This is a feast: a diverse collection of pieces published by Marcel.Proust in his early twenties. Pleasures and Days consists of short stories, sketches, and poetry published as a collection. Proust was honing the remarkable gift with which he was born, refining his sensibilities, playing with style and content.
A.N. Wilson in a brief, informative foreward:
"He wrote them in the intervals of being a bored and unwilling law student who...rather than revise for exams, would prefer to cultivate artists and grandes dames...Just as the youthful Darwin had painstakingly observed the minute gradations of finches' beaks in the Galapagos Islands...so the young Proust, noting how a certain social species might turn up now in a great salon, now in an artist's studio, and again in a low dive had begun the process of accumulating knowledge which would produce the greatest masterpiece of French fiction: In Search of Lost Time."
Andrew Brown, who I believe, based on my reading several translations of In Search of Lost Time, has done a fine job translating, observes in his introduction:
"The best commentary on Proust's first published work, Pleasures and Days, can be found in his mature masterpiece In Search of Lost Time...The complex syntax, those long sentences with their coiling clauses that he was already practicing in the Pleasures (with varied success - many of these pieces were dashed down in a few hours and never revised...)"
And Anatole France in his preface (because it's Proust; I didn't mind three intros):
"His book is like a young face full of rare charm and elegant grace...The calendar of Pleasures and Days marks both the hours of nature, in its harmonious depictions of the sky, the sea and the woods, and the hours of humankind in its faithful portraits and its genre paintings, with their wonderful finish...He here shows a sureness of touch surprising in such a young archer."
The poems, "Portraits of Painters and Musicians," don't rhyme but the meter is essential and even granting the difficulty of translating poetry, the meter is superb. They are a treat and a surprise in a book which has several. In the portraits of artists he evokes beautifully their paintings; in those on the composers he uses meter as homage to the music while the words capture the mood.
The short stories reflect the magnificence of his prose in In Search of Lost Time and the themes. All of the ingredients are here along with an unexpected surprise. There are three short stories about a character, Honore, at different points in his life. The first finds Proust writing magical realism! It's wonderful; I wish he'd done more of it -- though not at the expense of the masterpiece.
There's also a surprising, entertaining homage to one of Proust's favorite writers (and mine), Flaubert, in the form of a new story featuring the characters from Flaubert's book Bouvard and Pechuchet. Flaubert's book is satirical and comic; Proust sticks to the spirit and the form and takes them forward in time in "Bouvard and Pechuchet on Society and Music." It begins, "'Now that we have a position,' said Bouvard, 'why shouldn't we go out into society like everyone else?'" I've only read bits of the book but this seems spot-on and is a standalone piece. Experiencing young Proust having a laugh with Flaubert, perfectly adopting his style and writing for these two clever comic characters is fun.
Then there are the sketches, grouped together as "Fragments From Italian Comedy." Some or all of these are the ones translator Brown tells us Proust wrote quickly and didn't revise. There is plenty of playfulness in his masterpiece -- but these sketches are different because they're not polished by Proust's painstaking, at times painful, editing.
I felt joy reading a joyful, young Marcel. Here is the entirety of "Heldemone, Adelgise, Ercole":
"Having witnessed a rather indelicate scene, Ercole does not dare to relate it to the Duchess Adelgise, but does not feel the same scruples in front of the courtesan Heldemone.
"'Ercole,' exclaims Adelgise, 'do you really think that such a story isn't fit for my ears? Ah, I am sure that you would not behave the same way with the courtesan Heldemone. You respect me: you don't love me.
"'Ercole,' exclaims Heldemone, 'don't you have more of a sense of decency than to tell me that story? Just tell me -- would you treat the Duchess Adelgise the same way? You don't respect me: so you can't possibly love me.'"
I haven't done Pleasures and Days justice, I couldn't possibly. The best, indeed the only, worthy review I could present you with would be if you could see the beaming smile on my face the whole time I worked on this.