Time Regained

À la recherche du temps perdu #7

by Marcel Proust, Terence Kilmartin (Translator), Andreas Mayor (Translator)

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 material for literature-his past life. This volume also includes the indispensable Guide to Proust, an index to all six volumes of the novel.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, France, Literature, French Literature, Novels, 20th Century

784 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Marcel Proust was a 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 the 80s and 90s, welcomed in the most fashionable and exclusive salons of his day. However, his position there was also one of an outsider, due to his Jewishness and homosexuality. Towards the end of 1890s Proust began to withdraw more and more from society, and although he was never entirely reclusive, as is sometimes made out, he lapsed more completely into his lifelong tendency to sleep during the day and work at night. He was also plagued with severe asthma, which had troubled him intermittently since childhood, and a terror of his own death, especially in case it should come before his novel had been completed. The first volume, after some difficulty finding a publisher, came out in 1913, and Proust continued to work with an almost inhuman dedication on his masterpiece right up until his death in 1922, at the age of 51.

Today he is widely recognized as one of the greatest authors of the 20th Century, and À la recherche du temps perdu as one of the most dazzling and significant works of literature to be written in modern times.

Reviews

[Marek Hnatiak]

Tentokrát se autor hodně rozhlíží kolem. Po dočtení bych nejraději začal znovu.

[Adam84]

Závěr mnohovrstevnatého a natolik komplexního díla , že pro mne zůstane navždy trochu tajemstvím.

I přes náročná "větná monstra" a komplikovanost Proustova stylu, jež přinejmenším znesnadňují čtenáři vnímání, jsem si v posledním díle přeci jen našel svůj rytmus čtení a mohl si plně vychutnat estetiku tohoto Opus magnum.

Často jsem se pravda cítil dezorientovaný (což se u tak komplikovaného díla věřím nemá považovat za chybu na straně čtenáře), přesto cyklus Hledání ztraceného času rozhodně nebyl časem ztraceným. Možná spíš časem bez rovnoměrné plynulosti, časem připomínajícím svou prchavost i pomíjivost a časem, jež mění lidské bytosti, lásku i žárlivost.

Tim vším si totiž Marcel Proust dokázal v čase zasloužit svou nesmrtelnost. A chápu, že tím stejným čím mne může Proust přitahovat, bude druhé nudit, ale věřím, že ten kdo aspoň trochu pronikne, nebude už chtít ven.