From the Bookshelf of The Year of Reading Proust…

Time Regained (In Search of Lost Time, #7)

Marcel Proust,

Andreas Mayor (Translator)

Start date: November 18, 2013

Finish date: December 29, 2013

Discussion: Time Regained, vol. 7

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Time Regained, vol. 7

* Through Sunday, 29 Dec.: Time Regained
By Jason · 222 posts · 152 views

last updated Jan 11, 2014 06:21PM

* Through Sunday, 22 Dec.: Time Regained
By Jason · 124 posts · 76 views

last updated Dec 24, 2013 11:03AM

What Members Thought

Nov 15, 2013 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Wow, Proust kills it with this last book in his masterpiece In Search of Lost Time. He pulls it all together. I loved Proust's reflections on literary and artistic creation, reality, memory, pain, death and time -- and how in 'Time Regained' he draws all his themes together.

I'm almost sad my stroll with Proust is over. There are few books I've ever wanted to start reading again immediately after finishing. Today as I was setting down 'Time Regained', I almost reached for 'Swann's Way'. I feel l ...more

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Nov 18, 2015 Sue rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: france, classics, fiction, proust

I'm very glad that I have now read ISOLT and have some glimmer of why so many have devoured and loved this work for so long. I will return with more of a review. ...more

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Jan 06, 2024 Kaila rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2024, im-not-crying-youre-crying, classics, france

I did it! 1 year later, I have read all of In Search of Lost Time.

Several parts of this volume made me cry. I'm not sure if it was worth 4000 pages to get to that emotion - but you certainly can't just go read those passages and expect to feel it. Epicness is earned. You had to experience his life for years before the climax made sense.

Finally, a dinner party was worthwhile. I wanted to hear about every single person who was at that last party at the new Duchess de Guermantes'. I was constantly ...more

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May 12, 2016 Sammy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: second-eleven

"Stories somehow lengthen when begun" - Lord Byron, Beppo

And so, after 11 months and 3 weeks, I find myself making the emotionally harrowing descent from Mont Proust. And, boy, has it been worth it. Le Temps retrouvé (Time Regained, also translated as Finding Time Again) is the final volume of the masterful Search, and is a distinct step up from its immediate predecessors, for a few reasons. (My reviews of the previous volumes : Unum Duo Tria Quattuor Quinque Sex )

Published a few years after Pro ...more

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May 06, 2012 Mhgoblue rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I don’t even know how to start reviewing a story I’ve been reading for the last two years. It was wonderful, of course it was, but while I enjoyed reading it the whole way through, I feel like the real point didn’t become clear until the very end. It was worth waiting for.

So, to start with the plot: through seven volumes, we follow the life of Marcel, apparently the last heterosexual man in all of Paris, from his childhood in the countryside through his ridiculous social-climbing adulthood, all I don’t even know how to start reviewing a story I’ve been reading for the last two years. It was wonderful, of course it was, but while I enjoyed reading it the whole way through, I feel like the real point didn’t become clear until the very end. It was worth waiting for.

So, to start with the plot: through seven volumes, we follow the life of Marcel, apparently the last heterosexual man in all of Paris, from his childhood in the countryside through his ridiculous social-climbing adulthood, all kinds of high society intrigues and scandals, friendships, girlfriends, drag kings and queens, mistresses, weddings, jealousy, death, Venice, S&M brothels, war, infidelity, basically every aspect of the French aristocracy’s snobby, hilarious, superficial existence. The story is completely soapy and addictive, like if The Young and the Restless were a novel that impresses people when they hear you’re reading it. You will not be bored.

So that’s the story. But the real point is how Proust tells the story. In my Goodreads review for the second book I wrote, “Proust explains so many things I always knew somehow, but never recognized or was able to put into words. So many times, I’ve read a paragraph and said to myself, 'I knew that! I’ve thought that!' on some unconscious, nonverbal level. It’s a rare book that can introduce you to parts of yourself that you realize, as you read, have always existed, unrecognized until now.”

At the end of the final volume, when Marcel decides to leave the party and embark on his masterwork (In Search Of Lost Time itself), he clarifies his project to himself using almost the same words I did: he wants to re-create life itself, using exacting descriptions of thoughts and sensations, and thus connect his story with his readers’ own experiences on all levels: emotional, intellectual, and deeply visceral. Proust’s project is to tell a story that will resonate with us on our own terms, that will provide us with the means, not of reading his story, but of reading our own within ourselves.

His project really boils down to the essential problem of literature. What is its purpose? At the end of the book, when Marcel is at the Prince’s party and makes up his mind to go home and write his masterwork, he decides that literature should give readers a means of looking inward, refining and discerning parts of themselves that they may not have been aware of or developed otherwise. At one point in the story, Marcel tells the painter Elstir that, “We cannot receive the truth from anyone; we have to create it for ourselves.” Is there any truer method of communication? You can’t learn about life just through living; that’s only half of it. You must also reflect. In Search Of Lost Time is a book that can introduce you to yourself. As he inventories and records the richness of his character's inner life, Proust invites us to do the same and gives us the tools to make sense of our own experiences.

And, at the end of the book, as he sits in the Prince’s study planning the novel he will finally write, Marcel brings all of the preceding six books’ worth of events together in service to his theme, the true purpose of art and literature: connecting with others by connecting with yourself. It’s beautiful. I don’t know how to describe it except for that. This book changed my life. It really did. ...more

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