Thursday Translation, #11

From Marcel Proust, Correspondance avec sa mère, Paris, Librairie Plon, 1953.

[December, 1903]

My dear little Mother, I am writing this little note to you, as I am unable to fall asleep, to tell you that I am thinking of you. I would so much enjoy, and I want so absolutely, to be able soon to wake up at the same time as you and to take my café au lait next to you. To feel our slumbers and our wakefulness occupying the same space would be, will be, so delightful for me. I went to bed at 1:30 with this goal in mind, but, finding it necessary to get up again, I was unable to find my safety pin (which fastens my boxer shorts and keeps them tight). All this to say that my night was finished. I tried to find another one in your bathroom cabinet, and so on, and so on, but I only managed to catch a severe cold marching around like that (and 'severe' is a joke), yet no safety pin. I went back to bed but there was no hope of rest. Still, at least I am able to fill up the night making plans for a life that will be to your liking, and still more wrapped up materially with your own, a life lived in the same hours, in the same rooms, at the same temperature, according to the same principles, with reciprocal approval, even if for now satisfaction is, alas, forbidden to us. (1) Forgive me for having left the office of the fumoir such a mess, but I worked so hard until the very last moment. (2) And as for this lovely envelope, it's the only one I have handy to me. Make Marie Antoine keep silent, and shut the door to the kitchen that gives passage to her voice.

A thousand tender kisses,

Marcel

I feel as though I will sleep very well now.

Comments

[Billy]

Lol! What a fruity mama's boy! What a mollycoddled booby!

[Mike M]

No link to the original French?