I bought the new Proust, the Lydia Davis translation of Swann's Way. I am trying not to try to read Proust; as Matthew Stadler reminds us, making Proust into calisthenics kind of misses the point.

So but anyway, last summer I read about half of Swann's Way, got stranded somewhere in "Swann in Love". Already, I like Lydia Davis's translation a lot better.

Davis: "The anaesthetizing influence of habit having ceased, I would begin to have thoughts, and feelings, and they are such sad things."

Moncrief: "The anaesthetic effect of habit being destroyed, I would begin to think--and to feel--such melancholy things."

I don't have the original, and if I did, I couldn't judge, since I barely know French well enough to order a coffee.

I know that Proust-for-edification, Proust-for-betterment is not the point, but I am intrigued by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's remark (in Dialogue on Love?) that she has seen how the reading of Proust makes people smarter. (Not cultural-literacy smart, as in yes-I've-read-Proust. I think her point was that Marcel's subtle and nuanced appreciation of the varieties of people somehow made readers... uh, smarter.)