The Fugitive, or The Sweet Cheat Gone
Book Six, and chapter three of four. I had quite forgotten how many wonderful lines there are in this little section of the narrator in Venice with Mama. The first page has the wonderful description of days, which in the C. K. Scott Moncrieff original English translation appears as '...the whole world is merely a vast sun-dial, a single lighted segment of which enables us to tell what o’clock it is...', and in a much later translation by Peter Collier as '...the world is little more than a vast sundial where a single sunlit segment allows us to tell the time...'.
And as the narrator chases after young girls in Venice, he reflects on his original love of Albertine, and gives one of the most beautifully poetical lines of the whole work: 'We think we love a girl, and in her we love no more, alas, than that dawn which their face momentarily reflects.' In the earlier translation this is given as the slightly different 'We think that we are in love with a girl, whereas we love in her, alas! only that dawn the glow of which is momentarily reflected on her face.'
Then on the very next page we have the marvellous 'Our love of life is no more than an old affair that we do not know how to discontinue. Its strength lies in its permanence. But death, which interrupts it, will cure us of our desire for immorality.' Or 'Our love of life is only an old connexion of which we do not know how to rid ourself. Its strength lies in its permanence. But death which severs it will cure us of the desire for immortality.'
