I do not mean to sound snobbish, but I can’t imagine Marcel Proust read in any other language than French. Reading Proust’s “A la Recherche du Temps Perdu” is like watching Vermeer or el Greco paint one of their masterpieces—I don’t know how else to explain its sublimeness. Proust had a talent with words, they were like clay in his hands, they became alive and pulsated with meaning. I remember reading his book and being forced to stop frequently, in order to breath in the extreme beauty of the phrases he crafted. I have never read another author who made me feel the same way.