space conceived;
Hopeless the evil is, I have not told its history,
And she who was the cause nor knew it nor believed.
Alas! I shall have passed close by her unperceived,
Forever at her side, and yet forever lonely,
I shall unto the end have made life’s journey, only
Daring to ask for naught, and having naught received.
For her, though God hath made her gentle and endearing,
She will go on her way distraught and without hearing
These murmurings of love that round her steps ascend,
Piously faithful still unto her austere duty,
Will say, when she shall read these lines full of her beauty,
“Who can this woman be?” and will not comprehend.
As for the other apparatus in the book, I have made only a few slight changes to the very helpful notes by Estelle Gaudry and Jean-Yves Tadié, and to M. Tadié’s foreword, when it was necessary to supply a first name, for instance, or an identification, or otherwise enlarge upon a reference that might not be obvious to an Anglophone reader.
By way of coda: After these letters were brought into public view from where they
