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
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Dec 27, 2012 Rakhi Dalal rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

“But it was also by the force of inertia; there was in his soul that want of adaptability which can be seen in the bodies of certain people who, when the moment comes to avoid a collision, to snatch their clothes out of reach of a flame, or to perform any other such necessary movement, take their time (as the saying is), begin by remaining for a moment in their original position, as though seeking to find in it a starting-point, a source of strength and motion.”

The unflinching pursuance of mind, “But it was also by the force of inertia; there was in his soul that want of adaptability which can be seen in the bodies of certain people who, when the moment comes to avoid a collision, to snatch their clothes out of reach of a flame, or to perform any other such necessary movement, take their time (as the saying is), begin by remaining for a moment in their original position, as though seeking to find in it a starting-point, a source of strength and motion.”

The unflinching pursuance of mind, en route the labyrinthine alleys of memory, arouse an ardor to regain that which is far and lost. Thence seeketh the eyes, those moments which necessitate one to remain in one’s original position. Those moments, which engender vigor to let clear the aisle for the memories to ascend, ensnare and leave you mesmerized. How fortunate it is to find those moments in the most exquisite and enticing prose to have ever been written! A delicacy, for the famished soul to behold and savor!

Those exigent moments, hence brought forth by the reading of this work, seized the present and rendered those lovely ones, hidden in the recesses of heart. A stroll with the narrator turned the steeple into an old building, madeline into a sweet dish entwining the warmth of the lovely soul by whom it was prepared and 'that corner at the street' into a long lost point in past which still possesses me as a child. Lovely moments, all of them, more so because they are gone and are never to return except in memories.

“Somewhere in one of the tall trees, making a stage in its height, an invisible bird, desperately attempting to make the day seem shorter, was exploring with a long, continuous note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility that, one would have said, it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly.”

These beautiful lines inspire a motive to seek solitude and hence, plunge deep into thoughts, explore and contemplate on what is imperative to existence. Living everyday or letting life happen? Somewhere a midst the chaos, the madness of everyday life, the moments which mean the most to us, are unconsciously ignored and forgotten. It is these moments which we keep looking for and searching for long after they are gone. And then in a desperate attempt to evade the remorse, we sadly end up in the state of more acute awareness of the loss.

Proust, is not only aware of such moments, but he lets them linger on…in life…..in memories.…in writing…so that seekers like us can look upon them in amazement and in return be rewarded with the pleasure of going through the ones we have long lost…

The dearth of words on my part purport the extent, to which my heart is exhilarated and wishes to remain still some time longer in those moments. Let me linger on some more……
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Mar 09, 2023 Kaila added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2023, classics, france

I'm so proud, I finally made it all the way through.

Of course, I still have 3,500 more pages to go to really make it all the way through.

I don't think I've ever declined to give a star rating but in this case, I am going to leave it blank. I think I need to read the whole book before I feel comfortable knowing what I actually thought of this. I'm not sure I liked it, but I'm not sure I didn't like it either. It's a hard one to pin down.

If you're not familiar with Proust, well, hardly anyone actu ...more

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Dec 29, 2012 Lauren rated it it was amazing

It has taken me the whole day to decide on my rating of this amazing work of fiction. It has too many facets to easily categorize, making the decision quite difficult. There were moments in which this was the best thing I have ever read, undoubtably because the prose is the most beautiful ever written. I found myself utterly engrossed and unwilling to put it down but as soon as I did I had no desire to pick it back up.

How can one describe Proust to those who have not read Proust? They cannot, i ...more

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Jan 01, 2013 Muzzy added it

Can there be any doubt that Proust is the master of nostalgia?

The only author I know who compares to Proust is William Faulkner. But where Faulkner is parochial, Proust comes close to universality. What child hasn't played at love, years before he can know anything about it? Have you never heard a short phrase of music, and thought it represented a secret message only for you? Who hasn’t travelled back to a scene from the distant past, only to feel disappointed at how the past refuses to reappe Can there be any doubt that Proust is the master of nostalgia?

The only author I know who compares to Proust is William Faulkner. But where Faulkner is parochial, Proust comes close to universality. What child hasn't played at love, years before he can know anything about it? Have you never heard a short phrase of music, and thought it represented a secret message only for you? Who hasn’t travelled back to a scene from the distant past, only to feel disappointed at how the past refuses to reappear?

Very few authors have portrayed such feelings. Proust dramatizes them all with such panache, I almost want to believe he’s the first to try.

Where Faulkner can sometimes take himself too seriously, Proust’s sense of comic irony is never sad, but lifts the weight of his drama. One day Swann fears that his lover Odette will ask him for money to rent a castle for her and her friends. Swann thinks, no, I’m being silly, that couldn’t possibly happen. And then, in the very next paragraph, “Yet this was in fact what happened the very next day.”

With sentences that meander and distract, it’s easy for Proust's jokes to sneak up on you. A couple of times the joke didn’t hit me until the page after the punch line. Another hilarious moment: “Sometimes he hoped she would die in some accident without suffering . . . and when se returned safe and sound, he marveled that the human body was so supple and so strong.”

By the way, both those citations I just quoted were from Lydia Davis. I compared them to the Moncrieff version, and found that she rendered them with more economy and style. Davis’ work is a massive achievement, and it’s hard to imagine a more clear translation.

Harold Bloom says In Search of Lost Time is “a comic novel about sexual jealousy.” That may be accurate of the total novel. But for this first volume, I think it’s too narrow. The sexual jealousy only applies to the section Swann in Love. In the other sections, the characters seek to possess each other in more diverse ways, and the narrator tries and fails to possess his own memory and past sensations. So I would expand the definition to “a comic novel about possession” – and how it’s as impossible to possess the past as it is to possess a person.

This expanded view becomes clear in the book’s final lines, so gorgeous that I had to read them out loud:

“Nature was resuming its rule over the Bois, from which the idea that it was the Elysian Garden of Woman had vanished; above the artificial mill the real sky was gray; the wind wrinkled the Grand Lac with little wavelets, like a real lake; large birds swiftly crossed the Bois, like a real wood, and uttering sharp cries alighted one after another in the tall oaks which under their druidical crowns and with a Dodonean majesty seemed to proclaim the inhuman emptiness of the disuses forest, and helped me better understand what a contradiction it is to search in reality for memory’s pictures, which would never have the charm that comes to them from memory itself and from not being perceived by the senses. The reality I had known no longer existed. That Mme. Swann did not arrive exactly the same at the same moment was enough to make the Avenue different. 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.”
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