Remembrance (and re-reading) of Proust

How good is your remembrance of Proust? Last night started re-reading "Swann's Way," this time the new Lydia Davis translation - I am not by any means looking at the translations side by side but hers seems more comfortable and fluent than the Moncrieff, though both are great - mainly, Proust is great and a pleasure to return to at any time but especially after reading a string of rather ordinary novels that made me wonder for a while why is it that we read? As I've noted frequently in this blog, one reason we do so is to gain access to the consciousness of another - and Proust is the most pure, extreme, and complete example of that. His work is entirely about consciousness. People sometimes (mistakenly) think of his work, of much literary work, as about description - beautifual passages, imagery, and so on - but description does not capture or convey what Proust does: he articulates perceptions and observations that either you've never had or that you have always had but had never even attempted to formulate into words. He uses language to give us access not only to his consciousness but to our own. It's difficult to blog about Proust without using a text alongside of me, which I have never done for this blog and do not intend to - this is not about research and scholarship but about my thoughts on my reading - but I will give one small example: M. recalls that as Swann visits the family home at Combray the family would note the sound of the bell, not the "ferrugenous" sound of the bell that rang if someone walked through the door on his own but the softer sound of the bell a visitor would ring - and somehow this sound becomes associated with everything about Swann, his arrival, his personality, his meaning for the family and for M.