MARCEL PROUST
in the general accuracy of his renderings he was largely indebted
to Mme Proust, and that the occasional gross but trivial blunders
are all his own, there can still be no doubt that for the elegance of
his translation, the deep comprehension and sharing of Ruskin's
inmost meaning and feeling, he owed nothing to his helpers.
Proust's Ruskin may be compared to another great translation
which, although not free from elementary but unimportant errors,
is a masterly re-creation ofits original: namely, Scott-Moncrieff's
Proust. Until Proust's Ruskin manuscripts are published we can
only guess at the respective parts played in La Bihle d' Amiens and
Sesame et les Lys by his own knowledge and intuition and by the
conscripted assistance of his mother and friends. But concerning
the extent of his knowledge of Ruskin's other works, as revealed
by the hundreds of quotations in his essays and voluminous foot-
notes, certainty is possible. The quotations are mostly of his own
choice; nearly all are taken from works which had not previously
been translated into French; the few which had previously
occurred in Milsand or La Sizeranne are mostly retranslated
(except in the first section of John Ruskin) from the original; and
they come from no fewer than twenty-six works, covering
virtually the entire range of Ruskin's production. In the Mercure
de France essay, Ruskin a Notre-Dame d' Amiens, he quotes
Praeterita, The Bible of Amiens, The Queen of the Air and Vat
d' Arno; in the second section of John Ruskin he uses passages
from The Pleasures of England, The Seven Lamps of Architecture,
Lectures on Architecture and Painting, The Stones of Venice and
St Mark's Rest.^1 In his notes to La Bible d'Amiens he draws from
these and fourteen other works of Ruskin, including The Two
Paths, Unto this Last and Modern Painters; and if only three
more are added to the list in Sesame et les Lys, it is because the
tale of Ruskin's works is by now, except for some half a dozen
. very minor pieces, complete. Mme Proust can hardly have
supplied him with a home-made translation of all Ruskin; and his
quotations are made with an ease and appositeness which imply
a thorough knowledge of the books from which they are taken.
The conclusion is inevitable, that Proust had read and digested
1 This corroborates his claim in the letter to Marie Nordlinger of g
February '900, when he had recently finished these essays, to 'know by
heart' The Seven Lamps, The BiNe of Amiens, Val d'Arno, Lectures on
Architecture and Painting and Praeterita.