Jillian's review of Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1
Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Marcel Proust
Simply incredible, and even more so on the second read-through that I began today (I read the novel in 4 days to meet a class deadline, so I can't wait to go back and take a deeper and more leisurely journey through it). I've only read this first volume of the Recherche monster and I'm already impressed by the way Proust weaves together potentially disparate aspects of the narrative, leaving the reader to trace the associative connections among his memories, the seemingly offhand observations that only gain significance a hundred pages later. And of course the language is so frequently exquisite...though admittedly I've always been a fan of controlled but convoluted sentences that could easily irritate other readers, and which at times (at least in trans.) do push too far. I could probably find a favorite quote on every few pages, so I'll just offer up a few humorous and/or insightful ones:
If my grandfather needed to attract the two sisters’ attention at such times, he had to resort to those bodily signals used by alienists with certain lunatics suffering from distraction: striking a glass repeatedly with the blade of a knife while speaking to them sharply and looking them suddenly in the eye, violent methods which these psychiatrists often bring with them into their ordinary relations with healthy people, either from professional habit or because they believe everyone is a little crazy. (22)
My mother was obliged to stop, but she derived from this very constraint one more delicate thought, like good poets forced by the tyranny of rhyme to find their most beautiful lines. (24)
But even with respect to the most insignificant things in life, none of us constitutes a material whole, identical for everyone, which a person has only to go look up as though we were a book of specifications or a last testament; our social personality is a creation of the minds of others. (19)
-"You know Balbec so well - do you have friends in the area?"
-"I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinacy to implore an inclement and pitiless sky."
-"That is not what I meant,' interupted my father, as obstinate as the trees and as pitiless as the sky." (134)
"The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years. (444) ...more
If my grandfather needed to attract the two sisters’ attention at such times, he had to resort to those bodily signals used by alienists with certain lunatics suffering from distraction: striking a glass repeatedly with the blade of a knife while speaking to them sharply and looking them suddenly in the eye, violent methods which these psychiatrists often bring with them into their ordinary relations with healthy people, either from professional habit or because they believe everyone is a little crazy. (22)
My mother was obliged to stop, but she derived from this very constraint one more delicate thought, like good poets forced by the tyranny of rhyme to find their most beautiful lines. (24)
But even with respect to the most insignificant things in life, none of us constitutes a material whole, identical for everyone, which a person has only to go look up as though we were a book of specifications or a last testament; our social personality is a creation of the minds of others. (19)
-"You know Balbec so well - do you have friends in the area?"
-"I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinacy to implore an inclement and pitiless sky."
-"That is not what I meant,' interupted my father, as obstinate as the trees and as pitiless as the sky." (134)
"The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years. (444) ...more
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