In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

After reading the Lydia Davis translation of Swann's way, it was tough to adjust to the slightly clunkier CKSM translation, I can only imagine this could be a 5 star read if she had translated this volume as well. 

(Don't buy the Mint Editions copy, full of typos and inner-margins are way too narrow!) 

I absolutely love the introductions of both Robert and Albertine... Poor Robert deserved better from Marcel :”( 

“Grief that is caused one by a person with whom one is in love with can be bitter, even when it is interpolated among preoccupations, occupations, pleasures in which that person is not directly involved and from which our attention is diverted only now and again to return to it.”

“Pleasure in this respect is like photography. What we take, in the presence of the beloved object, is merely a negative film; we develop it later, when we are at home, and have once again found at our disposal that inner darkroom, the entrance to which is barred to us so long as we are with other people.”

Note: I didn't read this translation, I read “Within a Budding Grove.” Which, accuracy aside (I don't speak French so I don't know), is a much better title. Much less awkward and (perhaps) overly literal...

‰ЫПPleasures are like photographs: in the presence of the person we love, we take only negatives, which we develop later, at home, when we have at our disposal once more our inner dark-room, the door of which is strictly forbidden to open while others are present.‰Ыќ

—

‰ЫПThough I met each new day with the thought that I was now on the threshold of life, which still lay before me all unlived and was about to start the very next day, not only had my life in fact begun, but the years to come would not be very different from the years already elapsed.‰Ыќ