Dream Walk of Moonlight. Proust. Du coté chez swann (Swan's Way). Part 1, Combray, §7

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Dream Walk of Moonlight

Marcel Proust

Du coté chez swann.

A la recherche du temps perdu. Tome I

Swan's Way

Vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past

Première partie

Overture

Combray

I.

§7 /

§8

The narrator awakes to delusions and confusions. He discussed these previously. Finally consciousness regains.

He has a room in Mme. de Saint-Loup’s house. It lies within the countryside in Tansonville, the place where he grew-up. He normally takes an evening walk with her, napping afterward. This time he overslept to ten o’clock, missing his dinner. Once he played here as a child. Later when in Combray, he walked until dusk. Now he walks in the evenings before dinner, walking home by moonlight, with his room’s lamp glowing in the distance, the “solitary beacon in the night.”

From the English translation:

Then would come up the memory of a fresh position; the wall slid away in another direction; I was in my room in Mme. de Saint-Loup’s house in the country; good heavens, it must be ten o’clock, they will have finished dinner! I must have overslept myself, in the little nap which I always take when I come in from my walk with Mme. de Saint-Loup, before dressing for the evening. For many years have now elapsed since the Combray days, when, coming in from the longest and latest walks, I would still be in time to see the reflection of the sunset glowing in the panes of my bedroom window. It is a very different kind of existence at Tansonville now with Mme. de Saint-Loup, and a different kind of pleasure that I now derive from taking walks only in the evenings, from visiting by moonlight the roads on which I used to play, as a child, in the sunshine; while the bedroom, in which I shall presently fall asleep instead of dressing for dinner, from afar off I can see it, as we return from our walk, with its lamp shining through the window, a solitary beacon in the night.

From the French:

Puis renaissait le souvenir d’une nouvelle attitude; le mur filait dans une autre direction: j’étais dans ma chambre chez Mme de Saint-Loup, à la campagne; mon Dieu! Il est au moins dix heures, on doit avoir fini de dîner! J’aurai trop prolongé la sieste que je fais tous les soirs en rentrant de ma promenade avec Mme de Saint-Loup, avant d’endosser mon habit. Car bien des années ont passé depuis Combray, où, dans nos retours les plus tardifs, c’était les reflets rouges du couchant que je voyais sur le vitrage de ma fenêtre. C’est un autre genre de vie qu’on mène à Tansonville, chez Mme de Saint-Loup, un autre genre de plaisir que je trouve à ne sortir qu’à la nuit, à suivre au clair de lune ces chemins où je jouais jadis au soleil; et la chambre où je me serai endormi au lieu de m’habiller pour le dîner, de loin je l’aperçois, quand nous rentrons, traversée par les feux de la lampe, seul phare dans la nuit.

Proust, Marcel. Du coté chez swann. A la recherche du temps perdu. Tome I.

Available online at:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/proust/marcel/p96d/index.html

Proust, Marcel. Swan's Way. Vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past.Transl. C.K. Scott Moncrieff

Available online at:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/proust/marcel/p96s/index.html