Volume 52, Number 20 · December 15, 2005
Far from Proust's Way
By André Aciman
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
by Marcel Proust, translated from the French by James Grieve
Viking/Penguin, 558 pp., $27.95, $17.00 (paper)
The six volumes of the new Viking Penguin translation of Proust received rave reviews in England. And yet the titles of the first two volumes approach monstrosity. Du côté de chez Swann, traditionally translated—despite Proust's initial objection—as Swann's Way, appeared in England as The Way by Swann, which echoes something along the lines of 'How's by you?' 'By me is fine.' It is fortunate for Lydia Davis, the translator of Volume One, that Penguin USA decided to delete all traces of The Way by Swann and restored the old way, Swann's Way. À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, the title of Proust's second volume, for which he was awarded the prestigious Prix Goncourt, was not so fortunate. C.K. Scott Moncrieff's title Within a Budding Grove was a most felicitous rendering of an untranslatable title. The title of James Grieve's translation, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, is gobbledygook. What is a young girl in flower? Is she dressed in Laura Ashley prints? Or is a young girl in flower a girl who is just about to blossom? This punctilious and ultimately priggish commitment to word-for-word accuracy turns out not only to be a cunning way of attracting attention and of publicizing a radically new translation out to make sweeping changes, but it is, all said and done, thoroughly deceptive. Accuracy, particularly in this volume, is proclaimed, not practiced, promised, not delivered.
Review, 3126 words
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