Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu

[mayneverhave]

I've nearly completed reading the 4,347 pages that make up the Modern Library edition of In Search of Lost Time (tr. Moncrieff, Kilmartin), and I've noticed that despite the relatively frequent name dropping, this novel hasn't been given the discussion it deserves. All talk of the novel that I've encountered on these forums tends to be more concerned with its length (which is obviously considerable) and the long, convoluted style of its prose, than with any mention of specific characters, scenes, or even examples of the prose. Well, here's your chance.

I'll start it off. The novel itself is indeed long, featuring a very slow moving plot which consists mainly of the narrator's passage from childhood to middle age, his disillusionment with variously the aristocracy, friendship and love, and, ultimately, his decision to become a writer, specifically to write the novel you are reading. It features a rather large cast of characters of varying degrees of importance, nearly half of them homosexual, and all them (with the exception of perhaps 2) on extremely shaky moral ground. With the exception of Marcel's grandmother, all the other characters of the novel have some severe deficiencies at at least some point in their lives, and it is Proust's method (and one of the reasons the book is so spread out) to develop a character from one perspective for some 600 pages, and then to show her in a completely different light in the next thousand. Over the course of the novel, characters come in and drop out of focus, are married, age, fall from grace, and die. It is death, and as important, the eroding effects of time that are the purpose of the novel. Only the work of art will outlive the author (the reason why more people know who Marcel Proust is than Alfred Dreyfus), and only the work of art can show a human/character in their myriad faces.

Aside from its difficulties - each volume is intricately connected the others and cannot be read with any comprehension without reading the previous volumes; the novel's sentences are built up like the novel itself, featuring an expanding layer of subclauses and digressions until the reader begins to lose track of what the verb or initial subject of the sentence was; one sentence (on the subject of the plight of the homosexual in society) is 942 words - this is easily one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

The work it reminds me of most, strangely enough, is the Divine Comedy. The two works feature a narrator's blossoming understanding of the universe, a descent to the lowest levels and an ascent to the highest, a large group of brilliantly characterized figures, and the rare and symbolic mention of the narrator/author's name (Dante's mentioned once, and Proust's 3 times). Both works have compared to cathedrals, using a variety of metaphors and narrative strategies over a long stretch of writing to develop a more nuanced meaning.

I could go on quite a bit, but this is not a thesis. Has anyone else read this novel or is interested in reading it?

[Mr.lucifer]

How was the prose of the translation?

[Patrick_Bateman]

I have 'The Way by Swann's' ready so as to begin my ISOLT odyssey

[Emil Miller]

I got through half of Swann's Way in the original and found that the characters weren't doing enough to hold my interest and that was it.
The only other book that met with a similar reaction was Kafka's Trial, also read in the original and abandoned for the same reason.

[nathank]

I just finished Swann's Way last week and I'm into the next volume. It has been amazing so far!

The first few pages of Swann's Way blew me away with the incredible observations and the beautiful writing. His descriptions of falling asleep and waking up unsure of his location were mesmerizing. Then of course the madeline scene that sets up the rest of the section is great. One of the most striking scenes/descriptions for me was when he is talking about the hawthorne and the flowers in Combray.

Finally, I really liked the structure of the first section of the book (and yes the same basic structure seems to continue throughout the book and books). Opening with the dream sequence, which then flowed into the madelines, which then opens into memories of Combray (which also introduces the next section near the end), which then returns to the madelines, which then returns to the dream sequence. Very nicely done!

All in all a strangely engrossing work. Its strange because it seems like it should be so boring (just long descriptions of some French guy's more or less ordinary and pedestrian life), but it is so beautifully done and has all those wonderful observations put down so well that it draws you in. The pages just fly by

[mayneverhave]

How was the prose of the translation?

Syntactically complex of course, but rarely does it seem forced or affected. It rarely veers towards being too purple, although this seems a common criticism. Although my French is poor (and I don't have any copies of the volumes in French) so I can't make an actual comparison.

I got through half of Swann's Way in the original and found that the characters weren't doing enough to hold my interest and that was it.
The only other book that met with a similar reaction was Kafka's Trial, also read in the original and abandoned for the same reason.

I read around 3/4 of Swann's Way in college, gave up (I think I went on to read The Brothers Karamazov, which was going another route entirely), and finally reread the entire volume around two years ago. A little while ago, I decided to go on and read the entire novel with breaks in between each volume, but I ended up reading them all straight through.

There are a few problems on giving up at such an early stage. For one, a lot of the major characters are not yet introduced - I think of the Baron de Charlus, de Saint-Loup, Albertine, Gilberte - and if they are, are only mentioned in passing. The only important character is Charles Swann, who for the most part disappears from the novel after "his" volume. You have to understand that the narrator's primary age for the volume is early childhood, and thus, all of his perceptions of the other characters are based on how they directly effect him, from the mind of a child. Marcel hates Swann for no reason other than his visits deny Marcel his mother's goodnight kiss. As the novel progresses, Marcel revisits these various locations (like the return to Combrary during WWI in Time Regained) and encounters the various people of his childhood with the more nuanced eyes of a well-traveled man about town. Characterization in Proust is a long process that takes place over a number of years (like our own understanding of the people in our own lives), so that characters can appear at one point in the novel to be kind, then cruel, then absolutely crazy, then pitiable.

[Jozanny]

mayneverhave: your appreciation is much more discerning than that of Daniel Schneider's, and there is a lesson in there for me about the value of having name recognition. I cannot discuss the work with any great confidence yet though, except for portions of Swann's Way, because I not only have to finish it, but appreciate it for the few studies I'd like to publish on Modernism. I am in the section where Proust feels badly about tormenting his grandmother with his symptoms, when his parents finally heed the professor's advice.

[Mr.lucifer]

[QUOTE=mayneverhave;1004100]Syntactically complex of course, but rarely does it seem forced or affected. It rarely veers towards being too purple, although this seems a common criticism. Although my French is poor (and I don't have any copies of the volumes in French) so I can't make an actual comparison.QUOTE]

In other ways, very good? I'm can't believe I'm not the only one aware of the term, purple prose. That is a style I tend to dislike. I usually like good prose that is descriptive but gets to the point.

[mayneverhave]

[QUOTE=Mr.lucifer;1004116]

Syntactically complex of course, but rarely does it seem forced or affected. It rarely veers towards being too purple, although this seems a common criticism. Although my French is poor (and I don't have any copies of the volumes in French) so I can't make an actual comparison.QUOTE]

In other ways, very good? I'm can't believe I'm not the only one aware of the term, purple prose. That is a style I tend to dislike. I usually like good prose that is descriptive but gets to the point.

Proust's lyrical flights are pretty common in the first two volumes (especially the Combray section of Swann's Way and the Balbec section of Within a Budding Grove), almost always meditating on a subject of great natural beauty. For the majority of the novel, however, Proust's focus is on the characters and their rises and falls in society. This doesn't stop him from the occasional poetic language, such as this beautiful paragraph describing the narrator's mistress as she sleeps, that is perhaps as lyrical as Proust gets:

I, who was acquainted with many Albertines in one person, seemed now to see many more again reposing by my side. Her eyebrows, arched as I had never noticed them, encircled the globes of her eyelids like a halcyon's downy nest. Races, atavisms, vices reposed upon her face. Whenever she moved her head, she created a different woman, often one whose existence I had never suspected. I seemed to possess not one but countless girls. Her breathing, as it became gradually deeper, made her breast rise and fall in a regular rhythm, and above it her folded hands and her pearls, displaced in a different way by the same movement, like boats and mooring chains set swaying by the movement of the tide. Then, feeling that the tide of her sleep was full, that I should not run aground on reefs of consciousness covered now by the high water of profound slumber, I would climb deliberately and noiselessly on to the bed, lie down by her side, clasp her waist in one arm, and place my lips upon her cheek and my free hand on her heart and then on every part of her body in turn, so that it too was raised, like the pearls, by her breathing; I myself was gently rocked by its regular motion: I had embarked upon the tide of Albertine's sleep. THE CAPTIVE

Proust, however, is no romantic, and every great epiphany or flight of lyrical beauty is usually immediately brought back down to earth by some crushing disillusionment or some social interruption - as in this case: Albertine's waking up, and the renewal of the narrator's jealousy. Often, when Proust is describing great natural scenes (like the towers at Martinville or the trees at Balbec) he can never quite approach what mystery they seem to be imparting on him, or what exactly to do with such beauty. This is partly (along with the distraction of society and women, and a general laziness!) what causes the narrator's 4,000 page writer's block.

[mal4mac]

"If you haven't read Proust, don't worry. This lacuna in your cultural development you do not need to fill. On the other hand, if you have read all of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, you should be very worried about yourself. As Proust very well knew, reading his work for as long as it takes is temps perdu, time wasted, time that would be better spent visiting a demented relative, meditating, walking the dog or learning ancient Greek."

- Germaine Greer. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/20...e-greer-proust

[mayneverhave]

"If you haven't read Proust, don't worry. This lacuna in your cultural development you do not need to fill. On the other hand, if you have read all of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, you should be very worried about yourself. As Proust very well knew, reading his work for as long as it takes is temps perdu, time wasted, time that would be better spent visiting a demented relative, meditating, walking the dog or learning ancient Greek."

- Germaine Greer. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/20...e-greer-proust

There's no real reason to suspect that reading Proust is any more of a time sink than reading any other great author - this one just happens to have his masterpiece come in seven volume novel form, as opposed to an epic poem or a collection of plays. Germaine Greer, in 8 paragraphs, doesn't really address the actual novel at all, aside from complaining about the typeface of the French edition, the faults of the Scott Moncrieff translation (which has been revised by Terrence Kilmartin in the Modern Library ed.) and the Penguin translations (a different translator for every volume), and with the problems with acquiring a perfect master text (as Proust died before he could revise the later volumes), which is pretty silly as nearly every author has some sort of textual inconsistency. In light of her article, I would say the only thing that stops it from being some of the worst criticism I've ever read is the fact that it's not actually criticism at all. The actual content of the novel is not even mentioned, which leads me to believe that the author is telling people not to worry if they haven't read Proust because she, herself, has not read Proust.

EDIT: And yes, I realize that it is, indeed, not a scholarly article, and therefore it's not obliged to make points and (gasp!) back them up with textual evidence.

[Jozanny]

That is a delightful undercut mal4mac, but Proust fascinates me with his use of double time, and I do not mean the use of Shakespearean double time in Othello, but rather the sustained tension between the narrator's present voice weaving into the past; it is like a wave, riding beneath, surfacing, then diving again, very strongly presented in Swann's tortured love for Odette, a dead alive man who is an immemorial living relic. I love most of the great modernists, Lampedusa, Woolf, Musil, sometimes Joyce, and I love some of the better post-modernists, but none challenge us in the way we conceptualize time and memory as does Marcel Proust. Those who can call this purple prose miss the sheer beauty of this masterwork; much like Henry James at the height of his powers, Proust is a musical score who defies the innate biology of the human animal.

[kasie]

Swann's Way was a set text in my final year and I was frankly terrified of it - I'd heard so much about it, its significance, its influence, etc. I left it until the very last minute to read, began it with great reluctance on the coach going back after the Christmas holidays - two hours latere as we pulled into Victoria coach station, I wanted to run down the coach, stopping each passenger and saying 'Have you read this? You must! It's fantastic!' in the style of the Ancient Mariner. I didn't, of course but I did corner my fellow students only to be met (mostly) with bored indifference or downright outrage at the 'waste of time'. My tutor, however, gave me a wry smile and just said 'I knew you'd like it...'

I went on to read Within a Budding Grove but then the rest of life caught up with me and I regret to say I have not continued - but it remains on my 'To Do' list.

Would you recommend the Kilmartin translation, mayneverhave? I started on the Scott Moncrieff, the only one around at the time. With the help of a French major friend, I tried a little of SW in French but my French wass not really up to such an enterprise. And yes, I too suspect the opinionated Ms Greer of not having knuckled down to the task.

[Emil Miller]

Germaine Greer has been a blot on the landscape ever since The Female Eunuch. I think she is the only woman who had to be reprimanded on an aircraft because passengers complained about her non-stop chattering. On another occasion, she shared a taxi with the Mayor of London's father and he got out at some traffic lights for the same reason. When she first arrived on the scene and I happened to mention to a friend's wife that Ms Greer was a proponent of women's lib, she replied there's no such thing it's merely women's lip.

[stlukesguild]

That is a delightful undercut mal4mac, but Proust fascinates me with his use of double time, and I do not mean the use of Shakespearean double time in Othello, but rather the sustained tension between the narrator's present voice weaving into the past; it is like a wave, riding beneath, surfacing, then diving again, very strongly presented in Swann's tortured love for Odette, a dead alive man who is an immemorial living relic. I love most of the great modernists, Lampedusa, Woolf, Musil, sometimes Joyce, and I love some of the better post-modernists, but none challenge us in the way we conceptualize time and memory as does Marcel Proust. Those who can call this purple prose miss the sheer beauty of this masterwork; much like Henry James at the height of his powers, Proust is a musical score who defies the innate biology of the human animal.

It seems you have come around a bit on Proust. I could swear that you initially were among those who would have made the accusation of "purple prose" or overkill. Your allusion to a musical score strikes me as quite apt... and of course some composers... like Wagner, Bruckner, or Mahler... employ a far greater scale and richness of instrumentation... and some less. Those who are successful at it never leave me wishing they had composed... or written... something less. Proust immediately engaged me in a way Joyce never did.

AS for the critical quip. It means less than nothing. We can certainly find similar criticisms made of nearly any great writer... often by writers and critics who are normally quite astute.