Sodom and Gomorrah: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 4 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Sodom and Gomorrah: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 4 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) | Marcel Proust | Helpful Footnotes

books:

Battle Fiddler on the Roo... Deconstructing Harry Sacred cantatas Sodom and Gomorrah...

	Sodom and Gomorrah: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 4 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) Marcel Proust Penguin Classics, 2005 - 576 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

Sodom and Gomorrah?now in a superb translation by John Sturrock?takes up the theme of homosexual love, male and female, and dwells on how destructive sexual jealousy can be for those who suffer it. Proust?s novel is also an unforgiving analysis of both the decadent high society of Paris and the rise of a philistine bourgeoisie that is on the way to supplanting it. Characters who had lesser roles in earlier volumes now reappear in a different light and take center stage, notably Albertine, with whom the narrator believes he is in love, and the insanely haughty Baron de Charlus.

for more information click here

Thank you, Penguin

Sturrock justifies the editor's (Prendergast's) decision to include him in his lineup of translators. The English (as is the case with the preceding Penguin volumes of In Search of Lost Time) feels fresh, contemporary, and natural, never stilted or forced. Idioms and puns are almost always rendered as well in the English as they must be in the French. Even if you have read the Moncrieff translation, Sturrock and his fellow translators make a return to Proust worthwhile. After the cliffhanger at the end of The Guermantes Way, I couldn't wait to get to Sodom and Gomorrah. Proust and Sturrock deliver an always engaging follow-up.

(A quick note on the book's physical character: I love how Penguin has handled these softcover editions. They are just big enough that the print can be of a legible size. They're a pleasure to hold for long spells of reading. And they're sturdily-enough constructed that the spine need not crease.)

for more information click here

Helpful Footnotes

This new translations features 29 pages of helpful footnotes - limiting the need to constantly turn to Wikipedia for elucidation of Proust's many historical and literary references. The translation is easy to follow.

Thus I find in his spirit, exceedingly warm and congenial, what eases me the malevolent shivers that winter brings.

At one point in our life, in the thermosphere of love, we had encountered someone congruous in all aspects. However no two individuals go through the same geometric growth and when one outgrows the other they overlap. And so one conforms to the shape of the other only to achieve a perfect tessellation. I say this because love is so exact; a mathematical equation that has several ways of solving but the answer remains the same.

If Darwin's Origin of Species is a bit painstaking to read, in this volume Proust elaborates the evolutionist's theory on how plants and flowers propagate. This may not sound relevant but the exemplar of botanical reproduction explains the sexual and homosexual content of the narration in more than one utterly hilarious event. I can vividly picture Robin Williams in The Birdcage as M. Charlus who is finally out of the closet in the fourth volume.

The unforeseen deviation in Proust's theme should not discourage the reader to pursue the fifth volume because the narrator's love affair with Albertine is like Swann and Odette all over again. As with history of love that keeps repeating itself, it becomes all the more electrifying albeit with lesser shock.

for more information click here

Sodom and Gomorrah

It was my first time ordering a book from Amazon, I had a little trouble at first locating the exact place where I was supposed to order, because there so many things you could order, then I had a little trouble making the payment. But the book arrived on time and in good condition. Thank you.

products you might be interested in