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=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.

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/2009/nov/08/germaine-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/2009/nov/08/germaine-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.

[stlukesguild]

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.

Looking at my shelves I must recognize that Proust takes up less space Dostoevski, Tolstoy, Dickens, Hugo, and many others.

[Kafka's Crow]

The thing that strikes me most about Proust is his ability to write an absolutely unforgettable prose and create scenes that live in your memory, harking you back to this gigantic work and making you feel guilty for not finishing the whole lot. Be it Swann's bicycle or the child's illness and the cake (you would never look at a Madeleine in the same way again) or a child's first love. All these things are skilfully etched on your memory. You can start without fearing that you would fail to finish it. Just read a bit, give up, come back after a week, a month, a year, two years and pick the book and start reading where you left. It will be waiting for you and you wouldn't have to back-track to remember where you left reading. I will start the third volume some day. I know where I left reading. I am sure I will never forget. 'Le temps retrouve' indeed.

[mal4mac]

Publishing house reader Jacques Madeleine:

"At the end of seven hundred and twelve pages of this manuscript, after innumerable griefs at being drowned in unfathomable developments and irritating impatience at never being able to rise to the surface -- one doesn't have a single, but not single clue of what this is about. What is the point of all this? What does it all mean? Where is it all leading? Impossible to know anything about it! Impossible to say anything about it!"

Exactly my feelings at roughly this point - and roughly when I gave up...

When Evelyn Waugh began trekking through the text he remarked, "I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective."

Ref: http://www.examiner.com/book-in-national/the-proust-project-which-i-attempt-to-change-my-life-by-reading-through-proust-one-year?render=print

[stlukesguild]

mal4mac... We all know that you don't like Proust... along with the Bible, Joyce, and several other classics. The fact that you need to dig up passing quotes by others to reinforce your point of view is somewhat pathetic don't you think? Do you need the words of a number of second rate critics to prove your point? Jacques who? I think Charles Bukowski sucks but I don't need to quote Roger Shattuck or Richard Wilbur to prove my point. I'll also willingly admit that some writers I dislike may actually be quite good... they just don't "click" for me. James Joyce doesn't do much for me. I could dig up some quotes by Borges or others dismissive of Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake just to justify my preference... but to what end? Considering Joyce's continued impact and how greatly he is admired by other writers and critics I must accept that there might just be something there that I'm not getting. Considering the writers... and readers (including your own beloved Harold Bloom) who found something of great merit in Proust one would think that you could accept the possibility that the deficiency does not necessarily lie with Proust.:nonod:

[mayneverhave]

The thing that strikes me most about Proust is his ability to write an absolutely unforgettable prose and create scenes that live in your memory, harking you back to this gigantic work and making you feel guilty for not finishing the whole lot. Be it Swann's bicycle or the child's illness and the cake (you would never look at a Madeleine in the same way again) or a child's first love. All these things are skilfully etched on your memory. You can start without fearing that you would fail to finish it. Just read a bit, give up, come back after a week, a month, a year, two years and pick the book and start reading where you left. It will be waiting for you and you wouldn't have to back-track to remember where you left reading. I will start the third volume some day. I know where I left reading. I am sure I will never forget. 'Le temps retrouve' indeed.

Obviously though, in order to get the gist of the novel, you have to traverse the entirety of it, as wonderful as Swann's Way indeed is (and for the longest time, it was the only volume I had read.) As the novel progresses and reaches its climax in Time Regained, many years have past since the narrator's childhood vacations at Combrary. The narrator himself is now an older man, a large portion of the characters are dead (including *SPOILER* Swann himself, who dies around halfway through), and the ones that have lived are all greatly changed by time. Characters who once occupied the pinnacle of the social elite (the Faubourg Saint-Germaine) are now unrecognized by the new generation of socialites, and characters who were once prostitutes (male and female) are now fashionably acceptable artists and society ladies. Quite simply, the magical illusion with which the young Marcel approached the mythical Guermantes aristocracy is brought down quite devestatingly, and even Combray itself (after German occupation in WWI) can never be the same and has lost much of its earlier magic.

And thus, by the end of the novel, and after finishing it, the early scenes of Combray and of walking the Swann and Guermantes way, are quite literaly lost to the reader, only existing as memory, and a memory which we are apt to lose in our day to day activities. That is until we open up again to the first volume of the novel (in a replica of the scene with the madeleine that the narrator himself participates) that all of Combray and all of the characters who are dead or greatly changed reappear, alive and in all their former glory. In this way, reading the novel is itself an act of reclaiming lost time.

[Mr.lucifer]

Its okay to hate a classic, but remember, just because you don't like something doesn't always mean it sucks.

[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.

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.

? As I recall, my friend, our first argument was about Don Quixote, when you and I first met online. I bought Swann's Way around the time The Shipping News was current, and economics and logistics slowed my journey. I have the other volumes on kindle, and as resources permit, may buy a boxed edition in the future.

I usually don't shoot from the hip without exposure, and I do not find Proust wordy or imprecise at all. Length has no bearing on his discipline as a writer. I have read that there are weak spots after Budding Grove, but I am braced for that.

[stlukesguild]

Its okay to hate a classic, but remember, just because you don't like something doesn't always mean it sucks.

My point exactly.

[mortalterror]

mal4mac... We all know that you don't like Proust... along with the Bible, Joyce, and several other classics. The fact that you need to dig up passing quotes by others to reinforce your point of view is somewhat pathetic don't you think? Do you need the words of a number of second rate critics to prove your point? Jacques who? I think Charles Bukowski sucks but I don't need to quote Roger Shattuck or Richard Wilbur to prove my point. I'll also willingly admit that some writers I dislike may actually be quite good... they just don't "click" for me. James Joyce doesn't do much for me. I could dig up some quotes by Borges or others dismissive of Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake just to justify my preference... but to what end? Considering Joyce's continued impact and how greatly he is admired by other writers and critics I must accept that there might just be something there that I'm not getting. Considering the writers... and readers (including your own beloved Harold Bloom) who found something of great merit in Proust one would think that you could accept the possibility that the deficiency does not necessarily lie with Proust.:nonod:

I wonder what Oscar Wilde or Walter Pater would have thought of Proust?

[Jozanny]

I wonder what Oscar Wilde or Walter Pater would have thought of Proust?

An interesting counterfactual :p But Proust also serves up your point to me once; his incorporation of himself as an increasingly asthmatic invalid solidified Modernism and its place in the 20th century. I often wonder if what I really wanted was to be a ballet dancer, but had to use poetry instead.

It might be stretching it to deem Proust disabled in our contemporary lexicon, but it can be argued that his chronic condition contributed to his observational genius, and in the sense I mean it via identity, he's arguably also one of the greatest disabled writers who ever lived.

[mayneverhave]

I wonder what Oscar Wilde or Walter Pater would have thought of Proust?

Wilde was actually a friend of Proust's (and I don't believe he was that kind of friend). Apparently Proust would throw soirees at his parents' house in Paris, and Wilde was slightly perturbed at coming out of the bathroom one evening to find Proust's mother walking by him.

There is another story of a dinner party to which Jean Cocteau, Diaghilev, Picasso, Stravinsky, James Joyce, and Proust were invited. However, it appeared neither Joyce nor Proust had read any of each other's work and the only thing they could talk about was a pain in their bowels.


It might be stretching it to deem Proust disabled in our contemporary lexicon, but it can be argued that his chronic condition contributed to his observational genius, and in the sense I mean it via identity, he's arguably also one of the greatest disabled writers who ever lived.

Proust was actually a fairly rigorous (and successful) social climber and writer of short stories and essays (over which he dueled an insulting critic), until the death of his parents and his living in a sanatorium. When he lived in Paris, he usually entertained guests throughout the night and only went out high as a kite on a variety of drugs and wrapped in blankets and jackets. Fun guy!

[Jozanny]

Wilde was actually a friend of Proust's (and I don't believe he was that kind of friend). Apparently Proust would throw soirees at his parents' house in Paris, and Wilde was slightly perturbed at coming out of the bathroom one evening to find Proust's mother walking by him.

I did not know this, but it doesn't surprise me, as Wilde's decadence was influenced by Huysmans.


There is another story of a dinner party to which Jean Cocteau, Diaghilev, Picasso, Stravinsky, James Joyce, and Proust were invited. However, it appeared neither Joyce nor Proust had read any of each other's work and the only thing they could talk about was a pain in their bowels.

I have heard this anecdote so many times that I ought to write an essay on it as a literary urban legend. The first version I was told by a would be blind lover of mine. I have heard other versions and think lukes posted one here in General Literature, a year or two back.




Proust was actually a fairly rigorous (and successful) social climber and writer of short stories and essays (over which he dueled an insulting critic), until the death of his parents and his living in a sanatorium. When he lived in Paris, he usually entertained guests throughout the night and only went out high as a kite on a variety of drugs and wrapped in blankets and jackets. Fun guy!

I am going to dig up the opening to Swann when I have a moment, as something in my mind is tying this in. I find that the kindle makes searching for passages and making notes easier, but I only downloaded one or two e-files of my actual hard copy texts.

[Seasider]

I read Swann's Way as an undergraduate and found it hypnotic in a way I have not experienced since. I intended to read other volumes But knowing how way leads on to way... I never got round to it. This thread reawakened my interest and instead of plunging straight in i downloaded a sample from Kindle. The contents of the sample are General Editor's Preface and Translators Introduction. Not a word of Marcel!!!

[My2cents]

It's seems you're making an argument on why In Search of Lost Time should be read in its entirety, if read it all.

I would argue that if you thoroughly enjoyed the parts you have read, then you would be mad (or lying to yourself [you really didn't like it]) to stop there.

I didn't (stop there), though I have to admit that the stretch involving the narrator's dalliance with Albertine nearly did me in.

Still, has there ever been a better depiction of a housemaid in all of literature than that of Proust's Francoise? Has the death of a loved one ever been written about with such exquisite pity and horror than that of Proust's narrator's grandmother? And Baron de Charlus? Has there ever been a character so unsavory and pitiable at the same time?

I'd say no on all three counts and I would also add that no writer has ever written a better meditation on art which is ultimately what In Search of Lost Time is and of which I was rewarded with for getting through the Albertine section.

[mayneverhave]

And Baron de Charlus? Has there ever been a character so unsavory and pitiable at the same time?

Charlus is perhaps the most fascinating character in the entire novel and most certainly comes across as the second protagonist. The reader's first view of him is accompanying Odette Swann in Swann's Way, where he is rumoured to be Odette's lover. Later on, in The Captive, he divulges to Marcel and Brichot that he was in fact Odette's go between with Swann, that he wrote all her love letters to Swann for her because she didn't know how to write, and that he would organize orgies with numerous men and women for her. In Within a Budding Grove, Marcel is introduced to Charlus through his nephew Saint-Loup as a womanizer and a man who despises the effeminate in other men (going so far as to physically assault a man who he thought was coming on to him). Later, in The Guermantes Way, Charlus accompanies Marcel home and confuses the narrator with his mixture of verbal assault and his offer to take Marcel under his wing. It's later revealed that Charlus is a closeted homosexual, and Marcel's potential position as Charlus's boyfriend is taken up by Charles Morel, who later repudiates him (in a scene ironically similiar to Hal's repudiation of Falstaff) under the influence of the Verdurins. By the end of the novel, Charlus is an old, highly painted, madman, lurking in the male brothels of WWI Paris.

Throughout all of this he has the appearence of being a sort of homosexual King Lear, whose extreme arrogance and rhetorical brilliance have less of the effect of being offensive than they do of being engaging and sympathetic (though not necessarily empathetic.)



I didn't (stop there), though I have to admit that the stretch involving the narrator's dalliance with Albertine nearly did me in.

Marcel's relationship with Albertine is indeed tedious. Paragraphs like this one:


It was not Albertine alone who was a succession of moments, it was also myself. My love for her was not simple: to a curiosity about the unknown had been added a sensual desire, and to a feeling of almost conjugal sweetness, at one moment indifference, at another a furious jealousy. I was not one man only, but as it were the march-past of a composite army in which there were passionate men, indifferent men, jealous men -- jealous men not one of whom was jealous of the same woman. And no doubt it would be from this that one day would come the cure for which I had no wish. In a composite mass, the elements may one by one, without our noticing it, be replaced by others, which others again eliminate, until in the end a change has been brought about which it would be impossible to conceive if we were a single person. The complexity of my love, of my person, multiplied and diversified my sufferings. And yet they could still be ranged in the two categories whose alternation had made up the whole life of my love for Albertine, swayed alternately by trust and by jealous suspicion.

don't necessarily lack the profundity that Proust delivers throughout the rest of the novel - in fact this paragraph is quite brilliant - but that paragraph after paragraph of this same subject matter begins to become very redundant. Similarly, if the section on Marcel's grandmother's death - that fantastic section - were to be drawn out over a couple hundred more pages, it would suffer from the very same problems, and lose some of its brilliance.

[mal4mac]

mal4mac... We all know that you don't like Proust... along with the Bible, Joyce, and several other classics. The fact that you need to dig up passing quotes by others to reinforce your point of view is somewhat pathetic don't you think? Do you need the words of a number of second rate critics to prove your point? Jacques who? I think Charles Bukowski sucks but I don't need to quote Roger Shattuck or Richard Wilbur to prove my point. I'll also willingly admit that some writers I dislike may actually be quite good... they just don't "click" for me. James Joyce doesn't do much for me. I could dig up some quotes by Borges or others dismissive of Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake just to justify my preference... but to what end? Considering Joyce's continued impact and how greatly he is admired by other writers and critics I must accept that there might just be something there that I'm not getting. Considering the writers... and readers (including your own beloved Harold Bloom) who found something of great merit in Proust one would think that you could accept the possibility that the deficiency does not necessarily lie with Proust.:nonod:

Given your summary of 'what I don't like' shows that you don't know what I don't like. I don't like Ulysses, but I do like Dubliners and Portrait. I like bits of the Bible, but the large chunks I don't like have put me off reading it from beginning to end. What's wrong with quoting a few experts who disagree about the worthiness of certain classics? Montaigne, for instance, was forever quoting classic authors, but no one called him pathetic for doing that.

Jacques Who, I agree, is not exactly a world-renowned expert, but I couldn't resist the quote. The others I've mentioned are heavy-hitters - Waugh, Greer, Carey...

The deficiency may well lie with me, I've never said it might not, but I find myself continuously asking why I rate classic writers like Shakespeare, Montaigne, Tolstoy, Dickens, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and Cervantes above all other writers, without reservations, but Joyce (from Ulysses onwards...), Proust, and the Bible (in bulk) do nothing for me... and I've tried reading Ulysses three times separated by three decades, last time building up too it by reading Ellmann and several other detailed secondary works... but still, no joy (definitely no joy! I liked Ellmann a lot though...)

[mal4mac]

Its okay to hate a classic, but remember, just because you don't like something doesn't always mean it sucks.

That's why you should read other critics - if a bunch of clever tykes really don't like it, then perhaps it *really does* suck.

The novels of Proust and Joyce are held up by some critics -usually elitist fans of modernism who have had a choke hold on literary circles for far too long - as *the* greatest novels, which may lead many readers attempting a classic for the first time to pick them up.

They should be warned!

There are many other novels vieing for the title "greatest" that are actually readable (try anything by Dickens or Tolstoy for starters...)

Sometimes the emperor *really does* have no clothes, perhaps only Greer and Carey are bolshy enough to point this out, or even to see it...

[Jozanny]

mal, put aside the ism for a moment, and tell me why you hate Swann? I think it is one of the most beautiful, funny, honest, poignant character examinations of love ever written, equal to Tolstoy, if not even better for being less panoramic.

Some people obviously lack the capacity, you don't, and it is puzzling.

[Alexander III]

@mal4mac

I think I get you. What your problem is with proust, I have the same thing but with Shakespeare. I mean I recognize his great poetic talents, I recognize how he deserves the tittle of best english poet - all this on an intellectual level is recognized. yet when I read or watch his plays I gain no aesthetic enjoyment. It is weird. I read, I see the great beauty there, but I do not feel it. It does nothing to me, on a level of sensation. I see he contains more beauty than Byron, shelley, Rimbaud, pound and Pushkin - yet they all procure me immense aesthetic enjoyment and sensation when I read the, Shakespeare nada.

Nonetheless I dont think myself the only critical genius and that the majority is wrong. That is rather silly. I simply accept the fact that he is great, but he has no impact upon me. Art works that way. We all have those writers which don't give us any sensation yet everyone else gets beauty from them. Just accept it.

Right now you sound equally ridiculous as if I had made the statement that Shakespeare in truth sucks and people only ind him good because of an "emperors new clothes" thing.

Actually that would sound less ridiculous than your statement as I at least have an old and possibly crazed Tolstoy backing me up, which is a far better back up than a bunch of inconsequential critics which you cited.

[OrphanPip]

I read Swann's Way in the original French. I had the impression that Proust was at times tedious, (and yes he does approach purple prose sometimes) but at other times pure genius. His sentences do go on and on and the syntax can be a chore to unravel.

I like Proust, though maybe I wouldn't place him at the top of a list of my favourite authors. I can recognize his influence too, I recognize grains of Proust in a lot of 20th century authors.

"Or I would strike a match to look at my watch. Nearly midnight. The hour when an invalid, who has been obliged to start on a journey and to sleep in a strange hotel, awakens in a moment of illness and sees with glad relief a streak of daylight shewing under his bedroom door. Oh, joy of joys! it is morning."

I have to admit that sometimes, passages like the above, can come off as a bit silly and overwritten. It kind of makes you read it over and see if you really understand what is being said, and then question whether it's just superficially odd or if there is a certain depth there.

All in all, Proust is interesting to read at least.

[mayneverhave]

That's why you should read other critics - if a bunch of clever tykes really don't like it, then perhaps it *really does* suck.

The novels of Proust and Joyce are held up by some critics -usually elitist fans of modernism who have had a choke hold on literary circles for far too long - as *the* greatest novels, which may lead many readers attempting a classic for the first time to pick them up.

They should be warned!

There are many other novels vieing for the title "greatest" that are actually readable (try anything by Dickens or Tolstoy for starters...)

Sometimes the emperor *really does* have no clothes, perhaps only Greer and Carey are bolshy enough to point this out, or even to see it...

The problem is, however, that it is one thing to make the claim that the quality of Proust, the classic status that the novel enjoys (though I wonder how many people are actually reading the entire book), is just a product of reputation, that the book is actually inferior and that everyone says it's great merely because its the fashionable thing to do, without actually making any argument whatsoever for why it doesn't deserve its status. In Search of Lost Time has its flaws. At over 4 thousand pages, it's bound to. However, given that you haven't cited any actual text, said anything about the novel's content, and have felt it reasonable merely to cite other critics (who also don't discuss the novel's content), your argument doesn't hold much ground at all. At least Orphanpip actually cited text and discussed the book, instead of making general remarks on a novel you probably have not read.


@mal4mac

I think I get you. What your problem is with proust, I have the same thing but with Shakespeare. I mean I recognize his great poetic talents, I recognize how he deserves the tittle of best english poet - all this on an intellectual level is recognized. yet when I read or watch his plays I gain no aesthetic enjoyment. It is weird. I read, I see the great beauty there, but I do not feel it. It does nothing to me, on a level of sensation. I see he contains more beauty than Byron, shelley, Rimbaud, pound and Pushkin - yet they all procure me immense aesthetic enjoyment and sensation when I read the, Shakespeare nada.

You're on your own with that one.

[Jozanny]

I can only imagine the pleasure it would be to read Lost Time in the original French, as I used to be fluent, but unfortunately it would take me too long, at my age, to combat my loss. I would hazard, however that both my hard copy Swann and my k-editions are responsible translations, as I readily lose myself in this lost world.

I agree with mayneverhave, however. I do not simply read for pleasure, but to further my ambition and education, and consider myself serious, willing to take on challenges.

I know of nothing perfect, with the possible exception of a few hundred poems, give or take. Shakespeare, Moliere, Dante, Ovid, Homer, Virgil, all are flawed. Dante used The Inferno to go after his enemies. Don't bloggers do the same?

Proust stumbles in the same manner, and his novel was rejected by publishers in his lifetime, yet both he and Joyce revolutionized literature--and this may be news to mal, but one sees glimmers of Modernism in Anna Karenina. Tolstoy simply did not live long enough, but the wave was there at the end of the century, into the 20th.

I concede pushback. There is always that, but the genie isn't going to be recorked; the legacy will always remain, and writers will continue to rise to the challenge.

[mal4mac]

@mal4mac

I think I get you. What your problem is with proust, I have the same thing but with Shakespeare. I mean I recognize his great poetic talents, I recognize how he deserves the tittle of best english poet - all this on an intellectual level is recognized. yet when I read or watch his plays I gain no aesthetic enjoyment. It is weird. I read, I see the great beauty there, but I do not feel it. It does nothing to me, on a level of sensation. I see he contains more beauty than Byron, shelley, Rimbaud, pound and Pushkin - yet they all procure me immense aesthetic enjoyment and sensation when I read the, Shakespeare nada.


I don't think you get me. Read the "Jacques Who" quote. It's not a case of my seeing beauty in Proust but not "feeling it". Perhaps I saw flashes of beauty, but not much, certainly not enough, and i just felt like i was falling into quicksand while chewing sawdust half through the thing - not seeing beauty, feeling beauty, or getting anything from it.

Isn't seeing enough, sometimes? Sight is a sensation. Do you have to feel everything in your gut? Then again, how can you read Macbeth without feeling it in your gut? Or Romeo & Juliet without feeling it in your heart? Maybe the Tempest or Midsummer come closest to me of seeing beauty without feeling it, but there there is seen beauty in every other line - and that's more than enough to keep me going!

There are several major critics who are highly critical of Proust, I remember John Carey - former Merton Professor of English at Oxford, saying he only managed to read half of it before he had to give up - so I'm in good company! There might be enough such critics to say the case on Proust is still open - he might in a hundred years be considered an undoubted great, or he might be looked on as an unusual experimental writer who affected the course of the novel, but not a great artist. Who knows?

Then again, I agree he might just have no impact upon me (or on John, Jacques, Germaine...). But there are some writers who are next-to universally appreciated. For instance, the only major writer who dislikes Shakespeare, I can think of, is Tolstoy - and I can't think of a major critic who dislikes him (you can't really trust authors here, they are too involved... Tolstoy was in a dog fight with Shakespeare over "greatest ever"... he decided to go for the jugular... ended up biting the collar, and everyone laughed... even though he is still a top dog...)

John Carey and Germaine Greer are not inconsequential critics, given their Professorships they have have as much claim to gatekeeper status as any other critics/professors of literature.

Here's a quote from John Carey's book on books, "Pure Pleasure":

"Books which I do not like, or have never been able to finish, were naturally omitted (no Proust, no Faulkner). It seems pointless to parrot other people's praise... If you cry up unreadable books, just because they have been highly though of in the past, you may deceive the young and innocent into trying them - and put them off reading for life."

[Emmy Castrol]

The deficiency may well lie with me, I've never said it might not, but I find myself continuously asking why I rate classic writers like Shakespeare, Montaigne, Tolstoy, Dickens, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and Cervantes above all other writers, without reservations, but Joyce (from Ulysses onwards...), Proust, and the Bible (in bulk) do nothing for me...

How can you like Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy at the same time? They offer two completely different and contrasting interpretations of life.


@mal4mac

I think I get you. What your problem is with proust, I have the same thing but with Shakespeare. I mean I recognize his great poetic talents, I recognize how he deserves the tittle of best english poet - all this on an intellectual level is recognized. yet when I read or watch his plays I gain no aesthetic enjoyment. It is weird. I read, I see the great beauty there, but I do not feel it. It does nothing to me, on a level of sensation. I see he contains more beauty than Byron, shelley, Rimbaud, pound and Pushkin - yet they all procure me immense aesthetic enjoyment and sensation when I read the, Shakespeare nada.


Well put.. I feel the same as you about Shakespeare. For me, I think its because where Proust laid out himself bare, Shakespeare always held part of himself back. I wonder if its because Proust had an honest, huge love for humankind whereas Shakespeare's genius may have been restricted by his possession of a less generous heart.

[mayneverhave]

Well put.. I feel the same as you about Shakespeare. For me, I think its because where Proust laid out himself bare, Shakespeare always held part of himself back. I wonder if its because Proust had an honest, huge love for humankind whereas Shakespeare's genius may have been restricted by his possession of a less generous heart.

I'm sorry, but this argument is absolute rubbish.

Not only is it a gross miscalculation to draw any conclusions about the flesh and blood author's genuine opinions from his writing, with a writer like Shakespeare, this would leave us with a composite sketch of a man who held an extraordinary number of contradictory views, from royalist and anarchist, to theist to atheist, that (given that we know very little about Shakespeare's biography) it isn't really helpful, in addition to being completely besides the point, to make a connection between Shakespeare's opinions and his plays. As for Proust, he was a staunch opponent of drawing conclusions about an author's work based on biographical material - all of this written in Contre Sainte-Beuve.

Even so, if you really wish to go down that road. Proust's huge love for mankind? Are we reading the same author? How can author who writes sentences like these:

The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and with which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.

and is probably in the running with Jonathan Swift for the most misanthropic author in Western literature, be construed as a great lover of mankind? If we can draw but one conclusion based on the scant information we get about the narrator in In Search of Lost Time, it is that he is a massive egotist, whose disillusionment with friendship, society, and love is rivaled only by his representation of the near constant failings of his characters in every aspect of life. In Proust, man (and woman) is vile, pernicious, jealous, cruel, and unsympathetic.

The only saving grace to all of this, and the only thing Proust is really optimistic about, is the power of Art, and its ability to transcend time and the failings of human life.

[My2cents]

The novels of Proust and Joyce are held up by some critics -usually elitist fans of modernism who have had a choke hold on literary circles for far too long - as *the* greatest novels, which may lead many readers attempting a classic for the first time to pick them up.




There's no need to cite critics who are unfavorably disposed to Proust as if what you are saying is something more profound than "The book is too damned long!" "The book is intolerably overwritten!" "The book is mind numbingly boring!", the permutations of which had you confined your opinions to would have been to your credit as you would then be merely expressing your reading experience as opposed to extrapolating it to preposterous conclusions: that the preeminence Joyce shares with Proust is an elitist conspiracy, that the said conspiracy has misguided readers to Joyce and Proust when they could be reading Tolstoy and Dickens.

Really?

Just because you abandoned In Search of Lost Time, finding it unreadable and what not, doesn't make it any less a classic or not the greatest novel ever, as if a critic would ever be so delusional as to make substantiating or discrediting such claims his life's mission.

[Jozanny]

To get back to the text, and or the issues surrounding it, I wonder how genuine Proust's feelings were toward Gilberte Swann. Is the memory a construct for a primarily French Catholic audience? If one compares established homosexual writers, Henry James impregnates physical intimacy as a tortured implosion waiting in the wings; Wilde, of whom I know less, seems to conceal intimacy in a satiric gaming theory, but Proust is much more fluid, and I felt rather charmed by the girl in Swann who would go very far for that kiss, but wasn't a bad girl, just the same. This is not quite the pathology one gets out of Zola in the late empire.

Perhaps Proust was just less settled, or less certain? Does he mention his own relationships with men at all in the later volumes?

[OrphanPip]

My understanding is that Proust was pretty insecure about his sexuality. The only reason we know he was gay was because Gide blabbed about it after Proust died.

[Alexander III]

My understanding is that Proust was pretty insecure about his sexuality. The only reason we know he was gay was because Gide blabbed about it after Proust died.


Actually he was the one of the first european writers to be open about his sexuality in his work. He was insecure about it, but he was open about it.

Or at least that is what wikipedia told me...

[OrphanPip]

Actually he was the one of the first european writers to be open about his sexuality in his work. He was insecure about it, but he was open about it.

Or at least that is what wikipedia told me...

Depends how you want to define open about it, he wrote one of the first works to contain explicit homosexuality, but he never once admitted he was gay. Moreover, the work itself is rather condemnatory of open homosexuality. (At least it's less creepy than Mann's Death in Venice)

Edit: Andre Gide is probably the most "open" homosexual modernist writer that I'm aware of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corydon_%28book%29

Edit2: I'm thinking that the "only" is perhaps an exaggeration, it would have been possible to deduce that Proust was likely gay without Gide, but Gide is famous for publicizing the fact.

[Jozanny]

Interesting. I have not read Gide, not that I know of, beyond excerpts. I'll have to bookmark that, but I have read that Proust was disparging of the female sex toward the end of his life. I cannot recall the site, but it was not wikipedia that noted it. They quoted Proust.

Part of the reason I bring up, is that Swann's love story with Odette reads very authentic with me, but Proust and Gilberte feels closer to an artifice, a feint, this *seeing red* when she sends him a missive inviting him to tea, or the earlier letters to Swann himself, as if there is too much effort involved in trying to get the girl to heart him. Puppy love might be like that, I can't remember :lol:.

Maybe this is a paper for me, to quell some ghosts, a comparative look at James, Forster, Proust, Zola. Authorities on Zola claim he had to portray lesbianism as vicious to get Nanna in print, but I believe he was hostile toward women using sexuality for economic security.

[My2cents]

To get back to the text, and or the issues surrounding it, I wonder how genuine Proust's feelings were toward Gilberte Swann.

According to George Painter, Proust was fifteen when he fell in love with Marie de Benardaky, the real life model for Gilberte Swann. He also says that it was 1893, the year Proust first made acquaintance with the real life model for Charlus, when he became aware of his "inversion". (Proust was born in 1871.)

[Jozanny]

Leo Bersani already covered these issues, in A Future for Astyanax. I will have to get it, read it, annotate if I am serious about doing a short comparative study, as well as finish Proust.

Perhaps I should simply surrender.

[wizenedyouth]

.

I'm nearing the end of Le côté de Guermantes, the first volume I'll have read entirely in french (albeit with some cross-referencing between the original french and the penguin translation by Mark Treharne), and I have to say that the latest penguin translations retain Marcel's voice, style, pace, elegance, and above all, simplicity* so well that I didn't feel any dissonance between the experiences of reading Recherche in both English and French. Maybe this is a testament to the proximity of our languages, such as similarities in our use of idiom? Or perhaps just an effect of consistently cross-referencing between the two editions (I'd be interested in other opinions on translating Proust).

For me, Proust's value lies in his ability to isolate universal moments that resonate with the reader; in Swann's way this most famously relates to the tumultuous feelings of anxiety and vulnerability that we all experience in childhood, but it extends beyond that. As someone who has watched younger family members grow up, I was moved by the following simile (copied from the Treharne translation):

[I]I have chosen to leave out context in the interest of avoiding 'spoilers', since I'm not certain about the etiquette around plot-spoiling, being new to the community.

And after the geraniums, by intensifying their brilliant colour, have put up a vain struggle against the gathering twilight, a mist comes to envelop the island as it falls into slumber; you walk in the moist darkness along the water's edge, where the only thing likely to startle you is the silent passage of a swan, like the briefly wide-open eyes and smile of a child in bed at night whom you thought was asleep. And because you feel alone and the world can seem far away, you long all the more to have a lover walking beside you.

Perhaps this won't carry much resonance with others, but therein lies the beauty of Proust. You feel a personal connection to his poetic prose because of how it interacts with your own experiences, so I guess I can say he achieves a kind of 'tailored' or 'personalised' universality. For me, I remembered times when I would look after my younger relatives and find them innocently scampering around at bed time, or telling me about their dreams in a half-sleeping daze. Similarly, I felt a pang of guilt when reading Marcel's rumination on the nature of self-reproach, remembering and regretting an incident from my adolescence when I was cruel to my sister.

On another level, I find Proust hilarious. There is a scene in which a younger Bloch (Swann's way) sobs at the thought of Marcel's grandmother taking ill in bed, so eager is he to convey his sensibility he neglects the fact that she was merely suffering from a momentary bout of cold, if that, thus betraying his pretentious nature; it still makes me laugh. Not to mention the antics of Aunt Léonie and the contradictions inherent to Françoise.

The more I read through the Recherche, I find myself talking to my friends about his characters as if I had just left their salon, they are some of the most multi-dimensional and life-like I've ever experienced, in spite of the chasm of epoch and social milieu that separates us.

These are my initial thoughts but I look forward to discussing more with you all.

* 'Simplicity' might sound odd, given his penchant for what a lot of people see as Proustian convolution, but I mean it to outline a contrast with some earlier translations that forsake Proust's style for unnecessary floweriness on the translator's part.