From the Bookshelf of The Year of Reading Proust…

The Guermantes Way (In Search of Lost Time, #3)

Marcel Proust,

C.K. Scott Moncrieff (Translator)

Start date: April 29, 2013

Finish date: June 30, 2013

Discussion: The Guermantes Way, vol. 3

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The Guermantes Way, vol. 3

Through Sunday, 30 June: The Guermantes Way
By Jason · 121 posts · 155 views

last updated Jan 03, 2015 06:05AM

Through Sunday, 12 May: The Guermantes Way
By Jason · 79 posts · 139 views

last updated Dec 15, 2014 11:30PM

What Members Thought

Apr 30, 2015 Sue rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2015, classics, favorites, france, fiction, proust

This may be my favorite book of ISOLT so far. Yes there are moments that seemed to go on....and on...a bit, but overall I feel that the narrator became more real, more human, as did many of the people around him, including those who he has been studying from afar.

In The Guermantes Way, our unnamed narrator has matured somewhat, though his exact age remains unspecified. He is now attending the salons of those who he has admired from a distance, especially Mme de Guermantes, the woman he virtuall This may be my favorite book of ISOLT so far. Yes there are moments that seemed to go on....and on...a bit, but overall I feel that the narrator became more real, more human, as did many of the people around him, including those who he has been studying from afar.

In The Guermantes Way, our unnamed narrator has matured somewhat, though his exact age remains unspecified. He is now attending the salons of those who he has admired from a distance, especially Mme de Guermantes, the woman he virtually "stalked" in the streets, setting up regular "impromptu" meetings during her daily travels around Paris. A love-struck teen or slightly older perhaps.

But at these salons, exciting things happen--not duels or sightings of fabulous art and people so much as overhearing wonderful conversation. Our narrator learns about people, his heroes and heroines, himself, and we learn about him. The politics of the time are discussed, with the Drefus case front and center, views on that "race matter" being central, anti-semitism rampant. Then there are the posing and poseurs, the toadying for favors, and the finding that people are not who they outwardly appear to be. And all of this is done in Proust's quite wonderful prose.

Here is a description of the Guermantes and their interactions with others.

And yet, to take an example, all of them--all
those who were true Guermantes, that is--when you were
introduced to them, indulged in a kind of ceremony,
almost as though by holding out their hands to you they
were performing an act as weighty as confirming a
knighthood upon you. The moment he heard your name
uttered, a Guermantes, even a twenty-year-old Guermantes,
but treading already in the footsteps of his elders, let
fall upon you, as though he had not made up his mind to
acknowledge you, a gaze that was generally blue and
always as cold as a steel blade, seemingly destined to
plunge into the deepest recesses of your heart. And this
is just what the Guermantes imagined themselves to be
doing since they all regarded themselves as first-class
psychologists.They also felt that this inspection
intensified the affability of the greeting that was to
follow it, which would not be delivered without a shrewd
idea of your worth. All this occurred at a distance from
yourself that would have been too close for a passage of
arms, but seemed immense for a handshake. (p 440)

And to complete this:

...when the Guermantes in question, after a lightning
tour of the last hiding places of your soul and your
integrity, had deemed you worthy to consort with him in
the future, his hand, directed toward you at the end of
an arm stretched out to its full length, seemed to be
presenting a rapier for single combat, and the hand
was in fact placed so far in front of the Guermantes
himself at that moment that when he proceeded to bow
his head it was difficult to distinguish whether it was
yourself or his own hand he was acknowledging. (p 440)

And these are only observations of the male side of the family. To read more of Mme de Guermantes, you really must read this book. Proust comes into his own here, in my opinion, with his clever witticisms, sometimes gentle but biting descriptions and some beautiful language. There are some sections that seemed s bit long but it also seemed I was rewarded for these by a writerly gift or two throughout the novel.

Highly recommended with the caveat that you should begin with Swann's Way
...more

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Aug 29, 2015 Neslihan Elagöz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

proust'a yakışmayan gösterişsizlikteki son iki sayfayı saymadan 5 yıldız. tema, "aristokratlar içinde bir cingöz" olduğu için okurken çoook güldüm ve kitabın her yerinde yüzlerce ":)" oldu bu yüzden. ...more

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Sep 23, 2015 Sammy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-of-my-life

The twittering of the birds at daybreak sounded insipid to Francoise.

With this exquisite opening, Marcel Proust plunges us into the third volume of seven, Le Côté de Guermantes (The Guermantes Way), which seems to be the only one of the seven books that is consistently titled across all English translations. (My reviews of the first two books can be found here and here. The third volume of the book charts the early-twentysomething narrator as he makes his way further into the twisted depths of ...more

2 likes · Like · see review