“Halfway” is relative ’round here. If you broke in right now, you’d note, firstly, that I must have run out of the house halfway through doing my laundry. I did. And this and that are halfway from one place to another, but I don’t want to leave them in my car overnight, or just forgotContinue reading “Kenny Loggins: “Heart to Heart” (1982)”
Tag Archives: Proust
A perfect word: immure
Immure: to confine within walls. I first encountered the word “mur” at the site of Jeanne d’Arc’s death. This is a perfect example of a perfect English word, and I love when they are made like this. A word that says what it means. The beauty is that it takes a word from the FrenchContinue reading “A perfect word: immure”
Miller: The Colossus of Maroussi (1941)
I have one of the most remarkably poor memories of anyone I’ve ever met. Perhaps the very worst. What I can handle, though, is something a lot of people have told me is not only strange, but also difficult: I’m generally reading between 20 and 30 books at a time, and I stretch out readingContinue reading “Miller: The Colossus of Maroussi (1941)”
Proust: Swann’s Way: ‘Combray’ (1913)
I don’t want to pit Proust against Lawrence, but they simply beg to be tried, and how particularly funny, that it is a Frenchman being pitted against a Brit, and losing, for the time being, in terms of passion. I would not have considered comparing the two except that in Lady Chatterley, Clifford Chatterley isContinue reading “Proust: Swann’s Way: ‘Combray’ (1913)”
Proust, on the novel.
Après cette croyance centrale qui, pendant ma lecture, exécutait d’incessants mouvements du dedans au dehors, vers la découverte de la vérité, venaient les émotions que me donnait l’action à laquelle je prenais part, car ces après-midi-là étaient plus remplis d’événements dramatiques que ne l’est souvent toute une vie. C’était les événements qui survenaient dans leContinue reading “Proust, on the novel.”
Proust: Swann’s Way: ‘Overture’ (1913)
Clearly, I’ve decided to go with a translation (Moncrieff/Kilmartin), what seems to be considered the driest and most accurate translation available, as the new ones seem to carry the prose into something more contemporary. I never found an argument concerning that with which I particularly agree, even when modernizing Shakespeare, I think it should beContinue reading “Proust: Swann’s Way: ‘Overture’ (1913)”
Bayeux
Bayeux was a tragedy from the start. Every day for a week I would wake up early in the morning, trudge down to Gare St Lazare, sitting at the front of the metro with all the old women, and ask where the train to Bayeux is, nobody ever understanding my pronunciation. And each day theContinue reading “Bayeux”
arts & fetters 