Time Regained (In Search of Lost Time, #7)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

read book

Time Regained (À la recherche du temps perdu #7)

by Marcel Proust, Andreas Mayor (Translator), Terence Kilmartin (Translator), D.J. Enright (Revisions)

4.5 of 5 stars 4.50 · rating details · 1,402 ratings · 108 reviews

The final volume of In Search of Lost Time chronicles the years of World War I, when, as M. de Charlus reflects on a moonlit walk, Paris threatens to become another Pompeii. Years later, after the war's end, Proust's narrator returns to Paris, where Mme. Verdurin has become the Princesse de Guermantes. He reflects on time, reality, jealousy, artistic creation, and the raw...more

Paperback, 784 pages

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

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Big Fat Fiction - Best of the Heavyweights

40th out of 195 books — 77 voters

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Pompous Books to Read in Public

4th out of 89 books — 21 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,000)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Aug 19, 2010 karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: i-am-reading-proust, littry-fiction

take that, proust - i have finished you!!

summer of proust is OVER!!

if i were to make a collage of the final volume of proust, i would use the following images:

this one started off with some really tantalizing situations and then quickly backed off into more philosophical abstractions. dammit, proust, when you have gay bondage, stay with gay bondage!! and war!! these are exciting themes!! don't drift off into thinky time!!

the frustration i have with this one is the frustration i have with philoso...more

64 likes · like · see review

Sep 22, 2009 Bram rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, proustophilia

Sunday was Community Day at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which meant free entry to all. Deciding to take advantage of this at the expense of a gorgeous late summer day, I spent a couple of hours wandering through the impressive but under-construction building, primarily in the European and American wings that cover the last few centuries. I stopped in front of 200 or so paintings, but only two “spoke” to me. While in many circumstances a one-percent hit rate implies a horrible failure or d...more Sunday was Community Day at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which meant free entry to all. Deciding to take advantage of this at the expense of a gorgeous late summer day, I spent a couple of hours wandering through the impressive but under-construction building, primarily in the European and American wings that cover the last few centuries. I stopped in front of 200 or so paintings, but only two “spoke” to me. While in many circumstances a one-percent hit rate implies a horrible failure or disappointment, I left the museum with feelings of utter satisfaction and delight at my good fortune. Similar, in fact, to how I feel right now after finishing In Search of Lost Time. The connection between the museum and novel run deeper than that, however. My ability to be transported by art (or music, or _____) has been permanently enriched through reading Proust’s ideas on Lost Time, and how this Time actually can be recaptured in reality (additional and annoyingly incoherent musings on this below). Like many of the ideas contained within this book, this recapturing of Time is something about which I’ve somehow always and never known—that is, I’ve known it intuitively, yet without a concreteness or completeness that would allow for a full experience beyond the fleeting moment it can occasionally inhabit in quotidian existence. The initial lightning strike that leads to a discovery of Lost Time is inevitably involuntary, but it can be harnessed, extended, and savored through recognition and analysis, as old Marcel finally discovers while sitting in the library of the Prince & Princess de Guermantes.

As I gazed at (or more accurately, into) de Crissé’s The Bay of Naples, the unconscious displacement that I began to feel in both time and space was met with a newly-awakened consciousness that tried to hold onto and understand this feeling of joyful abandonment to a past experience. I must admit that, like Marcel in his initial attempts at clarifying The Search by dwelling on the madeleine or the steeples at Martinville, I was not wholly successful. I couldn’t quite understand where I was trying to go temporally or why I was so moved, but thanks to Proust, I understood what was happening. While an explanation of The Search mentioned in the book’s title is probably appropriate here to elucidate my point, I hesitate to summarize the narrator’s precious conclusion (one that offers a revelation at once sui generis and instantly familiar) for fear of doing it, and any readers of this review, an injustice. The Search is a thematic thread that begins almost immediately in the novel with the famous madeleine scene (and who knew that this small part was actually an adumbration of the novel’s key theme?) and reaches a peak with a final discovery that takes place some 200 pages from the end of the book. And despite the fact that this Search is the remarkably robust thread that binds these seven volumes together, it actually makes up very little of the bulk of the novel. But in its entirety, in the perfect satisfaction of its resolution, this theme amounts to a tour-de-force that is, in my humble opinion, unequaled in literature. For how often can I say that I actually experience certain parts of my life differently (and with greater, fuller satisfaction) as a consequence of reading a book?

I didn’t start out so smitten with the book’s final volume. Indeed, I was more bored with the first 150 pages (even with the shocking scene of flagellation) than with any other part of the novel. Now, this was most likely due to reading only three or four pages at a time over a period of a few weeks. I can’t get into a flow with an intermittent pace like that. Luckily, I had to fly to Chicago for work this weekend, and unlike David’s average airborne reading experience, mine is usually filled with uninterrupted stretches of intense reading. Two point five hours of Proust and only Proust each way—a perfect scenario for finishing a book begun over eight months ago when I first cracked open Swann’s Way. And Marcel delivered. Big time. Shortly after the aforementioned flagellation scene, he finally delves into his Lost Time thesis with unfettered ecstasy and pellucidity; sixty straight pages of glorious enlightenment. Honestly, I reread some parts of this section four or five times before moving on. Ever wanted to know how to travel through time and space? Proust tells you. And, perhaps because you already know this is possible in some vague way, it’s convincing as all hell. Seriously. And the joy of reading this section was compounded by a bizarre meta-effect, wherein I experienced the exact feelings Proust was describing as (or because?) he was finally describing them in full. Whoa.

Then we get the bal de têtes (masked ball), which contains the illuminating and humorous ruminations on the still-living society characters, each of whom has undergone tremendous physical, social, moral, and intellectual changes since the narrator last saw them years before. And then, quite suddenly, I found myself only a few pages from the end. How could Proust possibly wrap up this book appropriately in so short a space? Not only does he do it appropriately, he does it masterfully. I suppose it’s fitting that the most rewarding read of my life contains the most satisfactory conclusion. But “satisfactory” sounds like it’s easy or happy when it is, in fact, neither. Rather, the ending of the book has a calm inevitability that, when finally reached, reveals itself to be as inescapable and natural as death. Or, of course, life—life, which is finally crystallized for our narrator in the person of Mlle de Saint-Loup, who allows him to reflect on every important character relationship in the book, which together are (mis)woven into an incestuous tangle, all within a single heroic paragraph. In that one paragraph it becomes clear how many variations each character comprises, and it’s likely that if I started rereading this book immediately, I’d find that my “initial” impressions of Odette, Swann, Legrandin, Saint-Loup, Charlus, et al. lined up not at all with the farewell views I’m left with in this final volume. Which, when I think back through my own life and the personal permutations that would make me nigh-unrecognizable to myself, sounds just about right. (less)

16 likes · like · see review

Jul 29, 2009 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: happyendings, favorites

I'm moving, so I'm packing, which is making me very nostalgic and contributing to some pretty embarrassing online procrastination. It's also making me think a lot about Proust because you know, moving and reminiscing about all the places I've lived over the years and going through all this old shit, well, it's obviously getting pretty Proustian pretty quick around here. Well, except it is and it's not, because when Proust moved he didn't have to beg for boxes at the supermarket or pack things or...more I'm moving, so I'm packing, which is making me very nostalgic and contributing to some pretty embarrassing online procrastination. It's also making me think a lot about Proust because you know, moving and reminiscing about all the places I've lived over the years and going through all this old shit, well, it's obviously getting pretty Proustian pretty quick around here. Well, except it is and it's not, because when Proust moved he didn't have to beg for boxes at the supermarket or pack things or rent a U-Haul or beg his friends for help lugging all his crap all around the boroughs, because he had tons of servants to do this all for him. This is sort of the crux of Proust, I've decided: his descriptions of consciousness and memory and love and desire and nostalgia and all that feel so personal and universally relevant, but then there's so much about him that's ridiculously foreign and spoiled and removed that it's jarring and strange. Like usually reading about some really rich guy wouldn't make me feel personally offended like that, but because I feel so close to him in some ways, it does feel like a weird affront. It's an unusual response to a book, for me anyway. I don't normally think about characters like this at all, and in fact I know that a lot of the reason I love reading Proust so much is precisely because he's so rich and old-timey and crazy and weird. But there's something very unique and powerful about the sensation that one's having a Proustian moment, then getting all pissed off when you realize that Proust's Proustian moments were a lot more glamorous than yours. I don't know.... there's really not point to all this, I'm just procrastinating because I'm trying to delay the moment of reckoning that is confronting the two huge boxes of cassette tapes that, as of AD 2009, I have moved with fifteen times. Shall we make it sixteen? What if I someday am cloistered in a cork-lined room, trying to evoke a spring day smoking pot out of a Coke can on Albany Hill in 1993? Won't I need these mixtapes to elicit those memories? Won't western literature potentially suffer a great loss if these disintegrating cassette tapes don't come along?

What would Proust do??

Anyway, it's a good thing Proust is not here helping me pack up my CDs, because they're really gross and dusty and with his terrible asthma, it'd probably have killed him dead.

Okay. Enough of that. Back to Facebook, I mean packing.....(less)

6 likes · like · see review

Jul 07, 2010 Greg rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

As of 20:50 on July Seventh, Two Thousand and Ten, I'm still slightly reeling from finishing this book, roughly twenty two hours ago. Like ninety nine point some high number percent of my reading experiences I read this in less than optimum conditions; by plowing through the last hundred pages or so at a un-Proustian pace. There are parts of the text I'm sure I missed, little subtleties I could have enjoyed and blah blah blah, but I think the overload was also Proustian, especially in light of w...more As of 20:50 on July Seventh, Two Thousand and Ten, I'm still slightly reeling from finishing this book, roughly twenty two hours ago. Like ninety nine point some high number percent of my reading experiences I read this in less than optimum conditions; by plowing through the last hundred pages or so at a un-Proustian pace. There are parts of the text I'm sure I missed, little subtleties I could have enjoyed and blah blah blah, but I think the overload was also Proustian, especially in light of what the last hundred, or so, pages are like.

Jasmine asked if I really thought this was five star book. I don't know. Probably not. Time Regained wasn't the strongest of the novels, but like red-headed step-child of Recherche, The Captive, what this novel lacks in straight-forward appeal it makes up for in being essential to the over-all structure of Recherche as the novel, and each book being just part of the whole. Some of the other volumes are probably examples of where the parts are greater than the whole, or whatever. I don't know if it is a five star book. Maybe it is to you, and maybe it is not. Probably depending on what you find appealing in Recherche will depend on what you think of this book (do I hear a big uh-huh! from anyone?). I'll warn you though, if you really only get giggles over the wit of the characters, this book probably isn't going to be the one that makes you feel all tingling inside.

On a similar note, before reading this, about a two weeks ago, a co-worker, Dana, asked me to tell her if she would enjoy this book. I must state a strong, NO!. No. No, Dana, you will not like this book. The fascisticly titled book 50 Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read (I think this is the book, if it's not it is another book that uses must read in the title, or maybe it was have to read, but it is a very bossy order) says that Time Regained is perfect for gays who want to enjoy the gayest of Proust, and they will then know if they like Proust and if they want to they can go read the rest of the books. One, this novel is maybe the most explicitly gay, but if you are looking for something explicit and gay you'll probably do better to google "gay french erotica whipping". You'll be more satisfied. Time Regained should not be read by anyone who hasn't read the books coming before it. Except for a scene where someone gets erotically whipped, pretty much everything that happens is tied with previous events. You will be bored to tears without having read the other books. Seriously. The editor of this book (if it is in fact this book, I will check tomorrow for sure) is an idiot (Hi, Harold Bloom!!) and should be tied to a bed with heavy chains and get whipped and sodomized for making such a stupid demand on people to read something they will be in no position to enjoy. Proust has a bad enough rep without this kind of nonsense.

Now for some notes.

1. I mentioned wit above. For the record I'm sick of cleverness. I'm as guilty as the next person for using cheap tricks but it gets so boring after a while. Yeah, it might actually take a lot of work to pull off something clever, but it's so fucking meaningless except for a chuckle or two. I'm sure I'll do something 'clever' soon and I'll be a hypocrite. But cheap gimmicks are bullshit and if I have learned nothing else from Proust it's that all the wit and cleverness in the world is a farce, a waste of time, a spectacle.

2. "....pretentiousness is next door to stupidity....." nicely put Proust.

3. How about a line of Proust to deal with Republicans? "The smug satisfaction that an imbecile takes in the justice of his cause and the certainty of victory are peculiarly irritating."

4. "....real books must be the products, not of broad daylight and small talk but of darkness and silence."
(less)

27 likes · like · see review

Aug 12, 2010 Geoff rated it 5 of 5 stars

A work of art is experienced as a temporal, durational phenomenon. It is also an object of physicality, something that is reacted upon and reproduced by our senses and processed, firstly, by our intellect. Therefore a work of art is an object of space-time, as it contains within itself dimension and duration, properties availing themselves of our immediate sensory perceptions and our ruminative, reflective abilities at the same instant. If an image especially strikes us as it is burned onto the...more

9 likes · like · see review

Oct 30, 2012 Manny rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: french

What Didn't Happen In 1927

ANCHORMAN: And now we're going over to Paris, where crowds have been gathering since early evening waiting for the midnight release of Le temps retrouvé, with pre-ordered sales already totalling more than eleven million copies! Margaret FitzWilliam reporting.

[Paris street. Large number of people in fancy dress lining up outside bookstore. Carnival atmosphere]

JOURNALIST: Yes, all the Proust fans are out in force tonight waiting for the conclusion of the series! I can see...more

13 likes · like · see review

Sep 03, 2012 Joao Vaz rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

E é nos sete tomos do Em Busca do Tempo Perdido que Proust reencontra o Tempo.

E aqui o Tempo e nao o seu Tempo é propositado, porque julgo ser impossível não encontrarmos pedaços de nós mesmos no comprimento deste livro. Uma obra imortal mas ao mesmo tempo mortífera: dificilmente voltaremos a olhar para o prosaico (como uma madalena molhada numa infusão) sem o colorido de Proust.

Num desfecho sublime dum homem que não quis que as impressões que sentiu em vida fossem apagadas pela sua morte - esc...more

1 like · like · see review

Jun 26, 2012 Bucket rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-read-06-08-and-10-editions, classic, culture, identity, life-and-death, literary, philosophy, reviewed, time, world-lit

My thoughts on In Search of Lost Time as a whole are below! First, my thoughts on Time Regained:

Well, Proust definitely knew how to write a satisfying ending. The last 100 pages of the novel are a glorious culmination of the themes and ideas that have filled the previous 2900 pages. I did find things ever so slightly repetitive after a while, but not because Proust was literally repeating himself. This was more because he was coming at his major themes (time, memory, literature, art, change, ide...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 29, 2013 Leonard rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature-french, favorite

More than a commentary on Swann’s jealousy or M. Charlus’s homosexuality or the frivolity of the Guermantes’ sorties, Marcel Proust’s monumental work In Search of Lost Time paints the unsuccessful reconstruction of a forgone world and a lost existence from fickle memories, which like morning mists would fade with the rising sun. The narrator Marcel, longing for a past that didn’t exist but must be created, sought to experience Bergson’s continuous time rather than the fragmented and still-framed...more More than a commentary on Swann’s jealousy or M. Charlus’s homosexuality or the frivolity of the Guermantes’ sorties, Marcel Proust’s monumental work In Search of Lost Time paints the unsuccessful reconstruction of a forgone world and a lost existence from fickle memories, which like morning mists would fade with the rising sun. The narrator Marcel, longing for a past that didn’t exist but must be created, sought to experience Bergson’s continuous time rather than the fragmented and still-framed instantaneous moments by attempting to blur the boundaries between Cambray and Paris, childhood and adolescence, and Swann and himself and integrate here and there, before and after, and him and me through memory fragments of previous objects, people and sensations. As in a neural network or a mind-map, the madeleine linked his aunt to his mother, who in turn was linked to Albertine through jealousy, which also connected Marcel with Saint Loop and Swann, who, as with his (Marcel’s) grandmother, linked his childhood and adolescence. And through recollection, Marcel would try to relive the buried years and resurrect his grandmother and Albertine.

But even during his narrative, Marcel realized memory’s willfulness and the variation in hues, shapes, pitch and timbre between the actual object and its mental reconstruction. When he encountered an old friend, the facial features were so different from his recollection and reconstruction, for better or for worse pregnant with all the emotions, preoccupation, biases, that he could not match face with voice.

Because recollected sensation can never equate with the actual experience and time, like a patient thief, steals memories a morsel at a time until one day the owner would realize he was ruined, Marcel ultimately would fail to recapture and assemble stolen sensations and decayed seconds and in the end, must create new moments, new sensations and ultimately a new biography, through the synergy between past experiences and creative imagination. From those deceased hours and decayed memories sprouted In Search of Lost Time, not only Proust’s novel but also that of the narrator.

Whether we savor Marcel’s frailness, Swann’s infatuation, Charlus’s pompousness, Franscoise’s independent-mindedness, the sorties’ frivolousness or the social revelation of the Dreyfuss Affair, we can enjoy Proust’s classic without resorting to Marxist or Freudian or Feminist critique. And the sentences, like the serpentine Amazon, seemed to flow unceasingly into the distant horizon carrying with it the sparkling sunlight. Although ascending the novel’s three thousand pages appears precipitous, the effort will be well worth the while and, at the end of the adventure, the reader can rest on the crisp apex and savor time’s transience and memory’s playfulness as if they were alpine zephyrs. (less)

4 likes · like · see review

Feb 14, 2008 Scott Gates rated it 5 of 5 stars

Time Regained is weird because it brings the reader up to the point, chronologically in “real” life, at which the narrator has a revelation—during a party at the Guermantes’s—and decides he must leave society to live monastically and work on his monumental writings concerning his existence in time. So the end of the book brings you to the point at which the narrator decides he’s going to begin writing the four-thousand-page multi-volume book you’re about to finish reading.

More than previous vol...more Time Regained is weird because it brings the reader up to the point, chronologically in “real” life, at which the narrator has a revelation—during a party at the Guermantes’s—and decides he must leave society to live monastically and work on his monumental writings concerning his existence in time. So the end of the book brings you to the point at which the narrator decides he’s going to begin writing the four-thousand-page multi-volume book you’re about to finish reading.

More than previous volumes, this last one exhibits an aimless “superessayism” (a term Nabokov coined to help make fun of Thomas Mann more effectively). If he’d had the time to revise the final volumes Proust probably would’ve minimized this (right?).

In Search of Lost Time is the one literary work that accomplishes the feat of mimicking how time feels; when I look back to Swann’s Way (vol. 1) it’s with a sensation similar to remembering something from my own life years back. It had been twelve or so years since I first read about some of these characters.

At the party, the narrator is more unforgiving of his peers’ intellectual/moral lapses than ever (not to mention his old friends’ physical appearance; a substantial portion of this volume is composed of the narrator being appalled at how hideous people look). Makes for good reading, for all its unfairness.

(After six volumes, I still have no idea what the difference between a princess and a duchess is or numerous other little social codes of Proust’s “set.” I like to think these codes mean nothing now.)

Anyhow, in all of literature, paragraph for paragraph you can’t do better than Proust. The entirety of In Search of Lost Time is one of the best things ever written. On its own this one probably doesn’t deserve five stars, but I gave it five because Proust spoils you with page after page of great writing, and though this volume (along with volume 5) is weaker than the first four, it’s still super good.

It reaches its melancholy pitch near the end, with the narrator, literally closing up his ears in the middle of the party, straining to hear within himself the noise of his parents’ footsteps and the peal of the garden gate’s bell, announcing the departure of M. Swann for the night, a departure that happened an impossible distance in the past.

(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Sep 27, 2007 Nathanial rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: langorous pansies and dissatisfied sensualists

Shelves: discarded, fiction

accidentally deleted the audio files from my computer at work.

Evocative, yes; lyrical, sure; an insatiable desire to find relevance in a world set adrift from significance, granted - but why? Proust may have ushered in a Modernist era of psychological literature, may have provided a model of inspiration for Virginia Woolf to turn into stream-of-consciousness prose, and may have made inroads towards turning out generations of homosexual authors, and yet it's impossible to forget that he was a lan...more accidentally deleted the audio files from my computer at work.

Evocative, yes; lyrical, sure; an insatiable desire to find relevance in a world set adrift from significance, granted - but why? Proust may have ushered in a Modernist era of psychological literature, may have provided a model of inspiration for Virginia Woolf to turn into stream-of-consciousness prose, and may have made inroads towards turning out generations of homosexual authors, and yet it's impossible to forget that he was a landed gentleman who could afford to shut himself up in his house and write uninterrupted for hour after hour, day after day, year after year.

His autobiographical narrator draws so many conclusions from instantaneous gestures and tics that I have to believe him, more out of necessity to keep reading the book than willingness to grant authority to these judgments. They observations are, luckily, rendered with such skill that they appear to probe to the very source of the mysterious urges that make us who we are, and yet leave the origin of our wills and urges intact, so as not to steal anyone's agency. Actually, that's not true: Proust doesn't depend on luck, and he does selectively choose who gets to have their own ambition and who lives for the benefit of others.

Surely there's someone out there who's written a review of class dynamics in Swann's Way. Please point me towards it. The characters of the maids and servants are developed only towards the end of reflecting back on the lives of the protagonist's family, who in turn refute their authority by whiling away their lives in intrigue and speculation. It's wonderful, marvelous stuff, really - and the audiobook version gives listeners plenty of chance to glory in the turns of phrase that the author manages to elaborate, again and again, into syntactical chains of cause and effect, affirmation and negation, relation and isolation, that combine to fill instantaneous longings with such freighted weight that the sentences almost collapse: almost, but not quite. Notwithstanding the beauty, he's really a brahmin. He shows no self-consciousness in depicting the underlings as motivated only by the desire to satisfy their masters' wishes. While they may appear, on the surface, to be such benevolent caretakers (or naughty ones, as the case may be), Proust has already proved himself to be capable of demonstrating the contradictions of ambiguous aims and the tensions of artifice and self-interest, so this shortcoming in the text stands all the more apparent.

Oh, and "Swann's Way"? Slumming. That's his way.(less)

1 like · like · see review

Jun 03, 2013 Scott Sheaffer rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics, erotic-fiction, philosophy, world-literature

Proust, in the series In Search of Lost Time accomplishes the impossible. Beautifully written using a beautiful, quilted framework of hopes, dreams, memories, introspection, reality and perception.

In Proust's own words . . .

"I want to write about freedom from time but also to give details of life inside that fluid . . . that fluid, time. It's the changes that people undergo . . ."

"My task, to write a book which will inspire people . . . My book will be a sort of magnifying glass, It will offer t...more

like · see review

Feb 22, 2013 Saïdeh Pakravan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I will review Time Regained and copy this review on all the volumes of A la recherche du temps perdu as Proust's work is called. I read it in French but can't find it listed so am doing this overall review of the English text of In Search of Lost Time or, as it used to be called, my preferred title Remembrance of Things Past.
I came late to this spectacular book despite encouragements from my mother who had read it cover to cover (several thousand pages in all) a number of times and talked about...more I will review Time Regained and copy this review on all the volumes of A la recherche du temps perdu as Proust's work is called. I read it in French but can't find it listed so am doing this overall review of the English text of In Search of Lost Time or, as it used to be called, my preferred title Remembrance of Things Past.
I came late to this spectacular book despite encouragements from my mother who had read it cover to cover (several thousand pages in all) a number of times and talked about it all the time.
When I finally did, it became for me and remains to this day THE book, the one I will remember when all others are forgotten, the one I would take without hesitation to that hypothetical desert island where only one book is allowed. I often make the comparison with Shakespeare, although this is fiction and the bard's work is theater, for the complete grasp both authors have of the world and of human nature. But where Shakespeare's work encompasses cultures and history to describe and explain the individual, Marcel Proust in his indolent dandy manner never moves far from the salons of the Belle Epoque in Paris (he writes of a world older than his own by a few decades). His characters, from the lowly valets to kept women to chattering would-be intellectual queens of the capital and supercilious dukes are not generic but made unforgettable. More than in Dickens, they have all become types. Swann, Madame Verdurin, Odette, the baron Charlus, the rest of the cast of hundreds, we can only nod in recognition of the absolute truth of these people, so precisely drawn and analyzed, with finesse or cruelty as warranted. Yet beyond the affairs, the people trying to push their way up, the nastiness, the parties described to the last gilt chair and sorbet and orchid, Proust gives a complete picture of France at the time, living under the shadow of the Dreyfus scandal (the Jewish captain wrongfully accused of spying, an affair which for years split France in two) the politics, the mores, the music and books and flowers favored then, and infinite disquisitions demonstrating an encyclopedic knowledge of every subject under the sun, from medieval architecture to art history to geographic names to homosexuality, to how low people can stoop and how high they can fly, all this peppered with incredibly funny passages that always has me howling with laughter. A marvel of a book, which I'm sure you understand by now, I adore. (less)

like · see review

Oct 07, 2012 Justin Evans rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

An amazing conclusion, but also a little sad- what would Proust have done with this volume had he lived just a year or two longer? There are obvious problems (characters die, then reappear; Marcel meets people and then says he hasn't seen them etc...), but the more important problem is with the theory. Is Proust's experience meant to be a yardstick for *all* literature, or only for his novel? Would he have ended up more with a 'other people's books help you to read yourself' theory, or with a 'y...more

1 like · like · see review

May 18, 2012 Jim Coughenour rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: greatfiction

Finally. Reaching the distant conclusion of Proust's very long book – which is in fact the beginning – was a relief, a little disappointing, and ultimately satisfying. I've been reading Proust over the past 30 years, starting it again and again, with the advantage that I have certain passages from Swann's Way interwoven with my own memories, in fact it is part of my memory, or more honestly, my imagination. When I wake up to a bright June morning, part of me is "remembering" Proust's mornings in...more Finally. Reaching the distant conclusion of Proust's very long book – which is in fact the beginning – was a relief, a little disappointing, and ultimately satisfying. I've been reading Proust over the past 30 years, starting it again and again, with the advantage that I have certain passages from Swann's Way interwoven with my own memories, in fact it is part of my memory, or more honestly, my imagination. When I wake up to a bright June morning, part of me is "remembering" Proust's mornings in Combray, Balbec or Paris (and happily confused with the moods of other books, like James Schuyler's The Morning of the Poem). Like those other favored novels, we don't so much read it as live inside it. Nothing would have made Marcel happier. As he writes in the final pages of this final volume:

For they were not, as I saw it, my readers, so much as readers of their own selves, my book being merely one of those magnifying glasses of the sort the optician at Combray used to offer his customers; my book ... would be providing them with the means of reading within themselves. With the result that I would not ask them to praise me or to denigrate me, only to tell me if it was right.

I'm taking my sweet time too through William Gass's new book. Here's his summary, which I'll steal for my own: "The real world is full of pointless purpose, inattentiveness, confusion, pain, and perplexity, as well as the hazards of its satisfactions. Yet in Proust's pages it is perceived, it is felt, it is contemplated, in a manner so utterly statisfying that those pains, in the depiction, become pleasures; confusions are given an order only we are permitted to understand; defeats are now worth every word of their accounts; failures victories if only in their voicing."

I dream, irrationally, of reading this all again in French. That will probably never happen, but if I do, I'm sure all the magic will still be there. (Except for the longueurs of Albertine – those I'll be happy to never read again.)(less)

3 likes · like · see review

Feb 05, 2012 Ben Dutton rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It has taken me six months - a month per volume, by my simple mathematical skills – but I have finally finished Marcel Proust’s monumental ‘À la Recherche du Temps Perdu’. It is, simply put, a novel that blows you away. It is head and shoulders above anything else out there – or that will ever be out there. It seems like a novel that has come from another time, almost another world, and yet it speaks so directly to the human condition. Paris, of the late nineteenth century up until the close of...more

like · see review

Jun 20, 2011 David Lentz rated it 5 of 5 stars

In this final life's work of Proust on the theme of the passage of Time it's clear that the author is riper, near to death and concerned about the lasting impact of his writing. "Eternal duration is promised no more to men's works than to men." Yet there is so much beauty and substance and lyricism in his 4,300 pages clearly his volumes are, both individually and collectively, a masterwork for the ages. The novel seems more like an autobiography in which the names of persons and places have been...more In this final life's work of Proust on the theme of the passage of Time it's clear that the author is riper, near to death and concerned about the lasting impact of his writing. "Eternal duration is promised no more to men's works than to men." Yet there is so much beauty and substance and lyricism in his 4,300 pages clearly his volumes are, both individually and collectively, a masterwork for the ages. The novel seems more like an autobiography in which the names of persons and places have been changed to protect the innocent (and the gulity). Because of his theme, Marcel constantly returns to the events of his life to gain some semblance of understanding of them. In this volume he is concerned with the effect of the world war upon Paris. The familiar characters of Gilberte and Bloch happily emerge again to center stage and, as always, Charlus and Morel. Because of his failing health and self-exile from society, he must have known that he had little Time to tie up all the loose ends and that another volume would not be in the offing after this one. Indeed, he never lived to see this volume in print. By virtue of his failing health the pressing nature of his last years lend a poignancy to the themes of this volume so that it stands out among the other works when Time was full of budding possibilities and had not ultimately become a dreaded adversary. In this volume Proust picks up the leitmotifs that thread their way through this remarkable tapestry in his walks down various ways and he brings them all to a meaningful end. The story lines are surprisingly simple and easy to follow and there is so much enduring value in his masterfully articulated "impressions." I decided to commit Time a few months ago to read all of Proust's work --it was Time well spent. I can't encourage you enough to make a similar investment. The work is truly a Timeless masterpiece from one of the real geniuses of his day and through it Proust has justly earned his immortality, his worthy prominence among the best literary minds of all Time. (less)

2 likes · like · see review

Oct 31, 2010 Robin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics

Reading Proust may be the ultimate narcissistic exercise. I like to think that I’m no more narcissistic than the next guy, but sheesh – how many hours have I spend in the last two years reading this? How many months?

I’ve been putting off writing this attempt at a review for several weeks. The night I finished the book, I just sat and sat and thought and thought, and I probably should have gone ahead and written it then, but I thought I should keep digesting it for a little while. Even though I h...more Reading Proust may be the ultimate narcissistic exercise. I like to think that I’m no more narcissistic than the next guy, but sheesh – how many hours have I spend in the last two years reading this? How many months?

I’ve been putting off writing this attempt at a review for several weeks. The night I finished the book, I just sat and sat and thought and thought, and I probably should have gone ahead and written it then, but I thought I should keep digesting it for a little while. Even though I haven’t fully digested it, it’s weighing on me, and I need to set down a few of my thoughts before my own memory fails me and I start the whole blasted thing over again. (Which is inevitable – and I am NOT the type to re-read books typically, so that’s saying a lot.)

SPOILER ALERT
I love writing that in this context– as if there are spoilers in Proust, the anti-plot writer – but there are. Not so much a spoiler in terms of plot this time, but a spoiler in terms of technique. So proceed ahead at your own risk.

I had figured out the project of the book much earlier – the whole reading-the-book-being-a-form-of-reading-yourself thing – because it worked like a charm on me. (Hmmm – I really may be more narcissistic than the next guy.) And even when the foibles of his characters annoyed me, I obviously wasn’t too turned off, even though our narrator provoked my anger on more than one occasion. But when he comes out and says in the last two pages that this whole project may have resulted in his characters resembling monsters, I think I may have gasped aloud. Did anyone else have this reaction? I’m not sure why this was such a revelation for me – I know that Proust ≠Marcel/narrator (see my reviews of previous volumes of the book for my appreciation of the fun he has with this). And I know that the narrator doesn’t enjoy the company of most of the people that he encounters, so the monster characterization may be warranted in their cases, especially given the traits he emphasizes in them. Maybe it was the ultimate unreliability of the narrator that threw me, or the monster within him. And, this being the ultimate narcissistic exercise, by extension the monster within me….

It makes me look back on all of those dinner parties (finally described as “barbarian festivals” toward the end – YES!), and the jealousies, and the abyss of death between old lovers, and the narrator’s ultimate dissolution into a pedophile, and fully appreciate the nudge-nudge-wink-wink of it all.

The main monsterly feature of our narrator that bothered me throughout the book was his HATRED for other people. How he only feels pleasure when he’s alone, how he views the social contract as being sterile. I’ve read plenty of books before about misanthropists, but maybe the reason it bothered me more here is that there is this incredible tension between that and his urge to produce eternal value for his readers through recovering lost memories. It’s ultimately such a social project, a narcissistic-yet-generous venture, to create this opus in all its ghoulishly reflective detail. Yet the life he chooses to explore most fully, that of his narrator, seems not all that much worth savoring. If “the true paradises are the paradises we have lost,” where is Marcel’s paradise? At those dinner parties? In the throes of jealousy? Waiting for that kiss? But, like pretty much every other thought I’ve had in relation to this book, he even anticipates that observation, saying that he feels his “exaltation and joy” only by probing the hitherto anguish-filled and dissatisfying incidents of his past life.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, is the project that much richer being told in the voice of a depressive misanthropist? Is all that hatred-of-humankind necessary? And I guess, since Proust anticipates my every question, that answer would be yes. Because it wouldn’t be so powerful if some person who had had the gall to be happy with a lover were able to access joy by recovering that memory. The discontent of the narrator’s life puts the transformative nature of his reflective abilities into higher relief.

When I looked back on my review of the volume prior to this one, I realized that I barely touched on any of the plot -- and there actually was some! – because what was more important was the action of the mind. No big revelation there, but a little funny given that there are some major plot twists there. But I had already finished most of this last volume when I wrote that review, so I was already thinking globally. And it’s the action of the mind that sticks with you when all is said and done.

But boy, there were exciting gossipy parts here, parts reveling in the scope of the world he created – Verdurin on morphine! Saint-Loup on coke! The Duchess calling Gilberte a bitch! (I need to look up the French version to see if that translation is fairly accurate.) Having grown to know these people so intimately, it is so much fun to see these sides of them.

And I love how at the end Francoise is implicated in the writing process, mending his torn “paperies.” I have always rooted for Francoise.

Ultimately, the final image at the end was hard-won – the image of the monsters/giants on stilts touching distant epochs of their own pasts. He is so adept at making his readers experience that vertigo for themselves – at least in my narcissistic case. And in the end, maybe the particular philosophies of his narrator are not the point – just the monstrous, exhaustive, and gorgeous vehicle.(less)

1 like · like · see review

Apr 06, 2010 Brenda Pike rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I finished! I finally finished! I planned on reading the whole series in a summer, but it actually took nearly a year. So keep in mind that my less-than-stellar review of this volume may simply be Proust fatigue. It may be, but I don't think so.

First off, this volume was published after his death (as I mentioned in my review of the previous volume), so it has definitely not had the benefit of his final editorial scrutiny. I’m sorry, but as an editor, this matters to me. His language is less prec...more

like · see review

Nov 30, 2012 Venus rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novel

لحظۀ مرگ نزدیک است و آنگاه حقیقتا زمان باز یافته از راه خواهد رسید . و تنها مرگ است که انسان را از سودای جاودانگی میرهاند.

***

شست وشوی واقعی مغز را خودمان با خودمان و بوسیله امید می کنیم که نوعی غریزه بقای ملت است , اگر واقعا عضو زنده این ملت باشیم. برای ندیدن آنچه نزد «فرد-آلمانی» غیرحقانی بود؛ برای هر لحظه اذعان به آنچه نزد «فرد-فرانسه» حقانیت داشت , مطمئن ترین راه این نبود که آلمانی قضاوت نکند و فرانسوی قضاوت کند,نه,مطمئن ترین راه این بود که هم این و هم آن میهن پرست باشند.

حقیقت این است که صبح...more لحظۀ مرگ نزدیک است و آنگاه حقیقتا زمان باز یافته از راه خواهد رسید . و تنها مرگ است که انسان را از سودای جاودانگی میرهاند.

***

شست وشوی واقعی مغز را خودمان با خودمان و بوسیله امید می کنیم که نوعی غریزه بقای ملت است , اگر واقعا عضو زنده این ملت باشیم. برای ندیدن آنچه نزد «فرد-آلمانی» غیرحقانی بود؛ برای هر لحظه اذعان به آنچه نزد «فرد-فرانسه» حقانیت داشت , مطمئن ترین راه این نبود که آلمانی قضاوت نکند و فرانسوی قضاوت کند,نه,مطمئن ترین راه این بود که هم این و هم آن میهن پرست باشند.

حقیقت این است که صبح به صبح دوباره اعلام جنگ می شود. بنابراین کسی که ادامه جنگ را می خواهد به اندازه کسی که شروعش کرده مقصر است, شاید هم بیشتر, چون این یکی شاید همه فاجعه هایش را پیش بینی نمی کرده.

شکی نیست که باید از عواقب جنگی که بی وقفه چندین سال ادامه داشته ترسید. افرادمان در بازگشت از جنگ چه خواهند کرد؟ خستگی جنگ از پا درشان آورده یا جری ترشان کرده؟ وضع ممکن است اگرنه برای فرانسه که برای دولت خطرناک بشود، ممکن است حتی شکل دولت را تغییر بدهد.

در این کتاب حتی یک رویداد هم نمی توان یافت که خیالی نباشد. و حتی یک شخصیت «واقعی با نام مستعار» در آن نیست، و همه چیز ساخته و پرداخته خود من و در خدمت موضوعی ست که می خواسته ام بیان کنم. لازم است در ستایش کشورم بگویم که فقط خویشان میلیونر «فرانسواز» که برای کمک به خویشاوندی دست تنها بازنشستگی را کنار گذاشتند واقعی اند و تنها آدمهایی اند که براستی وجود دارند … از آنها نام می برم چون نمی توانم از بسیاری کسان دیگری نام ببرم که چنین کردند و به همت شان فرانسه زنده ماند.

شکی نیست که وقتی گستاخی به تو اهانت می کند، با خود می گویی چه بهتر می بود اگر از تو ستایش می کرد، و بویژه وقتی از زنی که دوست میداری خیانت می بینی چقدر آرزو می کنی کاش چنین نبود … اما در این صورت حس توهین و خیانت دیدگی برایت سرزمینهای ناشناخته ای باقی می ماند.

نویسنده نباید برنجد از اینکه منحرف به قهرمانان زنش چهره مردانه بدهد. فقط این ویژگی اندکی اعوجاج آمیز به منحرف امکان می دهد که آنچه را می خواند با همه کلیتش درک کند.(less)

like · see review

May 03, 2013 GONZA rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Eccoci qua, letti tutti e sette i volumi posso ammettere anche un certo rimpianto, anche se all'inizio non é stato facile perché è necessario trovare il proprio modo di leggere Proust, di farsi piacere queste infinite serate nei salotti a discutere del niente e a commentare le toilette delle signore di dubbia genealogia. I suoi discorsi non sempre sono stati interessanti, ma alcune sue osservazioni non possono che essere indimenticabili. Alla fine ero preoccupata quanto lui che non riuscisse a p...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jun 29, 2012 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wow! The final 150 pages pulled all seven volumes together in an amazing way. One commentator noted that many people decide to reread the entire thing when they finish it; it is easy to understand why. The story becomes nearly circular, but more perfectly a spiral: you come back around again to a point near where you started but not quite the same spot, yet you can look out and across and see where all you've been and how it all connects in a beguiling eddy.

Proust wrote in and about the Belle Ep...more

like · see review

Jul 06, 2011 passepied rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobook, wakacje-2011

"Ale, wracając do własnych spraw, rozmyślałem skromnie o swojej książce, a byłoby to nawet niedokładnością powiedzieć, iż myślałem o jej przyszłych czytelnikach, o moich czytelnikach. Gdyż moim zdaniem nie będą oni moimi czytelnikami, ale czytelnikami samych siebie, gdyż moja książka będzie tylko rodzajem szkieł powiększających, jak soczewki, które podawał nabywcy optyk w Combray; dzięki mojej książce dostarczę czytelnikom sposobu czytania w samym sobie. Tak iż nie będę żądał, by chwalili mnie l...more

like · see review

Dec 14, 2008 Becky rated it 5 of 5 stars

I finished the whole thing - all 6/7 volumes of this incredible novel. I was awed, bored, confused, delighted, enthusiastic, flabbergasted, and so on all through the alphabet. It all comes together in the final volume, Time Regained.

I read the new versions of the first 4 books and the old Modern Library edition of the last two or three because they aren't sold separately.

I can't say it's the "greatest novel ever written" because imo, it's self-indulgently and tediously long and convoluted. How...more

like · see review

Aug 25, 2012 Joseph Sverker added it

Shelves: novels-france

So, now it is done, In Rememberance of Things Past is read. It feels like an achievement , but like with so many classics, it was well worth the effort. The book is momentous and brilliant in all ways possible. We now enter the present time in terms of the narrative and just as insightful as Proust was about youth, social interactions of the upper strata of the French society he is not about old age and and sentimentality. The reflection on memory is fascinating and in many ways bring the book t...more

like · see review

Jun 03, 2010 Ginny Pennekamp rated it 5 of 5 stars

Last night, I finished reading the Proust Cycle. It took one year and four months. It was the hardest reading I've ever done and I can honestly say that I could not have read the whole thing without the support, encouragement and viewpoints from my book group. I decided to undertake the cycle for two reasons: 1) because it's widely considered to be the greatest modern novel of all time and 2) (and I don't think this is pretentious to say when you're embarking on Proust) to discover the meaning o...more

like · see review

Apr 29, 2013 Morgane rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"In Search of Lost Time" is the most beautiful, rewarding, perfect work of literature I have ever read. As the last volume, "Finding Time Again" finally brings together all the details of the previous thousands of pages and it was so immense and powerful I didn't really know what to do with myself when I finished it. Yes the entire work is long and often confusing and even boring and you're never sure where Proust is going with any of this, but he's not being difficult just for the sake of it. M...more

like · see review

May 09, 2013 Caroline rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: french-literature

Finished! A clear-eyed retrospective on the characters left after the war from a vanished belle-epoque world. Also Proust's explanation of what his literary purpose is, and of course more commentary on time, memory, relationships,and death. An unusual ending for a novel but one that casts a unifying drive over all seven volumes.

I was just in Paris and saw Proust's cork-lined bedroom at the Musee Carnevelet, where they also have several paintings of the characters Proust used as partial models fo...more

like · see review

Mar 13, 2010 Renata rated it 5 of 5 stars

Let me start here being very assertive regarding this review: this last book is, by far, the best of the series "A la recherche du temps perdu". It's my opinion, of course, but it's also common sense.

I think Proust's writings are a case of love-or-hate for those who face them for the first time. I fell in love with this particular book when studying about time, memory and the perception of time in works such as Walter Benjamin's and Gilles Deleuze's. Proust has such a beautiful, touching and eve...more

1 like · like · see review

May 27, 2013 Paul Gelsthorpe rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'll miss having 'In search of lost time' in my life. It's been an insightful, affirming and valuable experience. The main characters are so well defined that it's hard not to become personally attached to them and the themes so universal that a process of self-reflection is for me the natural response after absorbing such weighty ideas about life's important themes.

For insight into human behaviour, this is probably the most accurate and all encompassing book I've ever read.

Proust's final thoug...more

1 like · like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 99 100 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
2013: The Year of...: Through Sunday, 24 Nov.: Time Regained	1	14	Sep 30, 2012 05:14pm
2013: The Year of...: Through Sunday, 1 Dec.: Time Regained	1	9	Sep 30, 2012 05:13pm
2013: The Year of...: Through Sunday, 8 Dec.: Time Regained	1	8	Sep 30, 2012 05:13pm
2013: The Year of...: Through Sunday, 15 Dec.: Time Regained	1	7	Sep 30, 2012 05:12pm
2013: The Year of...: Through Sunday, 22 Dec.: Time Regained	1	7	Sep 30, 2012 05:11pm
2013: The Year of...: Through Sunday, 29 Dec.: Time Regained	1	14	Sep 30, 2012 05:10pm
Constant Reader Classics Discussion	19	21	Mar 27, 2008 06:23am

combine
Other Editions (62)

More editions...

Genres

Classics

45 users

Cultural > France

33 users

European Literature > French Literature

17 users

Literature

13 users

Literary Fiction

10 users

Novels

10 users

Literature > 20th Century

6 users

Criticism

4 users

Philosophy

3 users

Roman

3 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

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

More about Marcel Proust...

Books by Marcel Proust

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

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

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

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

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Le Temps retrouvé

1 trivia question

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from Time Regained & A Guid...

“For although we know that the years pass, that youth gives way to old age, that fortunes and thrones crumble (even the most solid among them) and that fame is transitory, the manner in which—by means of a sort of snapshot—we take cognisance of this moving universe whirled along by Time, has the contrary effect of immobilising it.” — 17 people liked it

“And it is because they contain thus within themselves the hours of the past that human bodies have the power to hurt so terribly those who love them, because they contain the memories of so many joys and desires already effaced for them, but still cruel for the lover who contemplates and prolongs in the dimension of Time the beloved body of which he is jealous, so jealous that he may even wish for its destruction. For after death Time withdraws from the body, and the memories, so indifferent, grown so pale, are effaced in her who no longer exists, as they soon will be in the lover whom for a while they continue to torment but in whom before long they will perish, once the desire that owed their inspiration to a living body is no longer there to sustain them. Profound Albertine, whom I at once saw sleeping, and who was dead.” — 16 people liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: Time Regained
avg rating	preview: Time Regained Goodreads rating: 4.50 (1402 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreadz.com/book/show/28405.Time_Regained?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1295311074l/28405.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreadz.com/book/show/28405.Time_Regained?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Time Regained by Marcel Proust[/url]

Time Regained (À la recherche du temps perdu #7)

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website