From the Bookshelf of The Year of Reading Proust…

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

Marcel Proust

Start date: January 1, 2013

Finish date: February 24, 2013

Discussion: Swann's Way, vol. 1

Why we're reading this: Alternate translation.
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Swann's Way, vol. 1

Through Sunday, 6 Jan.: Swann's Way
By Kris · 373 posts · 819 views

last updated Mar 29, 2025 09:41AM

Through Sunday, 24 Feb.: Swann's Way
By Kris · 142 posts · 381 views

last updated Feb 27, 2015 10:45AM

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What Members Thought

Jan 01, 2013 Fionnuala added it · review of another edition

Shelves: proust-the-novels, treasured-reading-experience, proust-and-related, read-in-french

Easter 2013.

When I reached the final pages of Du Côté de chez Swann, I knew that I hadn’t finished a book but that I’d simply begun one, that what I’d read were only the first chapters of a much longer work, and that reading through the entire seven volumes of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu would be, to borrow one of Marcel Proust’s favourite images, like travelling on a very long and very beautiful train.

I realised that what I had done so far was simply to wander through the first few carriag Easter 2013.

When I reached the final pages of Du Côté de chez Swann, I knew that I hadn’t finished a book but that I’d simply begun one, that what I’d read were only the first chapters of a much longer work, and that reading through the entire seven volumes of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu would be, to borrow one of Marcel Proust’s favourite images, like travelling on a very long and very beautiful train.

I realised that what I had done so far was simply to wander through the first few carriages of this train where I met with some intriguing passengers and overheard some curious conversations. I admired the different decor in each carriage while recognising the common elements that recurred from one to the next. I encountered some of the passengers more than once as they moved about from one section of the train to another, backwards and forwards as they pleased. I gazed from the windows of each carriage and spotted familiar landmarks, now on the left, now on the right. I noticed that the landscape seemed unchanging at times and yet the passengers sometimes wore different clothing. At other times, it was the scenery that was different while the preoccupations and conversations remained the same.

I found myself wondering if the train were not on some hugely complex orbit around a central point, passing over and back, revolving in both space and time, because, although Proust loved the precision of railway timetables, the chronology of this narrative is very, very mobile. At the beginning, I found this distracting but now I’ve accepted the fact that alongside clock time and calendar time, there is Proust time and that there may be many more meanings to Temps Perdu than the obvious one of ‘lost time’.

I find it significant that many episodes in the early sections of this work occur around Pâques or Easter. When we remember that Easter is not a fixed date in the calendar, that it is a mobile feast, falling on the Sunday following the full moon which itself follows the Spring equinox and which in turn depends on the earth’s orbit around the sun, then the series of Easter times in the narrative become as difficult to pin down on a calendar as the resurrection of memories from a wafer of tisane-soaked cake.

But Proust has such a keen sense of how nature responds in each season that while we rarely know the exact date of any particular episode, we do know exactly where the episode is situated in nature’s calendar. During the many Easters of the narrative, the weather is remarkably consistent even though it may be March in one and April in another. Proust returns frequently to the types of flowers which bloom around Easter, and refers often to the miracle of the renewal of nature. Aubépine or hawthorn is a favourite plant, the thorns of the new growth tinged with pink in a subtle Good Friday analogy. Boules de neige or viburnum are mentioned too for their parallel with Easter weather when snow showers can occur as easily as sunshine. In this way, we are reminded that Easter has more than religious significance, that plants too are influenced by the equinox, that the earth has its own renewal calendar, and that Proust time is cosmic time. ...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it it was amazing

Shelves: frogs, reviews-5-stars, read-2013, reviews, proust

PART I

Spoilers

For reasons that will become apparent, my review focuses not on the plot of the novel, but on its style and themes.

If you want to develop your own relationship with these aspects of the novel, then it might be better to turn away now.

This is partly why I paid little attention to the excellent discussion group at Proust 2013, before writing my review.

“Swann’s Way” is one of the most personal books ever written, and I want to define my personal relationship with it, without viewing i ...more

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Jan 02, 2013 Mala rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classic-ever-enduring-appeal, 2013-the-year-of-reading-proust

"narratives we have written inside of us, those that make us who we are."

There are books that we are supposed to read or our reading is not taken to be complete - it's like the seven wonders of the world — you may choose not to visit them but seeing them will somehow make you a part of their cultural heritage & history. Proust's ISoLT is one such cultural landmark. In his obssesive recollection of memories, the writer has also captured the charm & the vanity of belle époque life and culture & wh ...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: frogs, read-2013, reviews, reviews-1-star, proust

DJ Ian Digests the Classics in 50 Words or Less

Every time this French geezer has a piece of sponge cake, he remembers some tart who sponged off one Charles Swann many years ago. (1), (2), (3)

(1)(view spoiler)

(2)(view spoiler)

(3)(view spoiler) ...more

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Dec 31, 2012 Nick rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: rightly-revered-ritings

One hundred years old, this book.

100.

I'm awed at the parallels with modern authors. I'm glad I have previously read W.G. Sebald, and love his style of writing; of conjuring memories and evoking fleeting feelings in vivid detail. And the blending of art, memoir, travelogue, history and fiction.

Knowing next-to-nothing about Proust or his Lost Time opus —and hardly having read any classic lit'— I was not anticipating feeling so enthralled(or to quote Proust in 'thraldom')

There are hardly any paragr ...more

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Nov 20, 2012 Margaret rated it it was amazing

Shelves: french, literature, translation, 20th-century-literature, proust-2013

It was one of those summer nights in Cambridge, MA when I was trying to escape the muggy heat in a dorm without an air conditioner. Taking refuge in the Harvard University book store, the Coop, I was cold after being soaked through with sweat, or rain, or both. It was one of those summers. Shelf-reading until it cooled off and I could return to my room, I came across a set of In Search of Lost Time, standing on shelf on the second floor, conjuring memories of a half understood Monty Python sketc It was one of those summer nights in Cambridge, MA when I was trying to escape the muggy heat in a dorm without an air conditioner. Taking refuge in the Harvard University book store, the Coop, I was cold after being soaked through with sweat, or rain, or both. It was one of those summers. Shelf-reading until it cooled off and I could return to my room, I came across a set of In Search of Lost Time, standing on shelf on the second floor, conjuring memories of a half understood Monty Python sketch. The set looked pretty on the shelf, in with all the books I wished my own small university book store carried. The titles caught my eye, knowing almost nothing about that period in French literature made me want to feed my recreational knowledge of literature in general. It was also a pretty Modern Library set of a posh, intellectual work of literature so the superficial appeal was obvious.

I never did get those Modern Library copies from the Coop; instead I special ordered the Lydia Davis Swann's Way from the local independent at home because it was the recommendation for reading Proust by the Paris Review. In retrospect my intellectual snobbery is sort of a sad attempt to be the English major I never was (I had been mistaken for one over that same summer at the Old Manse in Concord), but it was for an entirely different reason. I'd been quite easily convinced to join the "2013: The Year of Reading Proust" Goodreads group because around New Years it is quite easy to make book related resolves to finish major reading undertakings in the upcoming year. Instead of those proud, copper spine Modern Libraries I'd left behind in Cambridge, I was the proud owner of Penguin fancy French-fold edition, complete with deckled edges.

I promptly fell asleep during the discussion within the first pages of sleep itself, because something across time and language carried over into my own experience. When I got flu so badly I couldn't even read, I regretted slowly letting the impression of the first couple pages fade away through the retching and heaving of a body out for revenge. Through an astronomy conference, a hectic beginning of the semester, and many late Sunday nights trying to keep up with the Proust 2013 schedule, I kept up because no matter how obtuse I found Proust's prose at the beginning, by half way through the reading section for that week, there would be a break through where I found those complex sentences beautiful and once again discussing something true about humanity and transmitted through time.

Memory is a tricky thing, as our narrator describes, and from memory to developing intellectualism to discovering one's tastes in theater and literature were relatable to my own memories of those discoveries. In poor Swann's love affairs I saw how people still are oblivious to relationships that are wrong with them and slowly descending into frustration. Every now and then I felt like giving the narrator a swift kick in the pants for being such an uptight snob, while realizing almost at the same time that the uptight snob phase is one every precocious aspiring intellectual goes through.

The language was splendid, the characterizations spot on even to the point where I wanted to roll my eyes along with the narrator, and the obsessive attention to detail dense but fascinating. I'm looking forward to finishing more of In Search of Lost Time throughout the year. While Proust has created a work of art I might not have picked up otherwise, now that I have begun on the path by reading Swann's Way I am ready to head down it and discover what's next in this literary adventure. ...more

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