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In search of lost time

Blogs > corumjhaelen
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corumjhaelen
Profile Blog Joined October 2009
France6884 Posts
November 19 2012 16:30 GMT
#1
Presentation :
A la recherche du temps perdu (In search of lost time or Remembrance of things past if you are more poetic and less precise) is a french novel usually published in 7 volumes : Swan's way, Within a Budding Grove, The Guermantes Way, The Prisoner, The Fugitive and time regained. According to wikipedia, it is the longest novel in world litterature with about 1.5 million words. To give you an idea, this is about three times War and Peace, a novel not exactly known for being short.
The novel contains more than 200 characters, and as the last three books were published posthumously, they contain quite a few mistakes, the most usual being that a character is said to be dead only to talk a few pages later. So Kwark, if you're reading me,the story isn't very coherent + Show Spoiler +
<3


My story with the novel
6 years ago, the year after I finished high school, I went to a MP classe préparatoire, which is something close to what I think Americans call prep school with Maths major and Physics minors. Fortunately, I had two hours of French a week, which consisted of studying three books on a theme which happened to be "The powers of imagination" that year. the three books were a bit a philosophy which utterly sucked, Don Quixote, an amazingly funny book, and Un amour de Swann (A love of Swann). This reading is one of the few which changed my life.
I had a lot of work though, so if I managed to finish the fist volume during the summer, I gave up on the second volume, partly because the main character can be a bit annoying as he is very peculiar.
But 3 months ago I decided to start my reading over with the second book. After about 80 days of reading, I reached the dreaded word "Fin".

Some music to listen to
Music is much discussed within the books, so I'll give you two of Proust's favorite works :



Main characters

The narrator : is has a nervous disease which makes his life a bit scluded. He's also hypersensitive and hyperimaginative, the two traits that define his talents and personnality.

Charles Swann : he is the role model of the caracter. they share a lot of tratis, like their jealousy and their artistic talents. Nevertheless, Swann never manages to put himself to work. He's very high society and jewish, which is of some importance.

Albertine Simonet : the narrator's great love.

Robert de Saint-Loup : the narrator's best friend. He is a Guermantes (a very important imaginary aristocratic family), nephew of Oriane, but he's more interested in art and has liberal opinion.

Baron de Charlus
: another Guermantes, brother-in-law of Oriane. He's also a friend of Swann. He has a legendary tempers, artistic talents and he is the model of the homosexual in the novel.

Oriane de Guermantes : The center of the narrator's reveries on aristocracy and high society. He breifly falls in love with her before being received.

Mme Verdurin : she has a "little clan" in which Swann meets Odette, his future wife. She's very authoritarian, and her professed love for arts seems to be just for snobish purposes.

Summary :
Fun version :


Short version : the narrator becomes a writer.

Longer version : (I actually wrote a really long version in French but I don't really think it's of any interest, it was more a personnal summary)

The first volume opens with the narrator remembering his childhood, his trouble getting asleep, his love for his mother and his life in Combray, the countryside little city where he walked so much. Then we are told the story of Charles Swann and Odette de Crécy's love story, in particular of Swann's jealousy.

The end of the first volume and the beginning of the second one tell the story os the narrator's first love, Gilberte Swann, and of some artistic deception. The second part of the volume tells of the beginnings of his high society encounters with Robert de Saint-Loup and Mme de Villeparisis, the continuation of his teenage love life with the group a teanage girl he meets along the beach, which inludes Albertine, and his of his artistic formation with the meeting of the painter Elstir.

The third volume more or less deals with the narrator's first experience with high society, and his deceptions of it.

The fourth one is a continutaion of the third one of some sort, but changed by the revelation that homosexuality exists. It is also a transition toward the fifth and sixth volume as the narrator start to suspect that Albertine likes women.

The fifth and sixth volume more or less stand together as Albertine's novel, the story of the narrator's great love and of his jealousy.

The seventh volume opens with a description of the life in Paris during World War I. then the narrator has the revelation that he is indeed a writer. We then have a description of the society we knew from the other volumes years later, after Time made his work, before a short and sweet wonclusion on the life of the writing narrator.

Proust's writing style
In France at least, Proust is mainly known for the lenght of hte book, the madeleine, and the length of his sentences. It is not unusual that they take a whole paragraph (not mine, you know, about two-third of a page), and I quite distincly remeber reading one that was about two pages long. It is also not unusual to see metaphor's into a metaphor into a metaphore.
It means that getting into Proust's novel can be quite difficult. It took me about 50 pages to get used to. Once I was though, I never looked back. Its style is a pleasure to read, the sentences flow easily, are musical and poetic.

Plus you can find an objective reasons why such long sentences were used : indeed, In Search of Lost Time is also a book about what is art and litterature, and those never ending sentences correspond perfectly to Proust idea's that you can find the most accute general ideas by thouroughly examining the mast particular persona.

Appreciation or Why you might want to read it

It's hard to say everything that is good about this novel, first because of its length, second because as it is considered as one of the great masterpiece of the XXth century, many people have written much smarter things than I can hope to write.

First of all, the themes in the novel are both extremely varied and deep, and are more or less all linked together in the novel. The novel can be said social, psychological, a analysis of love, jealousy and separation, a treaty of memory and time, a search of what is art and beauty, an esthetic treaty or a trety on imagination, which the novel would be an application of. The "lost time" of the title might just be the focus point of all those ideas.

There are several tones in the novel. Often descriptive, mainly of feelings and sensations, almost always searching a psychological truth, each situation is examined from all angles possible, and often a latter revelation will bring a new meaning to a scene. proust is really one of the best psychological writer, for m only Dostoïevski is in the same league.
Proust can also be acid, and even funny, especially in his description of high society; i've laughed to some of Charlus' monologues or to Oriane de Gurmantes' jokes, or to the mockeries of some of the characters (there is a very incisive portrait of M. de Norpois, an embassador who has a very pompous language, full of clichés).
At the same time, Proust doesn't fall in the trap of the snob who mocks other snob, and explain his taste for high society, and all those ridiculous characters have their sincerity and their loyal moments. Charlus in particular is one of the strangest and nicest character in the novel.

While the novel may first look like it's going in every direction, Proust obviously gave lots of thought to the composition. Each main characters has its different sides, are painted diffrently numerous times throughout the novel, because there are several revelations, often really surprising. proust likes to link very different ideas. Moreover, the main question of the novel ("How is the narrator finally going to get to write this book?") ends up being a reason to read the novel in itself, by the end I wanted to know that like I'd want to know who the culprit is in a whodunnit. Except the answer is a lot more satisfactory.
By the way, the hero of the nove, which in my eyes really is a hero, is very peculiar. His perception and sesibility makes him the perfect writer in the yeys of Proust, which means that Proust is in a way trying to write his ideal novel... that's ambition !
That doesn't stop him from an extreme modesty too, and the narrator has many bad sides and can be quite annoying... If his qualities are exceptionnals, so are his bad sides.

There are a lot of ery beautiful pages, I cannot recall them all, but here's a few : the realisation that the grandmother is really dead, the dialogue with Gilberte at the end of the sixth volume, the theory of what is a novel in the last volume, the scene were Swann tells Oriane that he is going to die in a few months, the madeleine of course, the regrets of time lost at the end of the first volume, the end of Swann's love for Odette, the+ Show Spoiler +
death of Albertine
, the extremely famous (at least in France^^) scene where Bergotte (the model of the writer in the novel) dies in front of The view of Delft, the description of the narrator's favorite flowers, hawthorns... How much have I forgotten !

The narrative system is extremely complex despite the appearances (at first it looks like a regular first person novel told in chronological order, with a few exceptions). It is inspired by Sylvie by Gérard de Nerval (a very short short story that I have to recommend, simply some of the most beautiful pages in French litterature) : Proust writes, the narrator writes sometimes what he knows at the end of his life, sometimes what he know at the time of the scene, sometimes what he knew at a time in between. Once or twice, the narrator speaks to the reader, and it is very strange in this narrative setting.
Sometimes, it feels like Proust and the narrator are very different peple, sometimes it feels like they are the same person, in the last pages of the novel for instance, you even wonder ho is really speaking. And there's this strange paradox of a narrator telling us that he'll write a book about his life but different, which is what Proust is doing, as if there were infinitely many narrators between Proust and his main character.

Finally, the novel is an incredible aesthetic success. I feel like when you've finished the book, you undesrtand a lot better what art is about, and you want to write, because what the novel tells us is that litterary life is the most important of all, as it is by definition the one which axtracts from life all beauty and meaning...

Conclusion : Way too short of a blog, or way too long, I don't know. There might be quite a lot of English mistake, especially as in some parts I translated what I already wrote in French... You can tell me, especially if I'm confusing !
But more importantly, this is without a doubt my favorite writing work, and I hope I gave some of you the desire to try Proust, or at least that I interested some of you. Rarely have I been so fullfilled by on of my activities =)

PS : this reding took me quite some times from bw recently, especially with all my film watching, so shoutout to everyone I love in this community, especially 2pac, harem, pie, other people in sgs chat, Game, Bakuryu, and I'm forgetting many people !

*****
‎numquam se plus agere quam nihil cum ageret, numquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset
rabidch
Profile Joined January 2010
United States20289 Posts
November 19 2012 16:37 GMT
#2
Funnily enough i had a discussion about this and other long novels yesterday. Will probably end up never reading this though...
LiquidDota StaffOnly a true king can play the King.
corumjhaelen
Profile Blog Joined October 2009
France6884 Posts
November 19 2012 16:43 GMT
#3
If you want to read just a short part of it, I think Un amour de Swann, the second part of the first volume can easily be read alone, and is really good. It's also only ~300 pages or something^^
‎numquam se plus agere quam nihil cum ageret, numquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset
rabidch
Profile Joined January 2010
United States20289 Posts
November 19 2012 16:45 GMT
#4
On November 20 2012 01:43 corumjhaelen wrote:
If you want to read just a short part of it, I think Un amour de Swann, the second part of the first volume can easily be read alone, and is really good. It's also only ~300 pages or something^^

Will remember it, thanks
LiquidDota StaffOnly a true king can play the King.
CoughingHydra
Profile Blog Joined May 2012
177 Posts
November 19 2012 19:20 GMT
#5
We had to read Combray (which I believe is in the first or the second volume) in high school and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Thanks for the write-up, I'm definitely considering to read the whole novel!
corumjhaelen
Profile Blog Joined October 2009
France6884 Posts
November 19 2012 20:46 GMT
#6
On November 20 2012 04:20 CoughingHydra wrote:
We had to read Combray (which I believe is in the first or the second volume) in high school and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Thanks for the write-up, I'm definitely considering to read the whole novel!

It's the first part of the first volume (about half of it I think). Thank you for your kind words. pretty cool to see that some people make it read in high school, even though it might be a bit too young to fully appreciate it.
‎numquam se plus agere quam nihil cum ageret, numquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset
farvacola
Profile Blog Joined January 2011
United States18824 Posts
November 19 2012 21:05 GMT
#7
I absolutely love Proust, though I've only read the first three volumes as these books fall under my personal category of "big lit", which is more or less my own way of saying "I need to take my time with these!" As someone with a pronounced interest in how temporality and memory are represented in fiction, I absolutely love how Proust expounds upon involuntary recollection, as though we are, at times, nothing more than victims of our own capacity to remember as memories pick and choose the signals with which they activate. I just recently got Sodom and Gomorrah, so I look forward to continuing my search of lost time
"when the Dead Kennedys found out they had skinhead fans, they literally wrote a song titled 'Nazi Punks Fuck Off'"
silynxer
Profile Joined April 2006
Germany439 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-11-19 21:07:32
November 19 2012 21:05 GMT
#8
I only read the first volume, and similarly to you, was at times annoyed by the narrator. The psychological part about Swann's love was alright but the first part about Combrary didn't give me much. I don't remember being annoyed by the writing style but I read it in a German translation so it's hard to say whether the peculiarness of his writing was conserved (and I'm used to long sentence lovers from German literature as well, say hello Mr. Mann!).
There was an appendix in my edition about the volume not being that appreciated at the time of release (much to the dismay of Proust even in his circle of friends) and only later it got recognition, what stood out for me was a quote from a critic talking about the psychoanalytical value of the book. In retrospect this made a lot of sense to me and the Combrary part should probably be read with this in mind (which I unfortunately couldn't because I'm not so much into that stuff). If that's your deal I would recommend it.

Normally I try to avoid spoilers but your description of the later parts made me consider picking them up some time despite not getting too much out of the first volume. It's going to be a bit difficult because I forgot all the details already and I'm not going to read the first book again. Well probably I have to read a summary first or something.
corumjhaelen
Profile Blog Joined October 2009
France6884 Posts
November 19 2012 21:34 GMT
#9
On November 20 2012 06:05 farvacola wrote:
I absolutely love Proust, though I've only read the first three volumes as these books fall under my personal category of "big lit", which is more or less my own way of saying "I need to take my time with these!" As someone with a pronounced interest in how temporality and memory are represented in fiction, I absolutely love how Proust expounds upon involuntary recollection, as though we are, at times, nothing more than victims of our own capacity to remember as memories pick and choose the signals with which they activate. I just recently got Sodom and Gomorrah, so I look forward to continuing my search of lost time

Nice to see I'm not alone =) It definitely took me a lot of time, I couldn't really read more than one hour at a time, and really slowly (when I read Harry Potter, I can finish a volume in two days or something...).
About memories and recollections, there is a stunning part in Sodom and Gomorrah called "Les intermittences du coeur" (I'm not really sure how to translate it...). I also love how he deals with habits and changes while talking about someone going to sleep and waking up for 40 pages...

On November 20 2012 06:05 silynxer wrote:
I only read the first volume, and similarly to you, was at times annoyed by the narrator. The psychological part about Swann's love was alright but the first part about Combrary didn't give me much. I don't remember being annoyed by the writing style but I read it in a German translation so it's hard to say whether the peculiarness of his writing was conserved (and I'm used to long sentence lovers from German literature as well, say hello Mr. Mann!).
There was an appendix in my edition about the volume not being that appreciated at the time of release (much to the dismay of Proust even in his circle of friends) and only later it got recognition, what stood out for me was a quote from a critic talking about the psychoanalytical value of the book. In retrospect this made a lot of sense to me and the Combrary part should probably be read with this in mind (which I unfortunately couldn't because I'm not so much into that stuff). If that's your deal I would recommend it.

Normally I try to avoid spoilers but your description of the later parts made me consider picking them up some time despite not getting too much out of the first volume. It's going to be a bit difficult because I forgot all the details already and I'm not going to read the first book again. Well probably I have to read a summary first or something.

I think the narrator is most annoying in the second volume... Well he's more or less annoying when he's in love, but by the time you get to The Prisonner you get used to it^^ I think Proust in fact never read Freud, even if there are similarities. But, I'd say the major philosophical influence is Schopenhauer.
Proust really got appreciated with the release of the second volume I think, he won the Prix Goncourt for it, which is probably the most prestigious French litterature price.
As for a summary, I managed to get into the second book while not reading anything after 5 years or so, I think it's doable. The notes in my edition really helped though (and spoilt me happily too...).
‎numquam se plus agere quam nihil cum ageret, numquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset
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