Within a Budding Grove (In Search of Lost Time, #2) in The Year of Reading Proust

Mar 11, 2013 Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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

A Note about the Translation

I wanted to support the translation of this volume by James Grieve, a lecturer at my alma mater, Australian National University, when I was there in the 70’s.

I’m pretty sure he taught two of my close friends. While I can’t recall meeting him, I did socialise with one of his colleagues, Robert Dessaix, who subsequently became a talented writer.

It was a very capable French Department. However, in the 90’s, it was decimated by budget cuts and Grieve was made "redundant" ...more

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Dec 31, 2012 Nick rated it it was amazing

Shelves: rightly-revered-ritings

This second volume within Proust's panorama of self and senses shifts from the inner salons to the outer sea side alcoves and sun drenched hotel lobbies. There is an energy and vitality to this second book which is projected through even more vivid character portraits and through Proust's evocative expression of his infatuations and obsessions.

There's a greater sense of space, of terrain and the broader environment. For me this seemed to allow the often claustrophobia inducing long-winding-inne ...more

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Apr 17, 2013 Mala rated it really liked it

Shelves: modern-fiction, 2013-the-year-of-reading-proust

A character, the Marquis de Norpois, quotes a fine Arab proverb- The dogs may bark; the caravan goes on. And so the ISoLT saga continues– Marcel has a meandering tale to tell and he will take his fine time telling that–fall in line or else, vamoose!

A lot happens in the second book– new characters, new themes are introduced. Old characters & old themes are expanded upon. Marcel gets to share the interior lives in the Swann household but can he ever know/understand the inner workings of Gilberte & ...more

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Feb 18, 2013 Richard Magahiz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, read-in-2013

This second volume in Proust's In Search of Lost Time is another sprawling, stream of consciousness work with a plot which is very much in the background. The Narrator's eye focuses on a person or object which seems to have symbolic importance, yet the meaning of the symbol is not made immediately apparent. Throughout there is a free-floating sense of time and of space, in which scenes go off on tangents and are never fully resolved, and memories and expectations intrude upon the mental image, o This second volume in Proust's In Search of Lost Time is another sprawling, stream of consciousness work with a plot which is very much in the background. The Narrator's eye focuses on a person or object which seems to have symbolic importance, yet the meaning of the symbol is not made immediately apparent. Throughout there is a free-floating sense of time and of space, in which scenes go off on tangents and are never fully resolved, and memories and expectations intrude upon the mental image, often displacing what is immediately in front of his eyes. Similar to the motif set up in Swann's Way regarding memories retold in a moment of recollection. Sometimes the retelling takes place long after the events have taken place and sometimes not: for instance, almost immediately after the first meeting between the Narrator and Albertine he describes the way they would talk about their impressions of that first day.

The beginning and the end of the book are propelled by the pursuit of the two objects of the Narrator's romantic obsession: Gilberte Swann and Albertine Simonet. They are typically portrayed in a sketch like fashion - their hair, skin, hands, a few things they say or do - and not in a way that gives the reader a very clear picture of what makes them so fascinating. Facile as he is with words, it seems as though the Narrator may simply be unable to explain his drive to captivate these young women to the reader.

I don't think there are many true stock characters among all the ones who make an appearance. These are complex people, with secrets and the capacity to surprise. Part of it is the strength of reputation and family which sets up preconceptions about how a person is expected to comport him or herself, which frequently conflicts with the urgings of the heart.

The book ends in a quiet, reflective fashion, with the Narrator in bed almost the same way the first volume started out. If he is aware of how his words and actions have moved him in a direction that feels likely to lead to unhappiness, he doesn't appear to show it. ...more

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Feb 23, 2013 Mike Clinton rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

At the risk of offering an analogy juxtaposing the trite with the magisterial - although that's much in keeping with the Proustian approach itself: if the "Seinfeld" series is about "nothing", then Proust's grand novel "A la recherche du temps perdu" is about "everything". Those philosophically minded might point out that if it's about everything, then it's about nothing - an observation sound to those of a logical or a mystical cast of mind equally. So it's about nothing, too, then. It's a grea At the risk of offering an analogy juxtaposing the trite with the magisterial - although that's much in keeping with the Proustian approach itself: if the "Seinfeld" series is about "nothing", then Proust's grand novel "A la recherche du temps perdu" is about "everything". Those philosophically minded might point out that if it's about everything, then it's about nothing - an observation sound to those of a logical or a mystical cast of mind equally. So it's about nothing, too, then. It's a great read, whichever it is, which makes it quite something. Its profound subtext weaves together themes pondering visual art and aesthetics, love and sex, death, nature and science (chemistry, geology, marine biology...), religion, architecture, psychology, philosophy, literature, music, fashion, social mores and class identities, etc. etc. etc. The plight of living consciously and unconsciously amid all these elements of life, whose meaning for us shifts reciprocally with our shifting selves, forms the plot of the novel.

This volume advances that plot in two parts that seem connected only through the adolescent travails of the narrator. In the first section, he becomes close to the Swann family through his liaison with the daughter Gilberte. His affair with her - a bit beyond puppy love, judging from the effect that a playful wrestling scene has on him - goes through ups and downs reminiscent of the amorous crisis experienced by Charles Swann himself in the novel's first volume, bringing the identification between these two characters intimately close. Just as vital to the first section is the narrator's sojourn through the world inhabited by the Swanns, the main prompt for the more substantial reflections related through the rich language that Proust uses so engagingly and marvelously. My favorite section was the second, where the plot hinged more on a series of character studies - Mme de Villeparisis, Robert de Saint-Loup-en-Bray, Bloch pere, the painter Elstir, and others - that culminated in his infatuation with a group of "jeunes filles en fleurs" and a reprise of his awkward - and literally anti-climactic - effort at love and sex with one of them, Albertine.

At times, yes, Proust's elaborate prose, long sentences of serpentine subclauses, and digressions that marry a microscopic focus on detail with vertiginous distraction can come across as ponderous. However, these are most often the features of the book that make reading it such a rewarding indulgence - for me, at least. ...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Sandi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, france, literature

I have thought long and hard about this review and the last thing I want to do is damn this work with faint praise. So I'll make a few observations instead.

Obsession continues to be the mainstay of in this volume The first half of the book is the Narrator with his obsession with Gilberte which is unremitted and Swann with being an incessant name dropper and having a place in society. Odette seems more content with her place in it for now.

For a country that went through a painful revolution to eq ...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Margaret rated it really liked it

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

I got bogged down in Within a Budding Grove, maybe because I was trying to finish it at the same time as my last semester of undergrad, or maybe because our beloved narrator is kind of an ass in this volume of In Search of Lost Time.

You know those students who always have something to say in class, usually to hear themselves talk? One of my courses had two of them, who gave opinions based on their own artistic sensibilities ("I don't like pictures with my words" said one once, it was really exc I got bogged down in Within a Budding Grove, maybe because I was trying to finish it at the same time as my last semester of undergrad, or maybe because our beloved narrator is kind of an ass in this volume of In Search of Lost Time.

You know those students who always have something to say in class, usually to hear themselves talk? One of my courses had two of them, who gave opinions based on their own artistic sensibilities ("I don't like pictures with my words" said one once, it was really exciting hearing someone in their very early twenties decry graphic novels) and were very into being intellectual without some of the experience to back it up. The narrator, especially when dealing with intellectualism and meeting his literary hero, Bergotte, had the same quality of naive intellectualism. The whole process of intellectual discovery would have been more interesting if the narrator had been a little more humble, but his lack of humility is clearly a defining characteristic in this portion of his life.

The narrator also discovers his ability to have obsessions with girls in this part of In Search of Lost Time. First it is Gilberte, the daughter of Swann, and then to some extent it is also Mme. Swann as well. Maybe if Proust wasn't quite as good as he was, these relationships wouldn't have come off as early as creepy as they did. While Swann's Way does not have an abundance of healthy relationships, the narrator isn't doing a very good job either in Within a Budding Grove. Between Gilberte (view spoiler) and the three girls at the seaside, the narrator is already running through his paces as a little bit of a, as the kids say, creeper. This pattern is a toned down, literary version of so many young adult novels so is quite interesting despite the slightly uncomfortable quality of these relationships.

The narrator in Within a Budding Grove is on the verge of a greater adulthood, since he is beginning to see the cracks in adult life though he is not quite able to process them in a way that allows him to operate outside of his childhood perceptions of reality. It's a complex exploration but probably will be my least favorite of In Search of Lost Time because of my general frustration with the precociousness (to be polite, he is a child to some extent after all) of the narrator. ...more

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Dec 08, 2013 Nick Short rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2014

Maybe the best literature I'll ever find. The story is simple, the aesthetic and psychological descriptions and observations bar none.

I wish I had the intellect to absorb it better, some sentences might last 3 pages or so, and could contain a description that can only be understood when read at a certain pace, one to be read slower with patience, or read faster which makes the effect during reading kind of very in focus/transcendent. All from just a sentence describing a person's face when they ...more

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Jul 29, 2015 Sammy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: books-of-my-life

"The most familiar precepts are not always the truest" -- Gisèle as Sophocles, writing to Racine.

The second volume of Proust's Great Novel(TM), À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (Within a Budding Grove, better - but more salaciously - translated as In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower) is no less magisterial than the last, although one suspects that many more people falter at the posts of this one, given as much of the book is to social commentary and increasingly oblique yet erudite discu ...more

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Apr 04, 2013 Valia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

В моем издании перевод Федорова и странные примечания от редактора :)

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Apr 13, 2013 Emma rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: france, read-in-2013

There are lots of fabulous descriptions of art, from opera to mostly painting, with...

more of my thoughts on this here:
http://wordsandpeace.com/2013/12/12/m... ...more

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