Swann's Way: Remembrance of Things Past (1) - Couverture souple

Best translation of Marcel Proust's Du côté de chez Swann

Many years have passed since then. The wall along the staircase on which I saw the approaching light of his candle no longer exists, has not for a long time. In me also, many things have been destroyed, things I believed would last forever, and new things have been erected, giving rise to new pains and new joys I would never have been able to foresee back then,—just as how these old pains and joys have since become difficult to understand. And it has been a long time since my father has been able to say to Momma: "Go with the little one." The possibility of hours like those will never be reborn for me. But as of recent, I have again begun to perceive, very well, if I lend my ear, the sobs I found the strength to contain before my father and which broke out when I found myself alone with Momma again. In reality these sobs never ceased; it is only because my life is getting quieter that I hear them anew, like these bells in convents that the noise of the daytime drowns out so effectively that you think they are no longer rung but that sound out once again in the silence of the night.