The Stranger

These sentences struck me, listening to Neville Jason's new unabridged recording of The Guermantes Way from Audible.com, as I drove to the tannery in Pennsylvania.

Or, étant alors à ce moment-là ce buveur, tout d’un coup, le cherchant dans la glace, je l’aperçus, hideux, inconnu, qui me regardait. La joie de l’ivresse était plus forte que le dégoût; par gaîté ou bravade, je lui souris et en même temps il me souriait. Et je me sentais tellement sous l’empire éphémère et puissant de la minute où les sensations sont si fortes que je ne sais si ma seule tristesse ne fut pas de penser que, le moi affreux que je venais d’apercevoir, c’était peut-être son dernier jour et que je ne rencontrerais plus jamais cet étranger dans le cours de ma vie.

Le Côté de Guermantes, Tome 3 de À la Recherche du temps perdu, Marcel Proust, 1920.

Being then myself at this moment the said drinker, suddenly, looking for him in the glass, I caught sight of him, hideous, a stranger, who was staring at me. The joy of intoxication was stronger than my disgust; from gaiety or bravado I smiled at him, and simultaneously he smiled back at me. And I felt myself so much under the ephemeral and potent sway of the minute in which our sensations are so strong, that I am not sure whether my sole regret was not at the thought that this hideous self of whom I had just caught sight in the glass was perhaps there for the last time on earth, and that I should never meet the stranger again in the whole course of my life.

The Guermantes Way, Volume 3 of Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust. Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, 1925.