Francoise on Love

Francoise, one of the many eccentric characters in Proust's Novel, who works as a cook in the home of the narrator says this about the follies of romantic love:

Dear, dear, it's just as they used to say
in my poor mother's day:
'Frogs and snails and puppy-dogs' tails,
And dirty sluts in plenty,
Smell sweeter than roses in young men's noses
When the heart is one-and-twenty'.

The new penguin translation has:

Oh dear! It's just as they used to say in my poor mother's patois:'Fall in love with a dog's bum. And thou'll think it pretty as a plum'.

Whatever be the translation, the truth behind this piece of peasant wisdom cannot be denied! In fact Proust explores the same themes - subjectivity, self-deception and false idealization involved in romantic love - brilliantly, although in a much more refined and artistically astute way, in the first part of his novel, Swann's Way, in the chapter called Swann in Love. I will write about the misfortunes of Swann as he falls in love in some other post at some other time.