Remembrance of Things Past: Volume II - The Guermantes Way & Cities of the Plain

by Marcel Proust, C.K. Scott Moncrieff (Translator), Terence Kilmartin (Translator)

Including THE GUERMANTES WAY and CITIES OF THE PLAIN.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Literature, France, French Literature, Novels, Literary Fiction

1216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1922

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

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

If the cares of this world have grown far too painful and you're thinking of becoming a junkie or born-again Christian, I'd suggest that you take a less drastic step, and consider trying out Proust first, just to see how it grabs you. This is what's known in my business as a "harm reduction" approach: like addiction and religious conversion, hardcore Proust reading will suck up your time, alter your character, transform your life, and cause all your friends to hate you. You'll become completely obnoxious and will find yourself thinking and doing things you'd never have thought you would, now that this single force dominates your whole life. But in the final analysis, the toll that recherching temps perdu will take on your functioning and personal relationships is considerably less than those associated with heroin addiction or Christian fundamentalism. Besides, reading Proust probably won't make you puke the first time, and it's not incompatible with an abiding love of homosexuality or Darwin's theory of evolution.... So if you're casting around, please, at least think of giving this it a shot. If the Proust doesn't do it, that other stuff'll still be there for you to fall back on.

Okay, so Swann's Way blew my fuses (in a good way) when I read it a bit over a year ago, then i really struggled with A l'Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs, which took me a really, really long time to read because I kept putting it down. So here's what I have to say about reading Proust: Don't put it down!! The reason I'm comparing this to heroin addiction and Christian fundamentalism is that -- in my own personal experience, anyway -- one can't just casually read Proust. It's a real commitment. It's not an activity, it's a lifestyle. Because if you put the guy down then come back after a few days, you're at risk of noticing all sorts of things that hadn't occurred to you before, like, "The narrator of this novel is an odious fucktard!"; or, "The sentence I'm reading is twelve pages long!"; or, "I've just spent the last four weeks of my summer reading about fictional French aristocrats making asinine smalltalk!" Total immersion in Proust really helps one maintain the fairy spell by ignoring all this, and keeps one safely rapt in the world of salons and carriages. That's why I'm glad I was lucky enough to spend May and part of June all alone in a luxurious cork-lined room, with a servant at hand to bring me cookies and little beet and celery root salads whenever I rang.... Okay, so once in awhile I did have to go out. However, I maintained an exclusive relationship with my darling Marcel by refusing to interact with the people I knew, and on rare occasions when duty did compel me to attend social events, embarrassing my friends by working compulsive Proust references into every conversation. The end result being: no one likes me anymore. But is this so terrible? I've still got three more volumes!!! More time to read!

Fine, okay: so why do I love this book so much?

I remember there was a certain point in my development as a little person when I realized that magic just did not exist. I had to confront the fact that I'd never be able to fly, and this first harsh reality was just the beginning. Each year I get older there's some new form of magic whose impossibility I'm forced to wrestle with and ultimately submit to. These "you just can't fly" reality checks come in the form of lost opportunities, lost possibilities, and of course -- most crushingly and irrefutably -- lost time.

For me, that's what this book is about. It's both the law and the loophole, brilliantly and impossibly the barred entrance and secret back door in, because what Proust is saying is that you cannot go back, but then just as he says that he does send you there, and that's why it's great, that's the main reason. This book flung me back into time, into someone and someplace else, and in doing so lifted me out of my life and its sad limitations. I just read Brad's review of Lord of the Rings, books I've never read but which I know people love for Tolkien's success in creating a self-contained, separate world. In Search of Lost Time is a similar thing, though instead of elves and orcs, you've got homosexual barons and bourgeois strivers, and instead of Middle Earth there's Paris and hotels and the inside of Proust's brain. This is fantasy in the best possible sense of the term, a kind of transcendent escapism I could never get from opiates or speaking in tongues.

Also, did I mention all the GAY SEX???? I never realized before reading this that I'm actually an extremely snobby, rich, asthmatic gay man, but I really must be, since this all totally resonated and proved so fascinating. Another thing I really liked here and am not ashamed to admit is that since moving to New York I've developed a lot of very expensive cravings that I'll never be able to satisfy; to me, Proust is the haute couture of literature, and it gratifies me enormously that while the tragic course of my life has doomed me to unglamorous schlumping around in H&M drudgery, nothing prevents me from hobnobbing in salons with the Duchesse de Guermantes while contemplating the rays of the setting sun against a gently gleaming seascape.... This is the book version of a priceless Parisian ballgown from the turn of the last century, and I got my copy for $1.50 at the Woodstock library book fair! Okay, so the previous owner had gone through and underlined all the gay stuff, but that's still a steal (and the timing was incredible: I came across it just as I was finishing Part II!). Literature really does have some democratic qualities....

I can only give a book five stars if I honestly feel like it transformed my life. Reading this installed a new application in my brain which causes me now during idle moments to consider, WWPT ("What Would Proust Think?")? This is probably most entertaining during social gatherings, but it's a device that can entertain me in almost any situation. I will never be the same again, mostly in ways that are enjoyable to me (though again, and I can't emphasize this enough, possibly not to the people I know).

I cannot in good conscience recommend this book to everyone across the board, because I'm highly aware that there's a lot to hate here. I can actually think of more reasons why someone would loathe this than why someone would love it, and I'm not entirely sure how I wound up in the latter instead of the former camp. I do think this is one of the greatest things ever written, though I don't know that I'd especially want to argue that point with anyone. All I'm really sure about is that I love it, and though I can name some appealing qualities, I'm still not completely sure why this love is so strong. Maybe it's because I'm a ridiculous, pretentious snob who gets a kick out of reading something hilariously long and generally considered rarified? Or because I understand the pain of suspecting one's "straight" significant other of being secretly homosexual (hi, Brian!)? Maybe it's because I really appreciate novels that couldn't be movies, that truly exploit the form to its limits? Or because I enjoy loving something I know I could hate, that wouldn't appeal to a lot of other people, or even to me at an earlier point in my life...? Or maybe because it's so totally unlike anything else I've ever read or loved? Yet so deeply engaging and astounding that I sometimes feel my whole life's just prepared me to read and to relish this book...? Well, I don't rightly know! I just know that I love it, and that I cannot stop reading these things, despite their deleterious effects on my personal life. All I really want to do these days is read Proust, think about Proust, talk about Proust, etc.... somehow this hasn't really translated into an interest in writing about Proust, but I thought I should account for the last month of my life.

Proust! AAGHH! FUCK!!!! He's the greatest!!! One of the glorious tragedies of reading this is that it's really destroyed my capacity to read anything else, because whenever I try I'm just completely preoccupied by the knowledge that I'm wasting precious time I could spend reading Proust instead. So I guess I've got no choice at this point but to get through the rest of this, so that hopefully after that I can move on with my life... And by move on with my life I obviously mean, learn to read French?

Onto the next one! Yeeeeehaw!

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately Volume II (containing ‘The Guermantes Way’ and - brilliant title - ‘The Cities of the Plain’) focuses too much on a narrow self-interested group of characters for my liking.

Beauty and wit vie with slog in abundance. I’ve even surprised myself with how long it’s taken me to finish this section.

Are we there yet? Volume III begins now.

[Warwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I reviewed Le côté de Guermantes here…

…and Sodome et Gomorrhe here.

[Timothy Hallinan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this, the third volume of what I'm coming to believe is the greatest novel ever written, the world of privileged--which is to say, entitled and rich--society opens to us. The first volume, SWANN'S WAY, begins on the level of a bourgeois household in the provinces (the narrator's), even taking its title from one of the walks the narrator's family regularly takes in the village of Combray, where they spend their summers. It begins with the famous (and almost insurmountable) sequence in which the narrator tries to go to sleep and moves on to present its narrator's childhood: ill, neurasthenic, abnormally obsessed with his mother; and also the family's insular life, which is enlivened by the visits of a neighbor named Swann, who lives most of his life in Paris--quite glamorously, it seems--and who has married a woman the narrator's parents "refuse to meet." In the second part of the book, "Swann in Love," we follow Swann's earlier life in Paris, where the most exclusive drawing rooms are open to him, and where he pursues and eventually marries a high-class whore named Odette.

In the second volume, WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE, the narrator is a teenager in Paris, where he is bewitched by the first girl he will ever love (obsessively, too), Gilberte, who proves to be the daughter of Swann and Odette. The book takes us into Swann's opulent household, in which his wife is visited only by those low down the social ladder, and into the home of the Verdurins, inexhaustibly rich bourgeoisie with the highest social pretensions. Madame Verdurin, the glue that traps all the climbers who assemble to dine with the Verdurins every Wednesday, is one of the greatest characters I've ever read, a comic monster on a par with Widmerpool in Anthony Powell's A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME.

In the latter half of this book, Marcel (the narrator) goes to the seaside town of Balbec, where, newly estranged from Gilberte, he falls in love with every girl he sees, but one of them stands out: Albertine. The Verdurins are also in Balbec, being horrifically awful, and here Marcel meets the aristocratic army officer Robert de Saint-Loup, who is a nephew of the Guermantes family, the leading nobility of the Combray area, where Marcel's family lives part-time.

Which brings us to THE GUERMANTES WAY, named for both the extraordinarily aristocratic Guermantes family, who play a significant role in the book, and also for the other walk the family frequently took in Combray, the longer one, which led them in the direction of the castle of the Guermantes. When this book opens, Marcel's family has moved to the Hotel Guermantes, the family's traditional Paris home which, like many aristocratic Paris homes, takes up most of a block and has areas that are rented out. Looking down on the courtyard, Marcel sees the comings and goings of the Guermantes and their circle, perhaps the most elevated in Paris society. (It's also the model that the Verdurins' weekly gatherings attempt so desperately to imitate.) From his perch, Marcel falls in love with the Duchesse de Guermantes, a beautiful woman married to an affectionate but compulsively philandering husband. Marcel falls in love with her and tries desperately to meet her but fails, and he realizes that she is avoiding him in the street.

When he finally gains entrance into the Guermantes' drawing room and, through them, into other aristocratic homes in the Faubourg St. Germaine, he is dazzled by the glory, if faded, that he sees in these names, found all over maps of France. At the same time, however, he realizes that their conversation is mundane and their intellects no sharper than those of the middle class. Even so, their manners and graces enchant him, although he's puzzled by their incurious acceptance of him in their midst, given his upper middle-class place in life. (Though Marcel's experience, Proust sounds the first note of one of the book's themes, the gradual infiltration of the upper class by those who do not belong to it by birth--a process that will conclude in the seventh book with the ultimate triumph of Madame Verdurin.)

This book also reintroduces him to Albertine, the girl Marcel met in Balbec, who, this time, is much more willing (perhaps more willing than he) to enter into a physical relationship with him. This relationship will be central to the fourth book, CITIES OF THE PLAIN (SODOM AND GOMORRAH, in other translations) and the fifth, THE CAPTIVE.

Of course, it's impossible either to review or summarize Proust because what he's really writing about most of the time is the internal life of his characters, especially Marcel. All I can say is that, when I read it, this book seemed to be the fastest-moving of the first three and to possess the most memorable characters (except for Swann), but then it could simply be that I was learning to read Proust.

Why does it get five stars? Because it's unique in the true sense of the word: the novel essentially reinvented. And do I think you should read it? At some point in your life, if you love books, it's essential.

[Katya · Rating 4 out of 5]

currently reading... the second 1000 pages goes a lot quicker than the first.

if you want a complete experience reading the proust, its actually necessary to read the last volume first, otherwise you really have no idea what to be following in the first 1000 pages

[Jojo · Rating 5 out of 5]

the opening to Cities of the Plain is perhaps my favorite prose piece ever written.

[Michael Battaglia · Rating 5 out of 5]

As disconcerting as it can be to painstakingly grind one's way through a thousand pages of an extraordinarily dense novel and realize that you're only a third of the way through it, it actually does get easier once you pass that first volume (admittedly quite the hurdle) and move into the second volume. A combination of me slowly getting used to Proust's knotted sentence structures (seriously, they're not just like a snake attempting to eat themselves but like a snake going back in time to eat itself and its parents simultaneously) and the author dialing back on the diction ever so slightly leads to some level of comfort with the whole affair and the experience becomes a bit more immersive. Familiarity does help, as while he seems to have more characters introduced than I have friends on social media, a lot of characters make repeat appearances from the earlier volume and in fact find themselves deepened and brought into sharper focus as a result. The themes of time and memory remain much the same but with the definite sense of passing time it adds more poignancy to the proceedings, as if starts to seem as if telling the tale brings about its own costs. Instead of reading about the narrator going on and on about whatever sentimental philosophy that occurred to him at a particular time, there's a weight to it now, a grasping sense of trying to recapture something before it fades away entirely or slips through his fingers. The writing could hardly be called "feverish" but in some moments there's a hint of desperation, as if by not getting this down correctly he risk not only losing a vital part of himself, but of family and friends that are long gone already and drifting into oblivion even further by the second.

Still, it definitely takes some getting used to, even for veterans of the first volume. The narrator remains somewhat self-involved, going on and on at length about things that don't seem that consequentially proportional even to people who might have attached some importance to them (a lot of it centers around his grandmother). His focus on the little details of life as what makes our memories important has quite a bit of resonance (how many of us remember a departed family member fondly by recalling a particular quirk or habit?) but sometimes after ten pages of musing on such a topic you want to tell the fellow, enough already, we get it. For a good portion of both sections in this volume he seems to spend almost his entire time going from one party to another where the rich and the nobility mingle and say snarky things to each other while he stands around and records it all. Characters float in and out of the mix, sometimes people get on a train or a carriage and go to a different party where much the same things happen as at the party before and if you try to capture all the details in your head to keep it straight it's probably futile. If you read it purely for the sense of immersion then your subconscious seems to pick up on the minor details and eventually you start to get a feel for the material. This does run the risk of interpreting the book as a blurry parade of snooty people who think they're very witty and in some respect that's not far off the mark.

The parties seem to act as interstitial material for the sections that really connect. In "The Guermantes Way" it's those sections that deal with the narrator's friend Robert and his mistress and most of all the sequence that deals with the fading out and eventual demise of the narrator's grandmother. For once all the verbiage seems to be attuned to the right frequency and as he alternates between a rather sober description of someone dying by degrees with musings about the import of it all and his attempts to keep her fresh in his memory (which becomes a strand that colors the rest of the second volume) the book starts to take on an emotional rigor that it lacked a little bit before and from there it becomes a way into the world of the novel. Suddenly the characters start to make sense as people and it all starts to loosen up a bit, with the lightness and humor beginning to be contrasted nicely with the rather more serious concerns the book has. The first big change to the narrator's life beyond moving from one place to another starts to give the book some forward motion where before it floated in a haze of really specific memory. Time starts to blend and skip along and it becomes easier to follow the thread of the nested narrative flashbacks, as one memory sparks another and he just decides to follow to wherever it leads. The cumulative weight of all the text starts to have an effect, as in a scene where Swann shows up out of nowhere and he's noticeably older, you can definitely feel the passage of time (a scene featuring him at the very end winds up being almost unbearably poignant). And even when you don't share his fascinations about why the Guermantes family is just so darn awesome (they seem all right), his probing vigor helps to drive the narrative along. You may question his obsession with following Mme de Guermantes around all the time but at least she seems annoyed by it, which is an understandable reaction. The narrator's a pretty weird guy, in all honesty. One who never seems to work, either.

One thing that will probably help people attempting to get into this volume and the series as a whole is to read up on the Dreyfuss affair, even if it's just a brief summary of the particulars. A political scandal of the day that divided the thinking folk of the country much the way that we get so heated over who is going to win "American Idol", many of the conversations in this volume center around whether someone is pro- or anti-Dreyfuss, to the point where it impacts a lot of the relationships between the characters. The really short version is that Dreyfuss was framed by a military that needed to convict someone, who then compounded their goof once they realized it by doubling down and manufacturing evidence to make sure he was guilty. As a study in a series of boneheaded decisions it's fascinating, but to most people it's going to come across as a rather big and unnecessary mess. However it did get the French of the day all fired up and familiarizing yourself, while not essential (I made it most of the way through before getting a chance to read over the details), will go a long way toward giving some scenes a bit of extra context, mostly because everyone brings it up a lot.

"Cities of the Plain" winds up being probably the best volume so far, even if oftentimes people do things that don't make a whole lot of sense. If you have to summarize it in the style of the episode titling of a famous American TV show, it would be probably described as "The One Where Everyone is Gay". The wonderfully abrasive M de Charlus takes more prominence in the narrative (after a few memorable encounters in the previous volume) and when the narrator witnesses an encounter between him and another fellow that might involve some hanky-panky, his mind appears to be blown and the narration focuses for more time than seems reasonable on homosexuality, like he's just discovered something that no one has ever imagined before. But it winds up being a near obsession that takes us through the rest of the novel, as now Charlus' fairly open homosexuality seems unimaginably obvious to the narrator (and us) and leads to a lot of reflections on what it means to live almost secretly in society while not really hiding anything. It adds an extra edge to the proceedings, especially when the narrator seems to go over the edge slow motion and begins to suspect that literally every girl he knows outside his mother is a lesbian. In the manner of a middle school student discovering a textbook on anatomy and giggling over the naked pictures, he starts to see loves that dare not speak their name everywhere as girls just wanna have fun everywhere together without him.

It would be amusing if not for his growing suspicion that girlfriend Albertine is a lesbian as well, the best evidence of which is that she has friends who aren't him. The romance between the two of them is a large factor in this volume and livens up the scenes that aren't at endless parties, even as you can't figure out why the heck she is even with him since he seems horribly self-obsessed and mostly just orders her around all the time, afraid that if she has any free time she'll go start doing it with ladies. But everything is much sharper here, with even the parties taking on a more interesting cast despite Proust wanting to use characters to show off his research into things like the names of places. The sequences where the narrative basically stops so he can muse on memory and love and sleep become a beautiful thing in their own right, possessing a power that stands outside all the high society hijinks but are informed by them as well, each needing the other to hang together as a whole. It makes for a vivid experience and you find yourself taking delight in how both mean and needy Charlus is, how utterly pedantic some of the partygoers are, how Albertine seems to have an awful lot of patience. It all pays off in a rather baffling decision on the part of the narrator that somehow makes perfect sense in that way we tend to do things that feel completely emotional rational but in hindsight aren't too bright. It's memory manifesting as physical space, dig in so deeply that you can see the delicate claw marks as the narrator goes as far down as he can and finds that it isn't enough. On one level, yes, it's rich people a hundred years ago at parties barely disguising their disgust with each other, but on a whole other level it's an effort to grasp what you can feel yourself losing every day, a drain with such a palpable pull that the fight to pull it all back in such detail should leave a person gasping and spent. The fact that he's able to relay it all back from the edge is what makes it such a remarkable feat.

[Josh L · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did ittttttttt

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in February and March 1999.

The Guermantes Way

In the third volume of Remembrance of Things Past, the subject changes. From boyhood in Swann's Way, through adolescent lovesickness in Within A Budding Grove, Proust's narrator now emerges into Parisian society. The Guermantes are one of the oldest noble families in France, and he gradually becomes involved in their circle. (The title of this part also balances that of the first one, in that the two walks taken by the family in the narrator's childhood would either follow Swann's Way, past his house, or the Guermantes' way, past one of their estates.)

The society setting makes it easier to see in translation an aspect of Proust which is there in the original (apparently) - the humour. He has an essentially cynical view of society, seeing it generally populated by fools and bores with titles, the gifted merely tolerated on its fringes. Stupid opinions are applauded when they come from the mouth of the Princesse de Parme, a member of the former royal family; indeed, the opinions of others change as soon as she speaks. It is a case of who you know - and who knows your family - rather than who you are which brings success in the society portrayed in The Guermantes Way. Proust exploits both the stupid and the witty to produce humorous effects, while the whole text is really a denunciation of the basis of high society - snobbery.

The main topic of conversation, which has divided French society, is the Dreyfus affair. It is set at a time when the innocence of Dreyfus was yet to be established; some believed in him, others did not. The whole question was shot through with the varying degrees of anti-Semitism of the people involved. (One position recorded by Proust was that even if innocent he should be left to rot in prison because of the trouble he had caused.)

This serious issue (serious because it highlighted a strong but normally hidden vein of anti-Semitism in the French establishment) is used to make the world of upper-class society seem even more superficial and shallow. And that is, in the end, the main theme of The Guermantes Way - it is an exposé of the superficiality and shallowness of society.

Cities of the Plain

The fourth volume of Remembrance of Things Past introduces homosexuality as a major theme for the first time. (There is a brief description of a lesbian couple in the first volume, but they are only mentioned in passing - which means four or five pages in Proust's terms.) The French title indicates this rather more strongly than that used in this English translation. The two parts of Sodome et Gomorrhe were originally published separately, but they are really a single unified novel.

The theme of homosexuality dominates the book from the beginning; the first incident recorded by the narrator is an overheard meeting between his friend M. de Charlus and one of his neighbours, which makes Charlus' sexual orientation quite clear. This radically changes the way the narrator understands the inconsistencies in their relationship, with the older man welcoming one moment; cold, brusque and rude the next.

It is not just male homosexuality which forms the theme of this novel. In other words, it is not just about the actions associated with Sodom but includes those associated with Gomorrah as well - lesbianism is also important. The narrator has continued his relationship with Albertine, who is now his mistress; he begins to suspect that she is actually bisexual, and is having a lesbian affair with Andrée, one of her schoolfriends.

Proust has some interesting, if now rather old-fashioned ideas about homosexuality. (They would of course have been distinctly advanced at the time he was putting them forward.) He describes Charlus, for example, as a woman in a man's body, all the masculine appearance on the top being an acted sham to disguise his true nature. (Despite his high position in society, he could not have been openly homosexual.)

The second, related, theme of Sodome et Gomorrhe is the development of the narrator's relationship with Albertine, which swings from jealousy to indifference and back again. Indeed, it is the contrast between his thoughts and his actions which Proust uses most skilfully to show how much he really cares for her, and that he is unwilling to admit this even to himself. At the very end of the novel, his declaration to his mother that he will marry Albertine shows that now one phase of his life has ended and another is about to begin.

[midnightfaerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, can I just say I really don't like Albertine? Still waiting on some redeeming qualities, but I don't think they're in her future.

Finally finished the second volume which included The Guermantes Way and Cities of the Plain. Enjoyed both immensely and wonder how this story will end. Although I definitely have to say for this author, it's really about the journey and not the destination. I can see why this is a classic now and it's all about how Proust writes. Flowery, yes, but beautiful. Most of my thoughts on Proust are in the first review..here:

In Search of Lost Time, Volume I


And I'll have more thoughts on the entire thing when I'm done, but so far, I'm enthralled, and I highly recommend this book. So glad I'm finally reading this. I also wonder how accurate the translation is. The wording is so beautiful, I'm wishing I spoke French so I could actually read it in French and see how different it is. Now that I think about it, if anyone has read any good reviews on the differences between the French version and the translation, please let me know! Thanks!

[Jack Kelley]

Hm. This is just as readable prose-wise as books one and two, with some flourishes (the description of each stop on the train line as memories of M. de Charlus and Morel’s disputes, the delayed information of M. de Charlus’ affair that opens book four) more genius than anything found in the first two books. Unfortunately the actual content is much less intriguing. I found Guermantes Way much more interesting than it is popularly believed to be (the major complaint people have is that it is merely a description of four or five dinner parties/teas… but it uses these as occasions to dive quite deep into the nature and history of the interlocutors in a way that satisfied me), but Sodom and Gomorrah (or Cities of the Plain) was quite tedious. The narrator’s intense jealousy regarding Albertine and her sapphic tendencies was interesting enough, but the continued descriptions of the secret lives that “inverts” leaves was hard to sit through. Especially when used as a foil for Dreyfusards. One of my reasons for adoring books one and two was its ability to be a novel of manners that is continually grasping for and rewriting its own understanding of society. Here, our narrator’s opinions begin to solidify as he ages, especially in the second half of book four and his friendship with Charlus. It becomes much less interesting.

There’s still a lot of exceptional stuff here. Perhaps my opinion will change with time. So it goes. The Vinteuil reveal near the end is perfect.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

With this I am about 2/3rds of the way through my bucketlist read of A Remembrance of Things Past! I can see the end in the distance.

Book 3 Guermantes Way and Book 4 Sodom & Gomorrah represent the young narrator's entrée into the various segments of Belle Époque society, from the upper aristocracy just short of royalty down through the lower aristocracy, upper middle class, country vs. city, and of course salon culture. We also see his sexual maturity played out over a varied landscape including brothels and the demi-mondaine. We also see marriage enter his thoughts.

Frankly, the narrator is not necessarily likeable. In fact he is often a dick, extremely inconsiderate, spoiled, selfish. You wonder just why he is given entrée, even sought out by all these various members of society. This is where reading all those Regency romances pays off: the narrator is very wealthy, of good family, well-mannered, erudite, educated, eligible, single, good looking. Of course he is in demand!

Aside from the narrator, you get to know many others: the Duke and Duchesse de Guermantes, the Verdurins who have risen in the world since we first met them in Vol. I, the aging roué Baron de Charlus who has a taste for young male 'rough trade', and the lovely unknowable Albertine which is so very important to the narrator.

There are many joys in reading Proust. His social satire is masterful, colorful, lively. His portraiture is a series of jewels. He writes with great beauty and wit (the seduction of two aging homosexuals that alternates with descriptions of a rare orchid being fertilized by a bee - must be read to be believed). He also writes with great emotion (the death of the narrator's grandmother and his later grieving in Balbec when memories of her overwhelm him).

Proust can also be a beautiful slog. Especially when he goes off on his philosophical, etymological, historical, etc. discourses. But so worth it.

[Viki Holmes · Rating 5 out of 5]

It feels ridiculous and presumptuous to give this book any kind of a rating, but nevertheless, here we are...2021, I decided, would be the year of Reading Proust, and here we are, four books in to Remembrance of Things Past, or In Search of Lost Time, however you'd like to style it. It's at times arduous, and the narrator is often, let's face it, insufferable, but there isn't another book like it, and it feels ridiculous to be saying anything at all in some ways. I've never felt so immersed, nor read a book that so effectively and accurately conveys what it is like to be immersed and overwhelmed by memories, and at the same time dear lord, I felt that I was stuck in a dinner party that would never end. I can say that reading this is changing how I am as a reader, and perhaps, then, how I am as a person, and that is important, even when it's not always enjoyable. I'm gong to take a break from Proust now until the summer holidays - it's not the kind of reading that can be done when other things crowd into the mind - it demands your full attention and therefore can't be attended to when anything else is on your mind. It's not a book to wind down with at the end of an evening, and there are times when it is supremely irritating, but it is monumental, unquestionably, and so here we are.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unbelievable... I actually reached the ending. I wasn't entirely sure there was an ending. I thought maybe pages quietly added themselves, possibly from the front of the book to the back, while I slept every knight.

-----

I think everyone should read Proust's first volume; it's one of the loveliest things I've ever embarked on. After that is purely elective, although I love what I've gotten through, thus far.

This book is not a fast read. ... However, I've properly picked it up again, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel... so I'm going for it!

[Carlotta Borasio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rispetto al volume precedente qui Proust è molto meno intimo. Feste, serate, società, personaggi che si intrecciano. Rimane che il tema che mi ha colpito di più è quello del rapporto con la nonna. Si ammala, muore, poi lo strazio del nipote che sembra comprendere troppo tardi di aver perso una persona fondamentale nella sua vita.
(Ma quanto è imbarazzante votare Proust a colpi di stelline? Si starà rivoltando nella tomba?)

[Matt Carton · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ for CITIES OF THE PLAIN, mostly because of Albertine’s character. Still, way too many parties here.


⭐️⭐️⭐️-1/2 for THE GUERMANTES WAY. A lot happens, and nothing happens. Essentially our narrator attends two different dinner parties. However, it’s what he learns about these society people and in turn what he learns of himself through them shows the development and education of a young man. And then there’s the Baron de Charlus…

[Ottavia · Rating 5 out of 5]

che dire? Marcel Proust è sempre una garanzia. Avevo già trovato straordinario il primo volume e trovo altrettanto meraviglioso il secondo. La capacità che ha Proust di entrare nell'animo umano, di descrivere ed esprimere pensieri e concetti inesprimibile è ineguagliabile. A mio avviso, la grandezza di questo enorme capolavoro sta proprio in ciò, nel ritrovarmi sorpresa a leggere sensazioni, pensieri, situazioni che altrimenti non sarei riuscita a definire, nonostante io sento di aver vissuto, seppure in contesti diversi, simili esperienze emotive e psicologiche. Mentre leggo la ricerca, mi sembra di trovarmi in uno spazio senza tempo, o meglio in uno spazio il cui tempo si forma e deforma seguendo le regole dell'autore. Alcune volte è lento, quasi immobile, altre volte incalzante, frenetico, veloce, che fugge. Non vedo l'ora di continuare con il resto! Un consiglio che mi sento di dare, questo è un libro che fa del tempo il nucleo principale ed è proprio il proprio tempo che bisogna dedicargli, non pretendere di leggere la ricerca in poche settimane o mesi. Deve essere metabolizzato, elaborato, a volte messo in pausa e poi ripreso. Ha bisogno del suo tempo.

[Mário Barreto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Contrastando com o precedente "O Caminho de Guermantes", o quarto volume do Em Busca do Tempo Perdido extravasa em dinâmica.

Em "Sodoma e Gomorra", o lirismo, ainda presente, fica eclipsado pelos reveses em que o Tempo lança os personagens. Proust chega a quebrar a quarta parede e, em determinado momento, pede licença ao leitor para que se interrompa uma deliciosa divagação para prosseguir com a narrativa.

Da Etimologia dos nomes das cidades normandas, passando pelo Esnobismo dos nobres e burgueses, tudo inundado pelo que ele chama de "inversão sexual", acredito que esse seja o pilar mais colorido da catedral proustiana.

Inesquecível.

[Eric Phetteplace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished vol. III The Guermantes Way. I started with the more recent Penguin editions for I & II (by various translators) and I kind of suspect the Moncrief translations aren't as good. I really dislike the rendering of the titles (Cities of the Plain is not the title, it's Sodom and Gomorrah. And why use a Shakespearian phrase for the title instead of the literal In Search of Lost Time and, in so doing, erase the continuity of the final volume's title?).

In any case, vol. 3 was my least favorite by far. Proust spends an endless amount of time describing aristocratic French society. It is interesting to see the narrator's views evolve and become more critical over the course of his interactions and the tone migrate from being reverent to an utterly scathing depiction, with the very end as an excellent culmination (M. de Guermantes is much more concerned with being late for dinner than the impending deaths of not one but two other people). Still there's a lot less of Proust's reflection, contemplation, lurid descriptive passages in vol. III and instead we get a whole lot of French family names being tossed around. Yawn.

Vol. IV I loved, perhaps more than any other single volume of Lost Time. I don't know exactly what happened but something about Proust's project clicked with me and some of the properties I found annoying earlier, particularly the long descriptive passages with sentences like this one that wind like the snakes of a caduceus scaled with commas, I grew to crave so much that I started perusing secondary texts and even listened to a podcast episode, something I rarely do for a novel I'm currently reading. S&G is still very much focused on society people but it feels more interesting in its psychology and the theme of homosexuality is far more interesting than that of French nobility. Speaking of, Proust's passages on homosexuality…have not aged well. Classifying gay men as "inverts" is pretty problematic, as is the main character's strange paranoia surrounding Albertine's lesbianism. He certainly writes with some sympathy but you have to wonder how much he was trying to hide his own sexuality and how much the beliefs of the times affected his thought. In any case, the opening passages are a lovely biological meditation on sexuality that rivals any other piece of Lost Time in terms of the depths of its lyricism.

I'm a little worried that I've reached the point where Proust dies and the rest of the volumes are constructed from manuscript notes. I could have been hallucinating it but Vol. IV had some atypical oversights—a character name missing, unusual repetitions that are redundant and not artful, strange temporal leaps right after long, focused passages—unlike everything else. While Proust oversaw its publication, I wonder if his health prevented him from being as diligent here as he was elsewhere. It's possible I've imagined it and even with these small errors, it's my favorite book.

[Snorri Stefánsson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enough Proust for me. Endless tedium which although sometimes fun is extremely drawn out and just af often fails to excite.

[Brett · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am once again swimming against the tide of four and five star reviews that litter this site, as they did for the first volume of Proust's very long novel, but I cannot in good conscience claim that I think this book is good or enjoyable or that it is rightfully called one of the great pieces of literature from the last century.

Why Remembrance of Things Past (or as the title is sometimes translated, In Search of Lost Time) has obtained this reputation is beyond me. Our protagonist is a feckless twit with his head firmly shoved up his own behind, and he is surrounded by high society dipshits who it is impossible to care about in any human way. Maybe it is the Marxist in me, but I'd love to see most of these people in the gulag.

That might be fine if this were a satire, but it seems we are genuinely expected to care about about the incomprehensible social cues and interminable conversation to which we are subjected. Add to that a weird and ever-present obsession with gay or lesbian sex that occupies much of the book in a very scolding and un-progressive way and you have all the makings of a deeply unpleasant reading experience. Did I mention that this volume is around 1200 pages long and there are frequently no paragraph breaks at all for many pages on end?

It tells me plenty that at the end of reading around 2000 pages of this book (when you include the first volume as well) I can barely even remember the names of the characters and definitely do not care at all about a single one of them.

It is obvious that many people experience this book differently than me. Again, just read any of the reviews that will be above or below mine on the page. But I've told my truth. This book fills me with a kind of loathing for its artificiality and remoteness. It feels like the opposite of what meaningful art.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always understood what Proust meant about that flood of memories a sensory experience from our past can trigger in us - that sweeping involuntary memory that virtually obliterates the passing of time. But I had another sort of memory experience recently when reading some diary entries I made 35 years ago as a heart-broken teenager. I felt as though I was a ghostly apparition at the actual events recorded in the diary because I could often call to mind at least some little wisp of a memory and at the same time, I maintained a vague sense of writing about those events too - sitting at the desk in my girlhood room, desk lamp on, younger sister asleep in her bed - while also existing in the present as the mature woman reading. I am no Proust, but I understood that ethereal feeling he captured so well, and I so poorly. But I felt it, even if I can't describe it. It's like being in three separate existences at once. Uncanny, really.

I have now completed this volume which marks two thirds of the way there...I have been with Marcel for a year now and feel like he is an old, if sometimes frustrating, friend. I know I have missed so much this first time through and that I must reread at some point down the road. I did feel a moment of relief when Marcel refers to the endless visiting and dinners as "stupid." He is a deeply conflicted individual and I like that about him because aren't we all?

[Steve Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

"'As for all the little people who call themselves Marquis de Cambremerde or de Vatefairefiche, there is no difference between them and the humblest private in your regiment. Whether you go and do wee-wee at the Countess Caca's or caca at the Baroness Wee-wee's, it's exactly the same, you will have compromised your reputation and have used a fetid rag instead of toilet paper. Which is unsavoury.'"- Baron de Charlus. Over 1100 pages in Volume II, which is a long haul, but, my, what a magnificent road. Here there are similar brilliant insights into our human psychology as the first Volume, but Proust, in Volume II, travels quite a bit more into Balzac's wheelhouse in his descriptions of society... and lives up to the master. I only wish Proust had sprinkled in a bit more humor... as his humor is... delicious.

[Liel · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have not yet read Proust, please put aside whatever else you might be reading. Better yet, get rid of it. There is hardly a point. Literature, life, art, love, yearning, the mind, brothels, dinners, celebrities, fashion, aesthetics, cookies, insomnia, the beach, France, mothers, the theater, obsession, flowers, and memory, to name just a few, are perfectly captured here. Writing before Proust is little but a long prologue; after him, side notes. Also, if you're curious about Proust, please refrain from reading any other translation; the newer editions might be nicely packaged, but the Moncrieff-Kilmartin remains the Golden Standard and is far superior to the wobbly attempts of the more recent volumes.

[Anne Holcomb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whew! I finally got through The Guermantes Way and am on to S & G. I put Proust down for a couple years but now I am back, baby, ready to finish it all by
the time I turn 30 hopefully. I will be adding my imrpressions as I read, no doubt.

My best comparisons for reading Proust are A:
long distance running and B: searching through a really huge thrift store. It's going to be long and grueling, but it will be unforgettable, you'll be a healthier person, and you'll be glad you did it in the end. And, you'll have to paw through a lot of stuff you don't need but by the end, you'll have an armful of the best vintage material you can find.

[Therese L. Broderick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, verily, over the course of 27 years, my husband and I did promenade through all three massive volumes of this First Vintage Books Edition. Our habit was to sit together in the evening, usually for fifteen minutes around 10pm, one of us reading aloud to the other. Finishing the last page left me with mixed feelings: a sense of triumph at our completed marathon, admiration for Proust whose sweeping arc of narrative came to an eloquent close, and sadness that our journey through his pages had reached its end. So, my husband and I are going to start over, re-reading this same masterpiece, but this time a different edition with a different translator. As the French say, Encore!

[Attela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il secondo volume della Recherche è forse un po' più ostico del primo a causa delle lunghissime descrizioni di vita mondana. L'inizio di Sodoma e Gomorra, comunque, dove viene narrato il rapporto tra Charlus e Julien è una delle pagine più belle che abbia mai letto in un libro. E pure il capitolo finale, Le intermittenze del cuore, con il narratore che si rende finalmente conto che la nonna è morta davvero, per poi scordarsene quasi subito, è tanta roba. Confermo le impressioni che avevo avuto col primo volume: Proust scrive roba VERA, roba che la leggi e dici cacchio, ma è proprio così. Affinità di spirito, penetrazione psicologica, non so.

[Kathie Harper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marcel has returned to Balbec, actually Cabourg, my favorite setting in this series. There are more salons, the Verdurins transplanted from Paris for the summer season and all the characters that attend, some old and some new. Marcel is still conflicted about his love life and the book ends with a surprise. I'm just elated to be more than half way finished with this quest~

[Bobbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me a year to read all three of the books of "Remembrance of Things Past." I limited myself to reading ten pages a day, which is the only way one can read Proust and remain interested. Some of the most beautiful writing I've ever read was in these books, and also some of the most boring. On the whole, I gave the books five stars because the beauty outweighed the boredom enormously.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

this became more of a chore than the first two volumes. but proust's dissection/destruction of the salon is so absolute -- and the closing scenes with swann, le duc et m. charlus so devastating - that i'll be going on to book 4 after a brief pause.