That evening, as he was returning home, Charles took up again one by one the words she had used, trying to recall them, to complete their meaning. . . . He wondered what would become of her, whether she would marry, and whom. Alas! 

"To achieve a translation that matches [Flaubert’s] high standard is difficult, perhaps impossible," writes Lydia Davis in the introduction to her new translation of Madame Bovary—the 20th into English, by her own count. Nevertheless, seven years after her translation of Proust's Swann's Way was met with universal celebration, Ms. Davis, also an acclaimed writer of fiction (her Collected Stories was published in 2009), returns to the Poetry Center to read from her rendering of Flaubert's classic novel.
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