In the Shadow of Girls in Blossom

by Marcel Proust, Charlotte Mandell (Translator), Edward J. Hughes (Introduction)

'I was at one of those periods in youth--vacant, without any particular love object--when, like a lover seeing his beloved in all things, we desire, we seek, we see Beauty everywhere.'

In the Shadow of Girls in Blossom, the second volume of Proust's In Search of Lost Time (1913-27), is a novel of exploration and (self-) discovery, continuing the story of the narrator's youth and adolescence. From the enclosed spaces of the fin-de-siècle social world that revolves around Madame Swann, we move to the fictional town of Balbec on the Normandy coast, a place where the social classes intermingle with mutual fascination. Against the ever-changing backdrop of the sea--a constant reminder of beauty, mutability, and the vastness of the world beyond individual human affairs--the narrator encounters individuals who will shape his experience and indelibly colour his outlook on that world. He finds a friend in the aristocratic Robert de Saint-Loup and is perplexed by his enigmatic uncle the Baron de Charlus; he finds a tutelary figure in Elstir, the gifted, idiosyncratic painter; and in Albertine he comes to recognise the blossoming girl who will become the love--and the bane--of his life.

The novel provides a breath-taking illumination of what it is to encounter beauty and to seek to understand our relation to it, in people, in experiences, in art, or the landscape around us. An exploration of the thrills of infatuation, the fallibility of perception, and how desire builds and ebbs, the narrative prepares readers for the love affair that will define the narrator's future existence and shape the volumes of In Search of Lost Time to come.

ABOUT THE For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Genres: Classics, Fiction

Kindle Edition

Published November 25, 2024

About the author

Marcel Proust was a French novelist, best known for his 3000 page masterpiece À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time), a pseudo-autobiographical novel told mostly in a stream-of-consciousness style.

Born in the first year of the Third Republic, the young Marcel, like his narrator, was a delicate child from a bourgeois family. He was active in Parisian high society during the 80s and 90s, welcomed in the most fashionable and exclusive salons of his day. However, his position there was also one of an outsider, due to his Jewishness and homosexuality. Towards the end of 1890s Proust began to withdraw more and more from society, and although he was never entirely reclusive, as is sometimes made out, he lapsed more completely into his lifelong tendency to sleep during the day and work at night. He was also plagued with severe asthma, which had troubled him intermittently since childhood, and a terror of his own death, especially in case it should come before his novel had been completed. The first volume, after some difficulty finding a publisher, came out in 1913, and Proust continued to work with an almost inhuman dedication on his masterpiece right up until his death in 1922, at the age of 51.

Today he is widely recognized as one of the greatest authors of the 20th Century, and À la recherche du temps perdu as one of the most dazzling and significant works of literature to be written in modern times.

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I understand why volume 2 of The Novel Containing All of Human Sensory Consciousness, the one where Marcel gets horny on vacation for a bunch of hot girls, is so many people's favorite. I was riveted to my seat by two full pages about him looking at a few trees while driving past them in a carriage.

At dinner recently I tried to explain to a friend what I think Proust is doing – "you know when you're a kid, and you look at something, and it's kind of weird, and you know it holds some kind of significance for you but you can't explain why, and it doesn't exactly fit into words? But there was just MORE to it, and it was connected to your past, there was some distinction? Remember that?? Proust does that." They looked at me like I had two heads. Maybe not everyone was the kind of kid I was, but Proust was. And I appreciate him for that

(Gorgeously translated by Charlotte Mandell, whose version should become definitive. CK Scott Moncrieff, to the dustbin of history you go. THE DUSTBIN. So what if your difficulty is supposed to emulate Proust's own. It's not necessary≈ anymore. We have the technology.)

[Reuben · Rating 5 out of 5]

volume 2/7 finished. must be one of the best books i’ve ever read. it took me ages, but i loved to savour it. it feels like you can find all of life in this book – completely timeless.

[oliver · Rating 3 out of 5]

In lieu of a review, I offer my list of new to me vocabulary:

Tisane - herbal tea
Pas-de-quartre - a dance with four participants
Intaglio - a design created by cutting into a printing plate
Samovar - a metal urn used to make tea
Spume - froth or foam, especially that of waves
Faille - a soft, light-woven fabric with a ribbed texture
Chatelaine - the mistress of a chateau
Tamarisks - a tree with a feathery appearance due to its scale-like leaves on thin branches
Transept - the two parts of a church forming the arms of a cross shaped church, projecting from the nave
Morocco (adjective) - a fine leather from goatskin tanned with sumac
Cheval-glass - a freestanding large mirror, usually with a tilt mechanism
Vetiver - a species of tropical grass
Belvedere - a summer house or open-sided gallery, typically at rooftop level
Cambric - a lightweight cotton or linen fabric
Introit - a psalm sung as the priest approaches the altar
Analgesic - a drug that relieves pain
Zither - a string instrument common in Central European music
Batonnier - the president of a law society
Rince-bouches - a small bowl of perfumed warm water presented to guests at a dinner between courses
Barouche - a horse drawn carriage
Esplanade - a long, open walkway alongside a body of water
Narthex - a vestibule in a church
Pistils - the female reproductive parts of a flower
Ogival - having a pointed, curved shape; the adjective form of an ogee
Portico - a porch leading to an entrance
Custumal - a written account of the customs of a local community
Vicuña - a wild Andean animal related to the llama and the alpaca
Quarterings (heraldic) - a method of joining several coats of arms in one
Pepla - a flared ruffle
Androcephalous - of an animal or beast, having a human head
Valerian - a strongly smelling flowering herb
Cocotte - a courtesan
Lorgnette - opera glasses held by a long handle
Confabulation - an imagined memory
Peri - beautiful, feared supernatural beings in Arabic mythology
Unctuous - pleasingly rich
Predella - the lowest part of an altarpiece, often part of a polytypch
Ataxia - a loss of muscle control
Toque - a hat with narrow or no brim
Zoophyte - an obsolete term for a class of organism thought to be between animals and plants
Diabolo - a circus prop similar to a double sided yo-yo
Corolla - the petals of a flower
Cryptogams - plants which reproduce without seeds
Papilinaceous - related to a family of flowers that resemble butterflies

[Fox Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Proust has wowed me again with his second volume. His writing style and themes of memory and time continue to make for a series perhaps without equal. I enjoyed that this volume adds a new focus on 'expectations and reality,' whether of a person or place.

The secondary characters (other than most of the girls) are more memorable than in the first first volume. Bergotte, Elstir, and Robert de Saint-Loup each have memorable scenes, though it is probably Odette and Gilberte in the first half of the volume that will stick with me. Even so, readers will know it is neither the plot nor the characters that makes this such a wonderful series but rather the insights of narrator Marcel.

This volume is also funnier than the first, though that may be due to the translator. There were several scenes worthy of a genuine laugh; if our little narrator can occasionally be ridiculous, it is only in the best way.

Perhaps I repeat myself...but if you refuse to read Proust, you do yourself a great disservice.

[felicia varenius]

“the masterpiece we gaze upon during dinner doesn't give us the same intoxicating joy we can only expect from it in an art gallery, which, by its bareness and lack of any personality of its own, symbolizes much more aptly the inner spaces into which the artist withdrew to create it.”

“it seemed to me that whatever there was that was great and real in this performance would be even more so if the actress superimposed it on work of real value instead of embroidering truth and beauty on a mediocre, common fabric.”

[isabella · Rating 5 out of 5]

“no matter what I loved, it could only be attained after a long and painful pursuit; and this supreme goal could be achieved only on condition that I sacrifice to it the pleasure I’d hoped to find in it”

[Jesse Hilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just beautiful. Nabokov is but a junior partner to Proust, and for those who love Nabokov’s prose it is logical to jump back to this earlier practitioner, who takes his time and uses a steady eye and a steady sense of syntax (I can’t read French only translations, so what do I know?). Proust had a keen eye for the complicated inner contortions of love and the feelings of inevitability, of oceanic pressure that comes during the fall into love. Jealousy also gets an apt chronicling. Charlotte Mandell translated and from what I could read it was enjoyable, funny, beautiful. I was once again surprised at how much of a page-turner Proust turns out to be. It’s encouraging to feel this pace developing as you read, since the entire novel is what, 3,000 pages long?

Onto volumes three and four! I’d already read three, The Guermantes Way, but I’ve forgotten much of it and might need to reread. A scary thought because that book is 814 pages long…brrr…

[Monica Macansantos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I chose to read this translation of In Search of Lost Time's Volume 2 after reading a glowing review on Lit Hub, and loved it so much that I've decided to stick to the Oxford World Classics translations of the rest of the series (I hope to at least get to Volume 4 of this masterpiece!). Though I don't read French, I feel that Mandell's translation allows Proust's voice to truly shine through--Mandell's style is clearer than Moncrieff's while preserving Proust's elegance, and I also enjoyed her translation better than Davis's translation of Volume 1 (which I found a little dry). As for the book itself, I love this volume perhaps even better than volume 1--Proust sounds more mature here and I loved his ruminations on beauty and the nature of change.

My only complaint is the tiny print, but Oxford University Press doesn't seem to plan on changing this anytime soon for its World's Classics series.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not less dreaming, but more dreaming, nothing but dreaming.

[Ramzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Six stars.

[L. A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really incredible follow up to the first volume. there are two sections, "Mme Swann's circle", which is a really interesting follow up to "Swann in love" in the first volume and details the narrators love of the Swanns' daughter Gilberte and his eventual loss of that love, and "Place names: the place", which details the narrators time spent convalescing at a beach resort and eventually meeting a number of characters who will continue to be relevant in the future volumes, including Charlus, Saint-Loup, and especially Albertine.

Mme Swann's circle presents a sort of mirror image of Swann in love in that the latter Swann's attempt to deal with feelings of jealousy by pulling away from his paramour Oddette, ending with his statement that seemed like a conclusive break, but was followed up by flash forward in time in which they are married and seeming a loving, devoted couple. In Mme Swann's circle the narrator romantically pursues the brusque, almost masculine Gilberte, partly by ingratiating himself to her parents. He gets into a fight with Gilberte and attempts to prevent her from thinking him desperate by avoiding her, and eventually finds himself losing all interest in her but remaining on friendly terms with her parents. there are some really excellent other sections here, including the narrators interest in a play which he rehearses to himself and builds up a fantastic image of the play as performed by a famous actress. Eventually he is allowed to see the play after an eminent family acquaintance recommends it to his parents, and is disoriented by his feeling of being underwhelmed and not being able to match the enthusiasm he was led to expect by the social narrative that had enticed him in the first place. as time passes, though, he encounters other peoples impressions that put his experience there in relief and transform his initial confusion and disappointment into a richer memory, laden with impressions from those most important to him. (maybe it can be thought of as a more nuanced take on joyce's short story "araby"?)

the narrator then goes to a fictional beach town, Balbec, to convalesce, both from his illness brought on by poor constitution but also from his break with Gilberte, which he does lament indirectly. He slowly gets over his shock of the new, a new room, a new technology (the elevator), and mourning and stressing over the separation from the familiar, he eventually comes to terms with the social landscape, able to find enough comfort that he becomes curious about the others there. he becomes fascinated with a girl, albertine, and his obsession with her waxes and wanes as mediated through the various social circumstances he encounters her in, as well as the moods he flits through, eventually becoming infatuated with her.

overall, this was a really interesting read in a lot of ways. as always, prousts descriptions of inner subjectivity are powerful and intriguing, and its not hard to see how various philosophers of the french midcentury would have found inspiration here (deleuze, lacan). it also stands out to me how bleak the picture of heterosexuality is. romance is understood by the protagonist as a process of total possession, but the inevitability of the failure of this, and the supposed psychological impacts thereof come to be a major focus of the psychology of the narrator.