Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1) in The Year of Reading Proust

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

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

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: reviews-5-stars, read-2013, reviews, frogs, 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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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: 20th-century-literature, literature, french, proust-2013, translation

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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May 22, 2012 Mike Clinton rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

It took me a long time to complete this first novel in the series, in part because it felt too self-indulgent to spend the time reading and savoring it. Fortunately, the GR group "The Year of Reading Proust" has provided me with sufficient motivation and incentive to commit the quality time required. I say "quality time" because the book requires the kind of focus - deep reading - that circumstances and distractions make less and less available; in fact, at the risk of sounding Proustian!, even It took me a long time to complete this first novel in the series, in part because it felt too self-indulgent to spend the time reading and savoring it. Fortunately, the GR group "The Year of Reading Proust" has provided me with sufficient motivation and incentive to commit the quality time required. I say "quality time" because the book requires the kind of focus - deep reading - that circumstances and distractions make less and less available; in fact, at the risk of sounding Proustian!, even the kind of surrender to long, detailed (but carefully structured) reveries that make up the content of the whole "Lost Time" series seems elusive - as if there's no longer time to lose.

At times I felt that Proust had taken Dante as his model, guiding readers not through the rich variety of heaven, hell, and purgatory, but through the dense, dynamic psychological and aesthetic processes - epiphanies, in the more dramatic moments - that not only reflect but compose human experience and identity. Proust guides readers through situations that parallel each other - his longing as a child for his mother to visit him in his room to say goodnight, Swann's jealous obsession with Odette, Proust's adolescent infatuation with Gilberte - and explores the association between these interior, emotional sensibilities with sensory experiences, such as the taste of a madeleine, a phrase heard in a violin sonata, architectural styles, scents in a garden, the sound of place names, etc. This core idea and the way it's structured in the novel struck me most strongly during the scene in the second part when Swann attended a party at the Marquise de Saint-Euverte's; there he heard once again the phrase from a violin sonata that he had long connected with his love for Odette de Crecy. At this point, however, his love for her had transmuted into a painful obsession, and this moment marks a critical point in this psychological process. Swann notices that the phrase sounds different to him this time, not because the piece has changed - although Proust suggests that the musicianship on this occasion is superior - but because Swann has changed and therefore receives and processes the sensation differently. This moment reminded me of the striking passage in the first part of the book when the young Proust observed a distant church spire taking on different aspects shaped by distance, light, but most importantly his own observation. In Proust's world, these aesthetic epiphanies are the vehicles that allow us to recognize the continuity and change that marks our lives and selves.

There are far more threads woven through the book, and I've only just begun the seven-novel series. ...more

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Mar 15, 2012 Sandi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, classics, france, literature

As just about everyone that admires this work has praised it far better than I ever can I will only say this.

If you are a reader that skim reads then don't even bother with this as you will get nothing out of it. Each sentence and description must be read in full to appreciate Proust. (I wish I could read it in French).

If you don't want to think even a little bit then again, don't bother. This book makes you think. Well maybe it doesn't make you but it highly encourages it.

If you like stories ab ...more

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