The Swann Way (Oxford World's Classics)

I will start by saying that I think In Search of Lost Time the greatest novel of the 20th Century. Now that you know my bias straight off, you will know why I am reviewing this translation and not bothering to review the novel itself. There are many others who have already explained why this is a reasonable bias.And I can’t read French well, so I will not be able to assess accuracy. I will confine myself to how the different translations “read”.I should say that I have read through the entire original Scott Moncrieff translation of Proust, read the Lydia Davis Swann’s Way, read some of the newly released Swann’s Way by James Grieve and the Swann’s Way of the revised Scott Moncrieff by Kilmartin, Enright et al; the version by William Carter reads too much like the original Scott Moncrieff despite his corrections, to be considered vastly different.And I think Nelson’s translation is the best yet.Many people fault the Scott Moncrieff for its errors and a prose ornate in a way Proust never was. I actually like that about it and thought the prose rather beautiful despite the fact that it wasn’t “Proust”. Scott Moncrieff has his defenders (see articles in The Guardian) but I understand why most modern translations have moved away from his. That’s why the Kilmartin, Enright revision is almost a nice compromise: you get some of the perfume but improved accuracy and easier to read.Lydia Davis was highly praised in her version and it may be the most literally accurate but it reads cold by comparison and I find it rather flavorless. Like her own short fiction, it felt like Proust stripped to the bone. Grieve I found unreadable and after over a hundred pages gave up; there was no elegance in his prose and it felt like a rush job.Brian Nelson’s version seems to me to hit the sweet spot. It is extremely readable, despite Proust’s famously long, winding sentences. It is always clear and despite eliminating most of the perfume, it is never dry. And some passages, which never made sense to me, now do.An example. In the beginning, when the Narrator is shifting in his sleep, and in his dream conjures a female companion based on the position of his thighs, a sensation that causes him to wake, Davis writes: “If, as sometimes happened, she had the features of a woman I had known in life, I would devote myself entirely to this end: to finding her again…” This I always found confusing; would the Narrator get up from his bed there and then and go storming out of his house after her?Nelson writes: “If, as sometimes happened, she had the features of a woman I had known in real life, I would resolve to devote myself entirely to the goal of finding her again…” These few words make plain that the action is to be postponed and only intended, not something that happened there and then. Finally, it made sense. More accurate I can’t say. But nothing to leave you puzzling over how to decipher.He doesn’t skimp on the intrinsic poetry in the prose, but I never felt like I didn’t know what Proust was getting at, as I often did in the other translations.So with these 6 variations on a theme, I would vote for this one. There are still the serpentine sentences, but I have never found them so relatively easy to follow. And to miss out on Proust because of the translation would be missing out on one of the most satisfying reading experiences there is.

I've led The Proust Seminar at the Mechanics' Institute Library in San Francisco for over 20 years. The following English translations of "Du côté de chez Swann" are currently in print: that of C.K. Scott-Moncrieff (Random House; Norton), a revision of that translation by D.J. Enright (Modern Library), another revision of that translation by William Carter (Yale UP), a translation by Lydia Davis (Penguin), and a translation by James Grieve (NYRB), and now this translation by Brian Nelson (Oxford UP). That's six translations (seven editions) of a book hardly anyone reads. I guess we're lucky? The Grieve translation, however, is one I would avoid at all costs; it's not Proust. All the others are just great; if you want a good sense of Proust's novel, every one will serve you quite well. So the question arises: why another translation of a novel that hardly anyone reads? [There's also Lucy Raitz's recent translation of "Swann in Love."] Well, a new translation of Proust makes good press, and good press makes for a burst of $; and Oxford UP doesn't yet have a Proust. so there's that prestige, for what it's worth. Nelson writes, "'The Way by Swann's [the title of Davis's translation in Great Britain, the U.S. version retains "Swann's Way"] I find awkward...I chose "The Swann Way" because it forms a perfect balance with "The Guermantes Way" (xvi). Well, yes and no. Rather, it's "Du côté de chez Swann" and "Le Côté Guermantes." Yes, "du côté de" poses a challenge for a translator, but it's not the "perfect" balance that Nelson claims. Next: no Synopsis! This is a key navigating feature of every other translation (save Grieve's) as well as every French edition of the novel. Its absence here is a head-scratcher. First sentence of the novel, "...je n'avais pas le temps de me dire." It's pretty straightforward, "I didn't have time to say to myself." Nelson translates this as, "I didn't even have time to think" (7). I can't think of any rationale why Nelson chose "think" rather than "say to myself" other than just to be different. And that's not a great rationale. In any case, this is a fine, quite readable, British-sounding translation that save for its lack of a synopsis, will serve you just as well as any other (save Greive's...avoid!).