{"id":182,"date":"2008-05-06T20:09:04","date_gmt":"2008-05-07T01:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lettersandsodas.com\/books\/?p=182"},"modified":"2008-05-06T20:09:04","modified_gmt":"2008-05-07T01:09:04","slug":"within-a-budding-grove-by-marcel-prousttrans-ck-scott-moncrieff-and-terence-kilmartinrevised-by-dj-enrightmodern-library-2003-this-translationedition-originally-chatto-windus-1992","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/within-a-budding-grove-by-marcel-prousttrans-ck-scott-moncrieff-and-terence-kilmartinrevised-by-dj-enrightmodern-library-2003-this-translationedition-originally-chatto-windus-1992\/","title":{"rendered":"Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Prousttrans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence KilmartinRevised by D.J. EnrightModern Library, 2003 (this translation\/edition originally Chatto &#038; Windus, 1992)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been reading <em>Within a Budding Grove<\/em> slowly over the past few months, in ten-page snippets on the train, sprawled on the floor, stretched out in bed. What I like best in Proust are the lyrical passages, the images, full sentences like this one:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I encountered no one at first but a footman who after leading me through several large drawing-rooms shewed me into one that was quite small, empty, its windows beginning to dream already in the blue light of afternoon; I was left alone there in the company of orchids, roses and violets, which, like people who are kept waiting in a room beside you but do not know you, preserved a silence which their individuality as living things made all the more impressive, and received coldly the warmth of a glowing fire of coals, preciously displayed behind a screen of crystal, in a basin of white marble over which it spilled, now and again, its perilous rubies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(p 136)<\/p>\n<p>My other favorite thing, which seems to happen over and over again, is the small shift of perspective that serves to make you aware, if you&#8217;d forgotten, of story as story, of the narrative voice, the distance between the narrator&#8217;s self and past self, knowledge and past knowledge:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I had not suspected this, nor that the beautiful but quite simple objects which littered his studio were treasures long desired by him which he had followed from sale-room to sale-room, knowing all their history, until he had made enough money to be able to acquire them. But as to this Albertine, being as ignorant as myself, could not enlighten me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(pp 634-635)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been reading Within a Budding Grove slowly over the past few months, in ten-page snippets on the train, sprawled on the floor, stretched out in bed. What I like best in Proust are the lyrical passages, the images, full sentences like this one: I encountered no one at first but a footman who after [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-proust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}