My reading of Proust has me thinking a lot about Ovid, especially his Amores. I offer here my translation of Amores 1.3:
I pray for righteous things: may the girl who was just snatched
away from me either love me or show me why I should always
love her! Ah, I ask for too much—if only she would allow
herself to be loved, then Venus will have heard all my prayers!
Accept a lover who would devote himself to you for many years;
Accept a lover who knows how to love with pure loyalty!
If my upper class family does not impress you, and if my
equestrian lineage does not impress you, then neither will
my impeccably plowed fields nor my thrifty parents who
regulate my expenses. But Apollo, and his nine Muses,and the
inventor of the grapevines, Bacchus himself, all act on my behalf,
as well as Love itself who has given me to you, and Loyalty which
yields to no one, and morals without a flaw, and naked
simplicity and blushing modesty. A thousand lovers would not
satisfy me, for I’m not the horse-jumper of love; You alone will be
my forever cure, if there is any loyalty. Whatever number of years
the threads of the Fates have spun out for me, let me spend them with
you and may I die first, with you grieving for me. Offer yourself
to me as material fitting for my poems. Brilliant poems will be
produced from your inspiration. Io, frightened by her silly
horns, and the one whom Zeus tricked by pretending to be
a water bird, and even that famous virgin, carried away across the
sea as she held on to the horns of the disguised bull, have all had their
names made famous through poetry. Poets will sing about us
throughout eternity, and my name will always be linked with yours.
There is no way that Proust could not have known and appreciated Ovid’s poetry. I can imagine Proust swooning over Ovid’s treatment of love, indifference, social position, etc. in the Amores.
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