In Search of Lost Time (The Modern Library: complete 6-volume edition)

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In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu #1-7)

by Marcel Proust, C.K. Scott Moncrieff (Translator), Terence Kilmartin (Translator), D.J. Enright (Translator), Richard Howard (Introduction)

4.35 · rating details · 1,620 ratings · 173 reviews

For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin's acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff's translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of À la recherche du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).

Boxed Set, 4211 pages

Published June 3rd 2003 by Modern Library (first published 1927)

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May 25, 2009

Manny rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: french, parody-homage, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, transcendent-experiences, life-is-proust

When you read Proust, and learn to appreciate his extraordinary, dreamy, hypnotic, truly inimitable style (this review is a mere shadow on the wall of a Platonic cave), which succeeds in making the syntax of language, usually as invisible as air, into a tangible element, so that, like literary yogis, we may feel, for the first time, how enjoyable the simple activity of reading, like breathing, can be; and discover the delights of sentences which took the author days to construct and us an hour t...more

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Nov 06, 2009

Jimmy rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Andre Gide, who worked for the famous Gallimard press in the early 20th century, rejected Proust's manuscript for Swann's Way, which was the first installment of the epic Remembrance of Things Past. I often wonder whether or not he ever regretted this decision, but, then again, Gide had his reasons. As an avowed homosexual, he reproached Proust for the repressed homosexuality that was an obvious reality of the work. In example, the girl Albertine, who young Marcel pines for in the early stage...moreAndre Gide, who worked for the famous Gallimard press in the early 20th century, rejected Proust's manuscript for Swann's Way, which was the first installment of the epic Remembrance of Things Past. I often wonder whether or not he ever regretted this decision, but, then again, Gide had his reasons. As an avowed homosexual, he reproached Proust for the repressed homosexuality that was an obvious reality of the work. In example, the girl Albertine, who young Marcel pines for in the early stages of the work, was in actuality, Albert, based on one of Proust's lovers. Gide's criticisms weren't terribly inappropriate though. Through reading Proust's biography, one gets the impression that he was a shameless hypocrite. Then again, this also brings to light the question of whether Proust was less of a novelist than he was a philosopher/cultural critic/journalist/etc. It's funny because at one point in the work he references the literary critic Saint Beauve, who had a theory that the reader should be aware of every tiny detail of the writer's life in order to fully grasp the essence of their work. Remembrance is full of little tidbits like these; he also mentions the German literary critic August Wolf, who was famous for his theory that Homer was actually a sort of pseudonym for the various authors that had worked on the Odyssey and the Iliad.

Honestly, Proust is an overwhelming subject in the space of a review. Piles of books have been written on the man, as well as his works, so I'm not even going to attempt any of that. What I will do is offer my opinion of his work.

First of all, it's insane how what is Proustian plays into this analysis. In itself, my memory of Proust's work can be adequately evoked by a series of sensations that remind me of his work. For Proust, a lime tea soaked madeliene cookie (or tea cake) sparks the memory of an entire life time. This is essentially what is Proustian; any one of our given senses is capable of evoking a broad expanse of psychological memory. So when I am driving through, say, the desert in Southern Nevada, in the springtime, I am instantly reminded of the two or three months that I spent reading Proust. Of course, this is also clearly just another mysterious psychological quirk inherent in human memory, but it still stands as the inspiration for Proust's passionate reflections.

The eponymous character of Swann's Way is an exemplification of the Belle Epoque renaissance man. This is Proust's idol in the early chapters of his masterpiece, a person who is aware of cultural fashions, yet at the same time displays a sense of weariness about how this particular brand of social prestige can actually benefit people. Proust was notorious for his scathing parodies of the characters that frequented the salons of his cultural reality. In other words, Proust enjoyed poking fun at his contemporaries. After three thousand pages of eloquent prose (Allain de Botton once pointed out the fact the the longest sentence contained within Remembrance of Things Past can actually be wrapped around an entire wine bottle (he shows a typographical example of this by presenting the sentence in a circular form, literally)) I am at a loss in attempting to point out the more significant parts of the work, but I do remember bits and pieces.

Much of the scenes are contained within the confined space of the literary salons of Paris. These people discuss painting, classical music, literature, philosophy, the theater, etc. It's akin to Dickens in the way that Proust portrays each character. They are all presented as hyperbolic parodies of themselves. The Dreyfus affair acts as a political centerpiece for Proust's opinions; he once referred to himself as the most stalwart Dreyfusard (which is incorrect because the novelist Emile Zola was far more dedicated that he was, essentially facing exile for his fervent views on the subject, and the author who penned a letter of complaint to the president of France at the time).

Proust goes on (and on) like this throughout the entirety of the work. It's the story of a neurotic consumptive who aspired to become a great writer (I have nothing but faith in the fact that he accomplished this). It's a story of heartbreak, disappointment, lost love, and failed relationships. It's an historically contained account of the intellectual milieau of late 19th century Paris. It is, in general, a sweeping autobiography written by one of the most curious characters that the entire canon of western literature has ever had to offer. In short, it's life as told through the lens of a effete, bourgeois, dandyish genius.

The end is of course the most profound point in the story, as well as the most melancholy. At one of the very last social gatherings Marcel attends he can't help but notice how terribly everyone has aged. Oddly enough, it just now seems more apparent than ever. Proust muses on how literature has the profound ability to freeze moments of history in time. This rings true for him because he is the perfect example of what Freud would refer to as a man who replaced love and sex with research. Also, he is the perfect example of what Modernism would later become obsessed with, which is time, and the inherent difficulties that its philosophical significance carries. Given his fragile, physical state of being, it seems all too appropriate that his life goal was to offer us this intellectual insight into one of the richest moments of European history, that is, as opposed to actually living it.

"The idea of Time was of value to me for yet another reason: it was a spur, it told me that it was time to begin if I wished to attain to what I had sometimes perceived in the course of my life, in brief lightning-flashes, on the Guermantes way and in my drives in the carriage of Mme de Villeparisis, at those moments of perception which had made me think that life was worth living. How much more worth living did it appear to me now, now that I seemed to see that this life that at every moment we distort can be restored to its true pristine shape, that a life, in short, can be realised within the confines of a book!"(less)

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Jul 31, 2009

Jessica rated it

Recommends it for: recherchers of temps perdu; rememberers of things past; snobs; size queens

Shelves: favorites, groups-of-people, hagging-out, happyendings, leetle-boys, love-and-other-indoor-sports, must-reread, wish-i-owned

I took today off work because I need to put everything I own into boxes so I can move tomorrow, but obviously I can't begin doing that until I get some of these obsessive thoughts about Proust out of my system. I mean, can I? Nope. I can't! After all, this house is where I read Proust -- wait, I read Swann's Way before I moved here, which is pretty nuts to think about -- and so how can I move without reviewing the whole thing?

I do feel pretty traumatized after finishing this book. So...moreI took today off work because I need to put everything I own into boxes so I can move tomorrow, but obviously I can't begin doing that until I get some of these obsessive thoughts about Proust out of my system. I mean, can I? Nope. I can't! After all, this house is where I read Proust -- wait, I read Swann's Way before I moved here, which is pretty nuts to think about -- and so how can I move without reviewing the whole thing?

I do feel pretty traumatized after finishing this book. Sort of shellshocked and confused with all these half-formed thoughts and intense inexplicable feelings bouncing around in me, and I don't know what to do with them or myself. Yesterday I wound up sitting in my friend's bar explaining Proust's aesthetic theories, but that kind of behavior'll get you kicked out of most places, and is not really becoming a young lady. And obviously that's where this website comes in.... what is it for, if not to unload just this kind of mental baggage?

Reading Proust made me wish I were more of a scholar, so I could try to puzzle out some kind of literary context for what this book is. I feel like people think of Proust as being stuffy and old-fashioned and all crusty and ancient, but I think a lot of that has to do with the subject matter (a lost time with superficial resemblance to Jane Austen's milieu), so it's kind of shocking to remember what else was going on while he was writing this. I know this is dumb and there're much better comparisons, but I kept thinking while reading this that it was like thinking your whole life that New York punk in the seventies was all about the Ramones and imagining you really got what was going on then from just listening to that.... but then when you're in your mid-twenties someone suddenly plays you Television for the first time, and you're like what? Like you think you know what modernism is, it's like Ulysses or whatever, but then you find out it's got this completely insane cousin across the river who's just doing all these things that appear at first to have no relationship at all to everything you ignorantly thought you kind of understood at least a little bit before. Again, I'm not much of a scholar and what I'm saying probably doesn't make any sense. To be honest, I don't even know what "modernism" means, I just know it sounds literary.... I think what I'm trying to get at is that the relevance of Proust's concerns to his time aren't immediately obvious because his approach to them initially seems so weird and unfamiliar. But then you realize, while you're in it, that Proust is actually so much of his time it's incredible, and that what he's saying and doing was hugely innovative and exciting at the beginning of the last century, and actually, I'd say, remains as much so today. And I just kind of wish that I knew more about art and literature and whatnot so I could tie it all in better, since I sense there're all these fascinating connections and reference points, but I don't know what they are. I'd sort of like to sneak into some college class or something where they're reading Proust, and listen in, or at least steal their syllabus.... do they even read Proust in college? I feel like they don't. I mean, I never heard of him when I was in college, or after. I really hadn't. I honestly had no idea who Proust was until I started hanging out on this website.

Anyway, for me the most relevant contemporary writer I thought of while reading this wasn't a novelist. A little background: I always really loathed the discipline of psychology and thought it was stupid. When I unwittingly enrolled in social work school, I was dismayed to discover that getting my MSW involved reading pages and pages of precisely this stuff I'd always looked down on.... My happy discovery was that Freud, at least, was actually a fabulous writer, and a lot of his ideas are totally fascinating and very beautiful. What I realized finally is that I just resented psychology for its pretension of pretending it's a science. But actually psychology's concerns and sometimes even their expression are hugely significant -- among the most significant -- and kind of wonderful. In fact, I decided, I love psychology, as long as it knows its place and realizes it's an art, not a science.... Freud said he wanted his case histories to read like short stories, so I think he understood this. Proust, of course, took this to an extreme, by exploring essentially the same territory, not in a short story, but in an extraordinarily long and in some ways kind of ridiculous novel. In Search of Lost Time is about the development of the mind, the experience of consciousness, the influence of past events and relationships on one's emotions and behavior.... all the same stuff Freud cared about, only it made more sense to me here, presented this way.

I completely lost my shit reading the last couple pages of this book, and broke down on some fundamental level in a way I imagine was akin to what you can get from really top-shelf psychotherapy. Towards the end of the book, Proust explains everything he's been trying to do, and just did, in writing this novel. It's his theory of art and specifically of literature, and it's pretty hard to argue with since you've watched him just do it. One of the things that Proust says is that readers of his book "would not be my readers but readers of themselves, my book serving merely as a sort of magnifying glass, such as the optician of Combray used to offer to a customer, so that through my book I would give them the means of reading in their own selves" (p. 384). I guess that could sound unexciting, ripped out of context, but he really does do this, and it truly is astounding. I felt throughly convinced by Proust's theory of what art is for, and as far as I'm concerned he was totally successful in accomplishing his aims. Like psychotherapy, ISoLT attempts to dive into the murk of the unconscious past to retrieve experiences and cognitions that have become inaccessible. Proust dives in and swims down to the bottom, and he finds them, and he grabs them, and he brings them back up and then hands them to you.... Which is pretty nuts. I mean, it's intense. I feel fucked up from it.

Hm. I thought I wanted to talk about this book, but maybe I just want to pack up my shit after all. I really do want to review this book, but maybe it's too soon? It's a really insane novel, and there's tons of stuff in it I'd really love to dork out about on here.... but yeah, maybe too soon. I might come back and say something more coherent later on, when it's all settled down a bit.

I guess the only thing I need to add right at this moment is that I really felt like Proust gave me this particular combination of the things I need most. I really can't read anything too difficult or serious, and to anyone who's considering giving Proust a try -- I can't emphasize this enough -- forget what you heard: this book is anything but a ponderous drag. It's silly and hilarious and smart and bizarre, and there's tons of fashion and sex and depravity and satire and insane plot twists that don't make any sense. I personally have a very short attention span and I cannot and do not read anything that isn't vastly entertaining. In Search of Lost Time is VASTLY ENTERTAINING!! (Except for The Captive, which is only somewhat entertaining.) This is not to say that it's for everyone, and I can see how lots of people would totally hate this. HOWEVER: it's definitely worth a shot, because this book could change your life. I mean that. It could. I'm a completely different person now than I was when I started. So what if this means I'm now an obsessively jealous, elitist, antisemitic, agoraphobic pervert who speaks exclusively in run-on sentences? I think I'm better for it, and you might be too.(less)

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Feb 27, 2009

W.H. Manville rated it

“À la recherche du temps perdu,” was Proust’s title for his major opus. First translated as “Remembrance of Things Past,” it was later, perhaps more accurately, if not as resonantly, called, “In Search of Lost Time.”
Graham Greene called him the greatest novelist of the 20th century. If I include Proust here, it is because I also posit him as a model in a writing course I teach. The admirable way he handled getting rejected by one publisher after another is a subject for stude...more “À la recherche du temps perdu,” was Proust’s title for his major opus. First translated as “Remembrance of Things Past,” it was later, perhaps more accurately, if not as resonantly, called, “In Search of Lost Time.”
Graham Greene called him the greatest novelist of the 20th century. If I include Proust here, it is because I also posit him as a model in a writing course I teach. The admirable way he handled getting rejected by one publisher after another is a subject for students to ponder.
As if anticipating Noah Lukeman’s emphasis on the importance of, “The First Five Pages,” Proust wrote and rewrote his own now famous first page -- which begins, "For a long time I have been in the habit of going to bed early" -- 12 times.
And yet it was precisely this opening passage that got him -— equally famously – rejected again and again.
“I do not see how the story of a gentleman turning and returning himself over in bed can interest the reader.. etc, etc…” one publisher said of the writer who not only influenced Graham Greene but Jack Kerouac too; and who can count the number of writers in between?
Usually I discourage students from choosing vanity press publishing. But if you possess the intuitive genius of Marcel Proust, you’d be wise not to listen to me. When he paid to publish himself, not only did he get rave reviews but a legit house offered him a contract for the rest.
“Writers today must ride a two-headed horse,” is the way I put it in a Handbook given my classes, “art and popularity yoked. Joe Heller, Alice Walker and Kurt Vonnegut show it can be done, and the great Milan Kundera, who breaks almost every rule in the pages that follow, not only gets favorable reviews but Hollywood buys his books. Jane Austin, one of my favorite writers, did not follow the rules taught in this course, nor did Marcel Proust or James Michener. In their own way, Agatha Christie and Theodore Dreiser did it their way too. Their prose was wooden but their mastery of plot enthralled readers.
“I name all these wildly-varying authors to stress there’s more than one way to make your mark as a writer. ‘It's ridiculous to set down rules for art,’ says Noah Lukeman in ‘The First Five Pages.’ ’Most of the truly great artists have broken all the rules, and this is precisely what has made them great. What would have become of Beethoven's music if he chased rules instead of inspiration? Of van Gogh's paintings? There are no rules to assure great writing but there are ways to avoid bad writing. By scrutinizing examples of what not to do, you will learn to spot these ailments in your own writing... because, ultimately, the only person who can teach you about writing is yourself.’
Let’s end with a passage from Proust himself.
If you were a publisher, would you turn this writer down?
Marcel Proust: ”The beautiful things we shall write if we have the talent are inside us, indistinct, like the memory of a melody which delights us though we are unable to recapture its outline. Those who are obsessed by this blurred memory of truth they have never known are the gifted…Talent is like a sort of memory which will enable them finally to bring this indistinct music closer to them, to hear it clearly, to note it down.”

(less)

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Jan 30, 2010

Brent Hayward rated it

· review of another edition

The year of reading Proust. Amen. This was monumental, a life event, like having a child or losing a friend or seeing a wonder of the world. Proust himself, I imagine, must have been rather annoying, but this subtle and (of course) incredibly long rail was unforgettable.

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Sep 18, 2011

Hayes marked it as celebrity-death-match · review of another edition

Review for Celebrity Death Match Only

In this corner, Monty Python for Marcel Proust...

...And in this corner, Stick Figure Hamlet.

Monty Python are very strong this evening, and start out brilliantly, throwing several very good punches. Hamlet doesn't seem in very good shape, and is moving sluggishly. But NO! Proust burns out; Monty Python cant keep up the momentum; they try to come back with a pathetically inadequate ending, but slow and steady, Hamlet knocks out th...more

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Dec 16, 2009

Abi rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: The dedicated and patient literature fan with a good deal of spare time.

Recommended to Abi by: Timothy Baycroft

Shelves: 20th-century, france, favourites

I read this because of Timothy Baycroft. I took his module on the Third Republic in France, HST234, in the first semester of my second year. I asked his advice on what novel to read to gain a better understanding of the period. À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu was his recommendation. And so it began. I later asked him how long it had taken him to read it, and it turns out he never has. I felt slightly conned, but this is now outweighed by gratitude because I never would have read Proust without his...moreI read this because of Timothy Baycroft. I took his module on the Third Republic in France, HST234, in the first semester of my second year. I asked his advice on what novel to read to gain a better understanding of the period. À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu was his recommendation. And so it began. I later asked him how long it had taken him to read it, and it turns out he never has. I felt slightly conned, but this is now outweighed by gratitude because I never would have read Proust without his suggestion, and few other books have been so rewarding. So thanks, Tim.
À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu is truly staggering, and not only because it is very possibly the longest novel in print. I read it in English, the C. K. Scott Moncrieff version (with Stephen Hudson for Time Regained - poor Scotty died before he could finish). I read it somewhat sporadically. It was never the only novel I had on the go. Basically, it entails one man's musings and philsophising on... well, pretty much everything, but especially jealous & unrequited love (Proust is BIG on this), homosexuality, The Dreyfus Affair, the value of literature and art, subjectivity and time. It is also a vicious satire of high society in fin de siècle France. It is incredibly funny (whether you're laughing at the narrator or with him), the characters are intricately and intimately drawn, the prose is a complex work of beauty and, contrary to popular belief, the plot's not bad either. I'm maybe alone here, but I think that The Guermantes Way was my favourite, maybe joint with Cities of the Plain, just because I loved the in depth focus on Proust's society and the Dreyfus Affair references. Ah, but in retrospect I loved all the volumes. Even though it was often tough going at the time, it's looking back on Proust that makes you realise how wonderful it is. Which is quite a Proustian way of thinking about it, I suppose. The amazing thing is that the novel actually replicates the feeling of time passing. When you are reintroduced to characters from previous volumes it requires an act of memory to place them. When the narrator reminisces, you reminisce with him because it genuinely has been a long time. It's a most curious sensation, and not one I've got from any other novel.
I won't lie, and there's no getting away from it. Reading Proust occasionally felt like a chore rather than a pleasure. There were times when he'd muse for pages on topics that bored me. There were times when the narrator was entirely repellent. There were times when I wanted to shout at and/or smack him. But there were frequent and redeeming bursts of beauty that swept away the frustration and drudgery and quite literally filled me with wonder.
It was like climbing a very steep mountain; the view was breath-taking but I was often distracted by the difficulty of the journey. What I had forgotten, of course, was how utterly amazing it feels to stand on top of a mountain. When you reach the final volume, and Proust brings together all the subtle strands that he's been developing for two and a half thousand pages, the cumulative effect is of overwhelming, dazzling genius. Sitting in a coffee shop, six months after starting, I was moved to tears by the sheer intellectual force of Time Regained, and a novel that can do that is something special. And you know it's all been worth it, even though the final victory came far too late to be of any help in HST234.
Plus, on a more egotistical note, to be able to say you've read À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu in its entirity makes you feel very clever. Impress your friends and family: pick up Proust today.(less)

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Jun 17, 2007

Malini Sridharan rated it

Recommends it for: people with a lot of time to kill or who need a reason to be pretentious

This book is good reading if you have huge chunks of captive free time (like my 50 minute train commute).If you cannot dedicate at least 1.5 hrs a day, 4-5 days a week to reading, it is probably not worth starting. At that pace, I finished the novel in about 4 months with a week break between each volume and a few days of desperate magazine huffing in the middle of Guermantes Way.

I read half in the modern library classics edition and half in the newer penguin translation. I had an e...more

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Feb 16, 2009

Angela rated it

I know I've been blabbering about it for a while, but this was the first fiction I read in years that had that same charm for me that novels had when I was young. I completely lost myself in them. I'm ready to start them over but I have to get through a certain amount of my sabbatical work first :)

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Sep 10, 2008

Mitchel rated it

Recommends it for: anyone who can appreciate it

Shelves: best-of-the-best

Every page of this book is packed with gorgeous, poetic writing and jaw-dropping, often hilarious psychological observation. Proust does not prop himself up with over-complex structures, is not confusing, is not gratuitously strange. He understood life preternaturally well and wrote about it preternaturally well. This is the novel of all novels. But read cautiously: Proust will dissect your most intimate thoughts and motivations, and he will be as accurate as a sniper.

"All our ...more

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Apr 03, 2011

Silver rated it

This is the closest copy I could find on goodreads to the collective editions I read from- mine are the Vintage publications of 2006, but it's still Moncrieff, Kilmartin and Enright.

It’s hard to know where to start with Proust’s famous series. There’s so much in these novels from a thematic perspective- time, memory, death, love, self, Jewishness, society, homosexuality to name but a few. It’s impossible to categorise his novels by theme or nature, so the impact that they had on me ...more

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Jun 21, 2010

Kyle Pennekamp rated it

For years, my writing partner Scott would use Proust's characters as touchstones and examples while we wrote. I would use Dickens characters. That's the kind of jackasses we are. But then he read some Dickens, and I thought I, in turn, should read some Proust. Around that time, he'd given Ginny a copy of Swann's Way. I also heard that not only did Proust inspire Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series, but when Truffaut found out his cancer was terminal, he spent a great deal of the last three mon...more

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Jun 08, 2010

Joy is currently reading it · review of another edition

This isn't the precise edition I'm reading. But it's the closest one to what I have as it's an ebook and the same translator. I have the ebook created by Adelaide University

And not precisely so as I copy/pasted the text. from their HTML version into a text application so I can use highlight and other text formatting to mark quotes and take notes that are clearly demarcated from Proust's text.

The file isn't paginated so I can't indicate page numbers but I can give approximate...more

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Mar 01, 2010

Ella rated it

Let me clarify: The Proust part gets a full hearty five stars. My voice teacher turned me on to Proust when I was 17. I wish I could thank her on a daily basis. You can't really go wrong with the actual text if you can read French. I cannot without a hefty dose of help and pain from various sources, and it becomes an impossible task without a large table. So I am sticking to the available English translations...

The translations are what hold me back. There is a better translation of ...more

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Jan 23, 2012

Daniel Silveyra rated it

I grew up hearing about how Proust was unsurpassable and then studiously avoiding him for years just to be contrarian. I finally bit the bullet, bought the new edition box set, and hunkered down.

Swann's was a delight. It had been at least a year since I last swallowed a book whole like that. The honesty of the telling, the insights, the minutely analyzed and described details of things, places and most of all people. Each character is a world of his own, with all the complexity of char...more

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Jun 18, 2009

Katerina rated it

A long, arduous read.
Marcel the author fills the novel with decadent, superfluous details, and after reading it, one realizes Marcel the narrator has told us both everything and nothing at all. The "detailed recollection [of Combray:]" is so rich in context that by the time one is done with Time Regained, one will be struggling to remember what happened ~4000 pages ago. Perhaps the point of In Search of Lost Time?

People who show off saying they've read the novel...more

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Mar 07, 2009

Alice rated it

I finished the six pack more than a week ago and I have been thinking about what to write since then. Time has passed and my thoughts have not become any more profound; however, I will not procrastinate any longer. Aside from feeling somewhat proud about reading the series of over a million and a half words, the effect of the man's observations about human behavior are with me every day. The thousands of thoughts Proust chronicles in his narrator's voice are just like the ones we all have dai...more

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Jul 20, 2011

MountainShelby rated it

Whew, what a journey. But it was worth the undertaking just to experience this exquisite gem: "And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognisable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann’s...more

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Sep 30, 2011

Mari Mann rated it

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There are some writers that have made such a unique contribution to literature and to art that they are considered among the best, if not the best, and not just in their own country, but in the world. Such a writer was Marcel Proust. He has been called the greatest novelist of the 20th century, and the novel, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, compared to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. But Michelangelo was known as “The Divine”, while Proust was called a hypochondriac, a dilettante, a hom...moreThere are some writers that have made such a unique contribution to literature and to art that they are considered among the best, if not the best, and not just in their own country, but in the world. Such a writer was Marcel Proust. He has been called the greatest novelist of the 20th century, and the novel, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, compared to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. But Michelangelo was known as “The Divine”, while Proust was called a hypochondriac, a dilettante, a homosexual and a mama’s boy. All of these things were true, to a certain extent, and when the first volume of In Search of Lost Time (Swann’s Way) was published in 1913, Proust’s friends were shocked that he had produced such a masterpiece. As Marcel himself said, there was not just one Proust, but many, and his many selves were often paradoxical and antithetical to each other. He used the ways of a hypochondriac to make people, mostly his mother, give him special treatment, yet he had his first asthma attack at age nine and struggled with ill health until his death at age 51. He was a social-climbing dilettante yet spent the last ten years of his life as a virtual recluse, shielded from the outside world by the cork-lined walls of his bedroom. He was a homosexual who wrote and spoke as if he deplored homosexuality. And he was a mama’s boy who used the love and anguish of that relationship as a springboard for the novel’s deep and enduring truths about all forms of love and devotion and life and art.

But do we really need to know anything about the writer to understand, or even appreciate, the work itself? Remembrance of Things Past, or as it is more accurately titled now, In Search of Lost Time, is often described as a semi-autobiographical work, so can’t we just read the books to know the man? No, in answer to both questions, but…yes. Although Proust only peripherally identifies the “Narrator” in Lost Time as himself, the book closely parallels his life, possibly a better phrase would be reflects his life (as some key things are reversed, as if seen in a mirror). And at the risk of sounding dramatic, Proust gave this life- mentally & physically- to the service of writing these volumes. He gave the novel his life and in return, it gave him immortality. Proust was aware of this “bargain with the devil” he’d made, and when he wrote fin at the end of the novel, he told his housekeeper/companion “Now I can die”…and shortly afterward, he did. Knowing something of the life of this man can help illuminate the world of Lost Time, as a reading of Lost Time illuminates not just Marcel’s life but all lives, our own included. That’s one of the reasons why this work is regarded as one of the world’s best, and why it is as relevant to us now as it was then and as it will continue to be in the future

In Search of Lost Time actually consists of seven volumes, the first being Swann’s Way. When these volumes were being translated into English, the translator changed the title, A la recherché du Temps Perdu, to a line from Shakespeare, “Remembrance of Things Past”. This is not only a bad interpretation of In Search of Lost Time , it’s not even what the novel is about. Marcel hated it. He didn’t much care for Swann’s Way either, which in French is Du cote de chez Swann, but what could he do? He was only the author.

So what is the novel about? And if it’s so great, why do so many people start reading it but give up before they even reach the famous madeleine scene? Is it because of Proust’s famously long sentences (the Proust Society of America says his longest is 958 words & may be the longest sentence in all of literature)? Or because, as one critic complained after the publication of Swann’s Way, that Proust takes fifteen pages to tell how he turns over in bed at night? Yes. But when the long sentences and the seemingly random and rambling passages begin to coalesce into a whole, and the invisible web of past, present and future becomes visible and clear, then the magnitude of this work and the joy of reading it shines through.

But what is it about? It's about life, from one life to all lives.(less)

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Jul 09, 2010

Dom Zuccone rated it

Shelves: art-aesthetics, fiction

This book should be in drawer of the bedside table of every hotel room. It is a guide to a world that was disappearing as it was written, but unexpectedly returns in the recognition of what the reader will see, but didn't recognise. It is a long voyage with an obnoxious, demanding man who excrutiatingly reveals the nuances of the forms of beauty in the arts of capture and captivity. It is to be devoured by an Impressionist painting. It is to be invited into world where only art is intimate and h...more

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Jan 01, 2012

Barry rated it

Shelves: all-time-favorites, proust

This is the greatest artistic achievement in any medium or era.

I am planning to now continuously read this in 2 hour installments each weekend, which should cycle me through the entire work once each year for the rest of my life.

I did the newer 2002 translations for Vols 1-4 and the RotP 3rd vol for the last 3 books. For my first re-read I will try to go back for those RotP translations for 1-4 as well and try my best to get the UK copies of the last 3. At some point I w...more

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Jun 25, 2007

Ewa rated it

a very beautiful boredom slowly and elegantly floats around like a chain of lazy smokes in windless dim-lighted bedroom searching for immortality of artistic creation

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Mar 08, 2011

Kathleen is currently reading it

The impetus for reading Proust, again, but with an aim toward completion, came from reading an interview with the Magnetic Fields' Claudia Gonson. She says:

I met Eve Sedgwick in 1998 by taking a year-long course reading the entirety of Remembrance of Things Past. That basically changed my life. She wasn’t wrong when she said that you need to pay attention when Proust gets that “wise” tone; he will teach you great things. You don’t need a shrink if you have Proust. I feel rather biblica...more

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Nov 14, 2010

Fanny Featherbrain rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: narrativa, letteratura-francese

Credo che ci sia un modo sbagliato di leggere Proust ed è quello di lasciarsi trasportare dalla musica della sua scrittura. Dico sbagliato (per esperienza – è stato il mio approccio iniziale, con tanto di quadernetto dove annotarmi i passi più “belli”) perché se è vero che in un primo tempo ci si lascia cullare dall’incanto, alla fine – o anche prima, diciamo verso il terzo, quarto volume dell’opera – si rischia di ritrovarsi d’accordo con chi ha scritto che in Proust la frase va ben al di là de...more

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Oct 30, 2010

Sue added it

It took months of perseverance to complete but was well worth the effort. The characters became like live acquaintances and by the time I had finished reading the series, I was ready to begin again because they had become so much a part of my daily life. I miss them. Proust went into such minute detail to reveal all sides of each character and event, visiting them at different times to show how time and memory change perceptions and experiences. The book could read for lessons in history, ho...more

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Oct 24, 2011

Norma rated it

I did not even come close to finishing this interminable novel. I read the first volume in French and "Swann's Way" in English as part of my Comp. Lit. degree. I was sorry not to like someone who is considered a great French novelist, but I hated this almost as much as I did "Ulysses." Recently, I read abook by Jane Smily (13 Ways of Looking at the Novel), which explained this book more concisely than my instructor managed to. Still don't like it, but understand it a bit bett...more

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Jan 18, 2011

Theresa Macphail rated it

Shelves: fiction

I love everything about these books - even the rambling and the way in which characters are accidentally revived from the dead to appear in book 6 that were killed off in book 2. That's what happens when you don't have an editor, I suppose, but the mistakes and heavy prose don't necessarily detract from Proust's ability to capture the aging process and a memory's ability to reanimate at a trace of the senses. If you are over 35, read these books. If not, you probably don't have the patience to g...more

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Nov 15, 2010

Kim rated it

I read this in French, but couldn't find the complete set in French, and, anyway, many readers will read only the translation. I found the novel to be based on a concept and written in a style interesting enough to carry me through all the volumes and feel a little disappointed when there were not more. Naturally, it is not even throughout and there were parts less interesting than others, but I appreciate the aesthetic and kinaesthetic elements and the introspective reactions of the narrator, e...more

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Apr 03, 2010

Rod Pardey rated it

Good book.

like 1 like

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Jan 30, 2012

Peter rated it

· review of another edition

Im ersten Band befindlich: Unterwegs zu Swann
Ich bin hin und weg. Erst auf Seite 271 und trotzdem schon so viel.......
Unterwegs zu Swann ausgelesen. Jeden Tag nur ca. 30 Seiten gelesen um ja nur gar nichts zu überlesen. Diese Lektüre hat mein "Lesen" verändert.
Werde sogleich mit dem zweiten Band beginnen: Im Schatten junger Mädchenblüte.
Bei der Lektüre mittlerweile auf Seite 200. Mittlerweile habe ich aufgehört bemerkenswerte Stellen zu notieren - es gibt einf...more

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Brain Pain: A brief history of time searched for and regained	18	50	Dec 25, 2011 09:46pm
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About Marcel Proust

French novelist, best known for his 3000 page masterpiece À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time), a pseudo-autobiographical novel told mostly in a stream-of-consciousness style. Born in the first year of the Third Republic, the young Marcel, like his narrator, was a delicate child from a bourgeois family. He was active in Parisian high society during t...more

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Books by Marcel Proust

Swann's Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)

Remembrance of Things Past: Volume I - Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove

In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (In Search of Lost Time, #2)

The Guermantes Way (In Search of Lost Time, #3)

Sodom and Gomorrah (In Search of Lost Time, #4)

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“If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time.” — 98 people liked it

“Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.” — 40 people liked it

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