Proust As Interpreter of Ruskin: The Seven Lamps of Translation (Marcel Proust Studies, vol. 9)

Drawing carefully on source materials and manuscripts that have often been overlooked, Cynthia J. Gamble provides a lucid and detailed account of the making of translations by Proust from Ruskins’s œuvre, notably The Bible of Amiens and Sesame and Lilies. She clears up the contentious matter of Proust’s knowledge of English, demonstrating that it was more advanced than he — or indeed most of his friends and critics — cared to admit. She explores his reasons for translating Ruskin, suggesting, rather unsurprisingly, that Ruskin’s subject matter would have appealed to a young disciple of Émile Mâle, and, more practically and revealingly, that Proust chose quite deliberately to translate a…