Remembrance of Things Past: Volume III - The Captive, The Fugitive, & Time Regained

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

From the French intellectual, novelist, essayist, and one of the greatest writers of the twentieth the third and final volume of his monumental achievement, including The Captive, The Fugitive, and Time Regained.

Marcel Proust's masterpiece is one of the towering literary works of the twentieth century. Relating its narrator's experiences in Belle Epoque France as he grows up, falls in love, and lives through the First World War, it has mesmerized generations of readers with its profound reflections on art, time, and memory. C. K. Scott Moncrieff's original English translation was heralded as an artistic achievement in its own right; the later revisions to it by Terence Kilmartin were based on the definitive French Pleiade edition.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Literature, France, French Literature, Novels, 20th Century

1152 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1927

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

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

After 114 days and 3,364 words, Monsieur Proust and I part company until a future reread (in a variety of translations).

GoodReaders have provided almost as many words (along with fabulous analyses) to rival the original so there is little requirement for me to add more. Some trenchant observations though:
- the last hundred-odd pages are worth the final ascent in their power and beauty. The whole narrative quickens and shapes itself into a comprehension both moving and compulsive.
- the final words do, indeed, want to make the reader want to return to the beginning and start again if only to sustain the momentum of the work’s finale.
- Proust is a creep.
- Or, at least, creepy.

I now look forward to contemplating this complex work in its entirety at leisure, aided by a biography or two and Christopher Prendergast’s ‘ Living and Dying with Marcel Proust.’

[Martin Gibbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Others have reviewed this work far more eloquently than I can, but I still wanted to put a few words into the ether:

*** This a review of the entire book, not just this "chapter." And it is a "review" in the loosest possible terms: Consider this stream-of-consciousness rambling:***

To avoid that night without a Dawn:

In my life I had been like a painter climbing a road high above a lake, a view of which is denied to him by a curtain of rocks and trees. Suddenly through a gap in the curtain he sees the lake, its whole expanse is before him, he takes up his brushes. But already the night is at hand, the night ... which no dawn will follow.


People, places, smells, feelings, memories: The swirling vortices of time that we try to cling to, fade and die, only to return in a person or place from which we have come.

Do we end at the beginning or start with the end? How can a story begin without an ending or does it begin at all?

The "ways" (Guermantes and Swann's) combine into a single point, a new life blooming out into a new future, while those who brought that life forward rot on their feet.


The Narrator guides us through these threads, and though his prose is rich and layered, descriptive and deep, filled with ever-expanding descriptions of events, feelings, thoughts, and smells, we still feel as if we walk through a dream. To me, there was a constant fog pervasive over every dinner party, Balbec, Combray, the War, and all those involved; was it because the Narrator is never named (except in those snippets where the fourth wall breaks, and these I'm convinced, had Proust lived, would not be in the final cut)? And in the final chapter, the fog clears a little, letting us see new faces: Except they aren't new. They are people we know, but who have aged. Once unrecognizable strangers resolve into friends with whom we've dined only recently, but "recently" being many decades prior.

It is thus that Time works its decay. It leaves us people in their places, places with their people, and bright memories that are in stark contrast to the dullness that remains.

This has been a very personal journey, in which I often found myself looking in a mirror. When asked "what is that book about?" I often find it hard to offer a concise reply, because The Search is different for everyone, and has its own varying meanings for each reader. As such, I find it hard to write any sort of traditional review for anyone, apart from the feelings and memories that are invoked by this sprawling narrative.

In order to properly answer the question, "what is this book about?" I must recall the madeleine scene and return the question with: Have you ever walked by a building and caught the whiff of some savory aroma; and had said aroma carry you back to your college days, wherein those memories flash vivid, bright, but only for a second (though you've re-lived four solid years in seconds)? Or, have you bitten into a Christmas cookie, and had childhood pass before your eyes: memories of being dandled on a long-dead relative's knee, the smell of the brandy on his breath, and the sounds of Bing Crosby playing in the background? Multiply this feeling by an entire lifetime, and you can begin to brush fingers against the skein of this intricate, masterful, multi-sided book.

Reading The Search is an endeavor that engaged all my senses and spoke to deep memories within my heart; it was such a personal experience, that I hope I've given it enough justice with my rambling.

[Michael Battaglia · Rating 5 out of 5]

By this point, if you've made it this far into the wacky world of one hundred and fifty page scenes of rich French parties, you pretty much have an idea of what you're in for and in theory the remainder of the novel should be smooth sailing. The interesting thing about the last three parts of the novel is that they were published posthumously (if you've ever looked at the novel and thought "This must have taken a lifetime to write", you're not too far off as it turns out) and so it's an open question as to whether this would have been the final form the novels would have taken if Proust had been around to perform all the corrections and deletions his little heart desired ("The Fugitive" section at one point had several different "authoritative editions floating around). Perhaps he never would have finished the novel at all and it would have been published after he died an old man anyway, there's no way to really tell. Fortunately he did actually finish the novel so you're not reading over three thousand pages of convoluted sentences that fail to come to any sort of ending.

Not being a scholar of French literature, I have no idea how definitive these volumes are, or how closely they claim to hew to his original vision, such as it was. Each one of the three volumes that comprise this edition has additional passages as an appendix they were left out, either by Proust or later editors believing that this was what Proust wanted . . . the ambitious could always cut those passages out of the back and paste them in to where they think they should go and see if it enhances the reading experience. But I'm okay with letting actual scholars decide what deserves to be in there since Proust isn't around to give his opinion.

And whether it's just me being used to it or the snazzy job that the editors did, but I found these parts to be the easiest to read of any of them thus far. Maybe it's because they seem to have more of a driving plot, maybe because the swings of emotion are more relatable, maybe all the snarky French nobles had better one-liners. It could also be the giddy high from being in the home stretch. But there's more of a sense of the narrator actually living his life and not wandering about observing snooty party after snooty party, thinking about how maybe he should get around to doing some of that writing thing some day, gosh. The characters seem more defined as well, again, that could just be familiarity after spending more time reading about them than I see my family. But despite the potential patchwork pitfalls of trying to be a psychic and figure out which of Proust's corrections he really meant and were the final ones, in these volumes the themes really come into focus and you can start to see why he spent so much time on what a lot of people may consider the world's most erudite paperweight.

For me it helped that the chunk of the first two parts are focused on his incredibly weird relationship with girlfriend Albertine. When we last left our self-obsessed hero he was convinced that dear Albertine had an eye for the ladies and thus had to marry her to keep her from straying to the ladies. He doesn't get around to marrying her but convinces her to live in his house with him, where he comes up with excuses all the time for her to stay home and not go anywhere, while he spends his time hanging out with her or going off on his own to wallow in misery since because of her he can never go anywhere fun, like Venice. Their relationship, if you want to call it that, remains one of the oddest things I've ever read in literature. She's absolutely agreeable to pretty much anything, seems pleasant and eager to listen, likes hanging around him, while he spends most of his time thinking about how he doesn't love her, which is why he can't break up with her. It drives him to almost hilariously weird obsessions, like interrogating all her friends as to whether she may be a secret lesbian and assuming they're all lying when they tell him that isn't the case, or seizing on any scrap of her even looking at another woman as proof that she loves women, which is why he can't break up with her. When he's with her he obsesses over how much he doesn't really like her and when she's not around he obsesses over what she might be doing and contrives reasons to keep her from going anywhere. The fact that the narrator seems completely oblivious as to how odd this all is makes for some interesting reading, and that's before you even consider how much the fabulously crotchety M. de Charlus adds to the proceedings, with his equally bizarre relationship with a much younger man livening up the proceedings as well (especially an honest to goodness tense scene where some people actively try to turn his lover against him). Along the way there's hint of everyone getting older, as we lose at least one character we started out with, but it all culminates in perhaps the most ridiculous argument a couple could have and an ending that is probably the most logical thing about it.

"The Fugitive" deals with the aftermath of those events, with Albertine off for better pastures, and the narrator alternating between scheming to get her back and glorying in how much better his life is without her. However, his constant ruminating over his memories of an affair with her are surprisingly moving and showcase how Proust could get to the heart of how our memories inform our emotions and vice versa. All of that gets kicked up a notch when it turns out that Albertine definitely isn't coming back and while you have to deal with the narrator venturing boldly down the rabbit hole of questioning every single person she came into contact with if she was a lesbian (and not taking no for an answer) there's a definite sense of grace and elegance to the internal deliberations, trying to sketch out the exact outlines of a loss, seeing where the cracks touch and how that affects not only your life going forward, but how you reflect on what's gone by. It's a poignant dive into the heart of grief and just because it comes from a utterly self-absorbed dilettante doesn't make the honesty any less real.

Meanwhile, every other male character turns out to be gay. The fact that Proust himself appears to have been a closeted homosexual (how closeted and how homosexual seems to be depend on who you ask) may or may not have a bearing on this. It does make for a theme you don't really see coming and while you want to assume the narrator is just projecting his own paranoias on events, after the third or fourth character (gentlemen or lady) turns out to be gay you have to agree that it's really happening.

It all comes together in the last volume, "Time Regained". While it starts out more or less like the other parts do, eventually a sense of finality begins to creep in, with time passing faster and faster in between the paragraphs and you get a sense that he's starting to put together what his whole has been telling him. And just to remind you that you're still reading Proust, a lot of these revelations come within one last massive French party for the rich, as he runs into nearly every character that hasn't yet died and marvels at how old they've gotten and the changes that have occurred in the years that seemed to have passed so quickly. This section winds up being the most memorable simply because of how existentially terrifying it is, having lived with these characters for many, many hours of reading time, to see them suddenly grow old (even if at times the book makes you feel like you're experiencing the events in real-time) is a shock in itself, a reminder that time isn't on your side at all, it's not even on a side so much as the referee and is determined to make sure that none of the calls go your way. It makes the weight of all that's gone before feel like a culmination of sorts and despite the book going meta in its last sections as the narrator decides to write a novel about all he's experienced, it feels like the end of a journey, with the narrator's ponderings reaching a new poignancy and even beauty as he strives to keep everyone he's known alive by describing them fully, even as he seems to admit that time is going to grind down all memory of the book until it's lost entirely. But the suggestion is that it's worth doing anyway.

Is reading three thousand pages of all this worth that conclusion? I think so. I think the attempt is always worth it and while not every sequence is probably essential to the work as a whole, it's that aggregation of events that give it whatever force it has, much like our lives are the additions that we and life contribute to ourselves, and how we deal with the inevitable subtractions. It takes a time that is long enough gone that not a single living person today can describe having lived in it, and make it come alive for us and more than just relating an endless series of genteel parties, it can speak to us about deeper themes, about what we remember and what we carry with us, and what lies beneath memory that we don't realize we carry. It's not for the people who live for the big events in life, that live to study where history is made and the changing course of human events, but for those people who how standing by a certain fence can bring back the memory of the taste of an ice cream cone on a certain hot day, who can remember not only her smile but the dizzy sick elated feeling that came with and the tiny melancholy buzz that couldn't be identified until years later, the notion that a moment can be singular and be forever and be over all too quick, that our lives can be a series of those moments if we learn just how to look, and how we don't get enough of them even if we live to be two hundred.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here between June and October 1999.

The Captive

With the seventh volume of Remembrance of Things Past (both The Guermantes Way and Sodome et Gomorrhe being originally published as two separate volumes), a distinct change is apparent. This is the first part that was edited and published by other hands after Proust's death, and to me the missing final polishing seems to make itself clear in several ways.

The immediate sign that The Captive is unfinished is that is contains inconsistencies not apparent in earlier volumes: the deaths of two characters are described or mentioned only for them to pop up alive later on. (There is also a completely missing piece of narrative near the end.) But I think that the comparatively melodramatic subplot is also a legacy from the lack of final revision; my suspicion is that this would have been smoothed out and made more discursive, for why should things suddenly start to happen after well over two thousand pages? The length of The Captive is comparable to that of earlier volumes, so it is nearly complete - unless a really major revision was planned. (The two volumes which follow The Captive are considerably shorter.)

There is another possible explanation for the melodramatic nature of The Captive. Like earlier volumes of Remembrance of Things Past, it is an exhaustive examination of a theme. In this case, the theme is jealousy, which might be considered essentially melodramatic. However, earlier strongly emotive themes, such as young love in Within A Budding Grove and sexuality in Sodome et Gomorrhe, do not lead to a melodramatic novel.

The theme of jealousy is explored through two obsessive relationships which mirror one another. One is between the narrator and Albertine, the other between the elderly homosexual M. Charlus and his protegé, the young violinist Morel. One is a heterosexual relationship, in which the dominant partner is jealous of the homosexual leanings of the beloved; the other is a homosexual relationship, in which the dominant partner is jealous of the heterosexual leanings of the beloved. Both become increasingly demanding, claustrophobic and unfulfilling until the break between Charlus and Morel, when Charlus is humiliated at a society soirée.

There are two candidates for the role of the captive of the title: Albertine and the narrator. Such are his fears of her duplicity - he lays little verbal traps for her to measure the extent of her lies - that his mistress is barely allowed to leave the house with him let alone by herself. Her friends are barred to her, she is cut off from her former life.

But, given the self-obsessed nature of Remembrance of Things Past, it is the narrator himself who is the more likely candidate. (We are finally told to call him Marcel, after the writer, though we are assured at the same time that this is not in fact his name.) He is not just imprisoned because he doesn't dare let Albertine out of his sight. His realisation of her deceitfulness leads to mental obsession with her even when they are not together. Like the author, Marcel is beginning to succumb to invalidism; the disease that has haunted him since childhood is taking hold more frequently, more permanently, more debilitatingly. In Proust's own case, this was an asthmatic condition, and by 1905 he had (famously) taken up a hermetic existence inside a cork-lined room in Paris. Marcel is not affected to such an extent, but his life is ruled more and more by the disease.

Albertine Disparu

The Fugitive, as a title, neatly matches that of the previous novel in Remembrance of Things Past (The Captive), yet it is clearly not a translation of the French title. Since it is the second of the three volumes put together by others following Proust's death, it is impossible to know what title he would have used for the eventual published work, if he had lived to make the final revisions.

The penultimate novel in Proust's cycle is entirely concerned with the narrator's obsessive relationship with his lover Albertine. We begin the novel where The Captive left off, with Albertine having fled back to her aunt in the country. The narrator makes a huge effort to bring about her return to Paris, but this never happens: Albertine is killed in an accident. Just after hearing the news, the narrator is shattered to receive a letter sent off just before Albertine's death, in which she says that she will return to him.

An important part of remembrance - the central theme, of course, of the whole series of novels - is the way in which we think of those we no longer see, particularly those at one time close to us who are now dead. It is inevitable that Proust would spend some time analysing the progress of this aspect of our memories. In more abstract terms, Sartre discusses the same issue in his Psychology of Imagination, and the ideas of the two writers on the subject are closely related. (Sartre in fact refers to Proust for illustration of his philosophical ideas on the subject.)

Their views are based on the idea that our imaginary pictures of people are of necessity only pale reflections of the living person, requiring frequent refreshment by renewed acquaintance with them. As the length of separation increases, our imagined version of the person becomes more divorced from the richer reality, and more and more sketchy. This is partly because the most real part of the imagined version is centred on our interaction with them.

I do not wholly agree with this analysis, which seems a little self-centred. However, Proust's narrator is an extremely self-centred person, and his mourning for Albertine follows this course. As is the case throughout the series, his analysis and record of his internal life is convincing, giving the distinct impression that he would not be an agreeable person to meet. He is self-dramatising and obsessed with the romance of his inner life. His internal viewpoint is here perhaps more melodramatic than in some of the earlier novels, and this can presumably be attributed to either a missing final revision or the strong emotional effects of bereavement.

On a fairly superficial level, the title chosen by the translators may seem misleading: it is only for the first few dozen pages that we think that Albertine has run away. But then both the French title and The Fugitive have a deeper meaning, as the narrator's memories of his lover begin to disappear from his imagination, becoming fugitive thoughts.

Time Regained

The final volume of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past has as its themes ageing, illness and death; an appropriate (if gloomy) way to bring to an end his narrator's exploration of his life. Like other volumes published after Proust's death, Time Regained shows signs of a missing final revision, chiefly in minor inconsistencies; but it is an amazing achievement for all that, containing some immensely powerful writing.

The events of Time Regained - and events is perhaps rather too strong a word - take place some time following those of Albertine Disparu. After the First World War, the narrator's health, delicate since he was a child, fails, and he spends years a recluse in a sanatorium. (The precise nature of his illness is not specified.) Following a recovery, he returns to Paris, and attends a fashionable society party. This party - after a lengthy piece of introspective philosophy - is described in one of the most powerful pieces of prose in the entire series of novels. It at first seems to the narrator that he has stumbled in a bizarre fancy dress event in which everyone is to come as an old man or woman; but gradually he realises that their appearance is due to their real ageing, compared with his memory of them from twenty years previously.

In fact, the untrustworthiness and impermanence of memory is one of the ways in which the themes of this last novel are linked to Proust's central concerns of perception and memory. As well as containing people he once knew well but now hardly recognised by the narrator, their relationships have changed and new people have arrived on the scene. Important but now dead people are hardly remembered; on the assumption that things have always been as they are now, the past is adapted to fit the present.

All this means that Remembrance of Things Past ends on a sombre note; but it has chronicled the whole life of the narrator, and life ends with death.

[Tim Chamberlain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I've finally made it to the top of literature's Mount Everest ... That's twenty years of my life which I'll never get back!

But - it was definitely worth it. The view from up here is amazing, and I have a feeling every other book I read from here on after will be slightly different because of my having made it all the way through this one. It's hugely pleasurable, hugely entertaining, mind-numbingly tedious and immensely boring in places. It's both frustrating and exhilarating. It, shocks, it surprises, it cloys, it flows, it gushes, it's tart and acerbic, it's sweet and mellifluous - it's all things, and it's nothing. A wonder, and a waste of time. Marcel's a ninny and a prig; he's a genius, he's witty and wise - he's all these things and more, just like this book - this book is everything, it's life; it's memory and experience, it's thoughts in and out of time. It's excellent, it's clever, and, despite initial appearances, it's surprisingly well crafted, and odd to say at the end, but it even feels - concise ... if that can possibly make sense of such a phenomenally long and long-winded book?

Henry James summed up the experience of reading Proust as one of “inconceivable boredom associated with the most extreme ecstasy which it is possible to imagine.” And it’s true, reading Proust is exquisite boredom. Andre Gide was the reader who famously turned down Proust’s great book when it was first offered to the Nouvelle Revue Française in 1912, hence Proust resorted to having 'Swann's Way' published privately. Gide later noted his error. Proust was then published by Gallimard; and in 1919 Proust won the Prix Goncourt. The rest, as they say, is history.

… Life is a piece of cake, if you take the time to think long and hard enough about it.

For me, reading Proust was oddly like meditating. I'd read ten or twenty pages in a sitting. Sometimes it was hard to get into, but after persevering for a few agonisingly aeon-like moments, one soon found that the flow of words would suddenly, inexplicably and effortlessly carry you off on the current. Submitting to the gentle meander, either drifting along, or letting one’s head spin in the pedantically fussy eddies of his particularities, reading Proust is akin to turning one’s brain off – or rather slipping it into neutral and letting your consciousness coast along. At times I did wonder if reading Proust is in fact unhealthy; as, when reading Proust, one can’t help but automatically suspend one’s critical acuity. It’s an impossible book to ‘close read’ as the many themes he ambles through and around continually send your mind off on its own self-absorbed tangents. You can’t help reflecting on your own life and times, prompted by Proust’s gentle ruminations, and it takes several pages before you suddenly awaken and realise you’ve been reading without reading. It’s an infuriating habit. Reading Proust cultivated it, and I’m sure it had a negative effect upon my other reading – certainly, when during my studies, I frequently found my mind wandering and unable to concentrate on whatever academic article or book I was meant to be reading, suddenly having to stop and retrace what was nothing more than a meaningless blur of words stretching back over an endless sheaf of pages, I found myself mentally shaking my fist and blaming Monsieur Proust for turning my mind into a lackadaisical blob.

E. M. Forster is right to poke fun at Proust’s famously long sentences: “A sentence begins quite simply, then it undulates and expands, parentheses intervene like quick-set hedges, the flowers of comparison bloom, and three fields off, like a wounded partridge, crouches the principal verb, making one wonder as one picks it up, poor little thing, whether after all it was worth such a tramp, so many guns, such expensive dogs, and what, after all, is its relation to the main subject, potted so gaily half a page back, and proving to have been in the accusative case.”

But they do serve a higher purpose. The book is all about transcendental experience. There is no real plot, so to speak. The book is an encapsulation of that internal reverie which we all manage to execute in the lightening quick instant it takes to think and feel everything within. Like a momentary flash of self-reflection before we fall into sleep at the end of a long day. Like a dream in which all of our memories coincide and happen simultaneously, sparking new thoughts, reflections and revelations only half of which we will ever fully recall or examine in close detail. And that is why we are all Proust. His colossal monument, as he likens it himself, is to help us comprehend the cathedral of the mind in all its intricate enormity: “How happy would he be, I thought, the man who had the power to write such a book! What a task awaited him! To give some idea of this task one would have to borrow comparisons from the loftiest and the most varied arts; for this writer – who, moreover, to indicate the mass, the solidity of each one of his characters must find means to display that character’s most opposite facets – would have to prepare his book with meticulous care, perpetually regrouping his forces like a general conducting an offensive, and he would have also to endure his book like a form of fatigue, to accept it like a discipline, build it up like a church, follow it like a medical regime, vanquish it like an obstacle, win it like a friendship, cosset it like a little child, create it like a new world without neglecting those mysteries whose explanation is to be found probably only in worlds other than our own and the presentiment of which is the thing that moves us most deeply in life and in art. In long books of this kind there are parts which there has been time only to sketch, parts which, because of the very amplitude of the architect’s plan, will no doubt never be completed. How many great cathedrals remain unfinished!”

Proust’s great work is a cathedral. It is whole, intricate, vast, open, overwhelming; a maze and a labyrinth in which to lose oneself – and although it is unfinished (the last volume has its technical flaws aplenty, which had he lived longer he’d no doubt have polished and smoothed into proper shape), it is surprisingly complete. I feared there wouldn’t be, but happily there is a sense of an ending. When you get to the final word, as with the harmonic variations in a great symphony, you realise Proust has actually managed to bring you full circle. It really is a book unlike any other.

It took me twenty years in all to read it, with two lengthy sabbaticals between volumes, which, I think means I near enough read it in real time. Starting aged twenty and ending aged forty, I've spent exactly half my life with this book happening in the background. I'd always assumed that once I'd finished reading it that that would be it - never again! It was such a long hard slog in some parts, yet in others I flew through it, caught upon the wave. The actual reading of each volume was relatively short, between two and four years, depending on various outside factors. But now I've finished (much to my deep surprise) I can sense I may well one day find myself drawn back in again ... But not just yet, I'm going to savour that final sweet taste of the madeleine, and continue to enjoy the view a little longer from up here, on the top of the highest mountain ...

[midnightfaerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

To read the overall review:

In Search of Lost Time The Complete Novel

[David Bird · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard to overpraise Proust, yet superfluous. What I found most important and impressive was the way that he caused me to re-experience the passage of time in my own life. I was reading over a six month period, and the passage of time itself during the reading was shaped by the book, but Proust's genius is also to evoke one's own memories.

It's a cliche of criticism that no two readers read exactly the same text; Proust's method makes that profoundly the case.

[Sai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Between the name and the popular conception of it, In Search of Lost Time is well known to be heavily concerned with memory, both in depiction and in analysis, but what I find more important is how much it is also concerned with simply, well, Time. This novel engages the reader in a wholly unique way, in that through use of factors like the length, the meandering and effusive nature of the prose, the heavy focus on the philosophy of the day-to-day mundanities, and even the tone and choice of narration, it creates a parallel experience in the reader to that of the narrator's. It is not "just" being powerfully evocative in its descriptions or exceptionally ingratiating with its tone - in just putting the effort into reading this, it becomes an aspect of your life, an alternate reality that informs your own.

I spent 10.5 months, approximately, reading this, and from what I can tell that's on the faster end of how long people spend on it, but even that point it has achieved a fixity in my mind akin to a dear friend, and the lack of it has been similarly present. For context, while I was between volumes 4 and 5, one of my best friends, someone I'd say occupies a spot in my life more intimate than most anyone else, died suddenly. A similar thing happens to the narrator at a point, and what I found so immensely striking here, that, as a result, I finished the last 600 pages within a month, was how effectively the impact of that death matched that of a real one. I will avoid specifics so as to avoid spoiling one of the few true twists of the novel, but the character that perishes is one that is so dear, in one way or another, to the narrator that you spend multiple hundreds of pages wrapped up in his head, in this slurry of confusion and torment that he seemingly cannot escape from.

While the narrator likes to style himself as completely honest with himself in these pages, something that's so fascinating here is how you can notice rare instances where it does seem that he has actually fooled himself - remarking how unmoved he is by the mention of a past love that has caused him so much anguish, but is telling in how he brings it up regardless, all these pages later, as often as he does. It lends the whole thing the feeling of a conversation between the two of you, and concretes the feeling of that alternate reality within you, the reader.

When the character dies, the one he has spent at this point weeks to months of your actual life completely engrossed with, it is right on the cusp of a seeming reconciliation. A most melodramatic plot point, but lent the immense weight of a real person - a real love - and the hammer-strike this inflicts on the narrator echoes through the ansible lines anchoring you to him, rocking you in a way I previously thought impossible of fiction.

When I initially noticed this, I messaged a friend online to remark about how "soy" it is to recommend a book like this, or even talk about a piece of media as such is. It either speaks to a shallowness of experience on my part or a staggering efficacy of the work, to make the comparison of a characters death to that of a real flesh and blood person. That question is not one I can answer, but I like to believe that it is that positive reflection that is true. When I got to that segment of the book, where the narrator is shut up in his room, in the dark, inconsolable for days-weeks at a time, I myself had to take a break. I forced myself, against the strong drive to read that had long since taken root within me, to hold off for 3 days before continuing, as it was starting to bleed into the rest of my life. I could barely hold myself together at work, I was sobbing on all my drives home, and I struggled to bring myself to eat anything, having been struck with a grief so potent and so ingratiated with myself that it had twisted itself up with the very real grief that had just recently been reduced to a smolder – one still fresh enough to rage back to life whenever it so pleased.

However, what the novel destroys, it seeks to mend, as Time does. The full process of him experiencing his grief, as long as it takes, and slowly but surely coming out of it, a subtly different but still very much new person, helped me through it as well. Of course, these things ultimately require the effacement by Time, and it would be the peak of folly to claim that I am remotely over my loss, but I find that I can manage it better now. I can restrain it – cut it off from other facets of my own neuroticism, and manage myself without the requirement of finding some kind of distraction at that instant (be it vices of the mind and vices of the flesh).

As I write this, it has been less than 48 hours since I finished, and I’ve very keenly felt the hole it has left. Not as painful (not nearly so), not as so purely sorrowful, as the hole left by my friend, but the same kind of lack of color of yourself, the kind of thing you can never notice until it is absent. You feel less for it yet – you are more for it. You have learned something more of yourself that, so thoroughly enmeshed, was impossible perceive before. To quote a friend: “Now, the days seem a little grayer and the nights a little darker. But, how marvelous the night! How vivid the sun!"

[Franklin · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great run! Total moving forward truly catching the present only to meet the end right back to the start right at the end of life! A Wild ride that we can all
embrace !

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

11.25.22 Finished The Fugitive, could have sworn I'd posted dates for The Captive, but GR hates my tablet. I must confess, there were times I've wanted to shake Marcel over his emotional to-ings and fro-ings with Albertine, only to have it all end in great big rien....

On to Time Regained and the last 398 pages. I may finish by year's end.

And I did. In the wee hours of 12.20.22.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, I really have read the whole thing, after more than 30 years. I started reading Proust in the old Moncrieff translation with the tiny print. And after the first few volumes. I would take a break. But I love "Swann in Love" so much that every time I would go back to Proust I wanted to start from the beginning...
Anyway, it's worth the effort. And once you finish it, you'll probably want to go back to the beginning and start all over again..

[Agustín Fest · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este año comencé uno de mis proyectos literarios más ambiciosos como lector: Leer a Marcel Proust y los siete tomos de “En busca del tiempo perdido”. Quise, de alguna manera, que mis treinta años significaran algo como lector y escritor. Leer también es escribir (es un aspecto de muchos). Escritor que no lee sólo puede burlar una vez, o dos, pero eventualmente cae presa de su propia desidia y lo castigan como a un Karamazov. Quizás con lectores dedicados evitaríamos el tufo del plagio.

El pintor tiene que ver la naturaleza, un sujeto, una imagen y contemplarla, meditarla, precisarla antes de mancillar decididamente el lienzo en blanco. El escritor también tiene que ser un observador y no sólo de sus alrededores, sino de esos bloques de letras, párrafos, oraciones, estilos, maneras de hablar. Tiene que entregarse a sus lecturas, sean cuales estas sean y sobre todo, tiene que estar dispuesto a arriesgarse a tomar esos libros aparentemente invencibles para desmenuzarlos, estudiarlos, descubrirse insuficiente (o levantarse como un Coloso adecuado al reto) para entregarse y sencillamente leer hasta concluir la historia. Traduzco la invitación: Deje de leer libracos complacientes un rato, anímese.

Dicho lo anterior, escogí a Proust y leer a Proust es una putada. Es una deliciosa ironía que el trabajo se trate del tiempo y que hogaño, sea muy difícil leer párrafos tan largos, abundantes. La tendencia del lector contemporáneo es disminuir su tiempo de lectura sin sacrificar el placer que provoca una historia. Eso, a su vez, alimenta estos géneros explosivos de literatura breve: microficción, ráfagas poéticas, palíndromos, twitteratura, como quieran llamarle. Subrayé demasiadas líneas en mi lectura ¿y saben cuántas pude compartir a través de Twitter? Tres. Solamente tres que se acomodaron a la brevedad exigida. Los demás son imposibles de tuitear sin destazarlos y convertirlos en otra cosa, algo que pueda leerse estúpido, insuficiente o incompleto.

Proust exige lectores de otra época. Lectores dispuestos a devorar lentamente la búsqueda memoriosa del narrador en su afán por recuperar el tiempo, tiempo que paradójicamente el lector pierde mientras enferma de Proust. A manera de una Scherezada, el Narrador entrelaza historias, recuerdos, personajes y es fácil perderse en los encuentros, vencerse al vértigo de las demasiadas palabras. ¿Vale la pena leer a Proust? ¿Tengo el tiempo de leerlo? Sí, lo tienes, búscale y atrévete. Quizás nunca deje de recomendarlo.

Hace unas semanas, en una discusión tuitera, una estudiante de literatura mencionó que quisiera tener tiempo de leer a Proust. Tuve que responderle, y me parece justo decirlo aquí: Una novela de siete tomos con la palabra “tiempo” en el título es una advertencia obvia. Si quieres leerlo tienes que buscarte el tiempo, tienes que sacrificar otras diversiones para entregarte al oficio y el placer de la lectura, una lectura orgánica, del tamaño de una selva y sin salidas fáciles. Es decir, tienes que tomártelo en serio (lúdico pero en serio Juanito). Aunque es posible que el destino de Proust sea la soledad. Es posible que, como lo vaticina el Narrador, la obra pierda su vigencia en unos cien años más y sean cada vez menos los lectores dispuestos, entregados. Si lo lees, prepárate para que sea imposible compartir la experiencia.

Otra cosa que salió en twitter fueron personas que solamente han leído uno de los tomos. Ya que lo he terminado, esas personas me angustian… después de que hice mi tarea sin trampitas, tomando al toro por los cuernos, leyendo de tomo en tomo, sin saltarme las partes aburridas y soporíferas, recibí mi recompensa al final, como tuvo que ser. El orden es importante, puede ignorarse pero no lo recomiendo. Recuperar los recuerdos progresivamente es un deleite increíble y me imagino esas lecturas incompletas, sin el destino o el progreso de los numerosos personajes mencionados, sin el placer o el gozo de cuchichear todo lo que se dijo de ellos.

La novela es un gozo una vez que empiezas. Además de obedecer a su época y su lugar (Francia, el caso Dreyfuss, los judíos, pre y durante la Primera Guerra Mundial), también es un compendio acerca del amor, el erotismo, el lenguaje, la amistad, las etiquetas, la diplomacia, el chisme, el juego de poderes, la muerte, las estrategias de guerra, el ocio, la enfermedad, el arte (en sus múltiples ramificaciones), la narrativa, los artificios del escritor y los celos (lo he dicho numerosas veces: si una mujer deseara comprender los celos de un hombre, debería leerlo).

El último tomo es un regalo. El libro, como muchos saben, empieza con la mordida de la madalena y en el último tomo, a la mitad, la madalena ya está mordida. Recibes una manifestación completa, preciosa, de lo que es el escritor y lo que es el arte, el descubrimiento de la gran obra (que quizás no sea tan grande) y el momento de escribirla. Después de seis tomos donde el Narrador se admite un fracasado, incapaz de escribir algo verdaderamente de valor, luego de atravesar el río de la memoria se siente con la capacidad de hacerlo, recibe el don del tiempo y a su vez, el don es un castigo cuando se descubre viejo, quizás sin el tiempo suficiente de plasmar todas esas memorias (ya leídas por el lector, y escritas por Proust), en medio de una reunión de viejos aristócratas, donde se encuentra a la mayoría de los personajes (si no es que todos) que Proust ha delatado a lo largo de la búsqueda. Se oculta la ironía y las mejores ironías siempre se disfrazan, igual que los soñadores quijotescos que pronto olvidan el peso irónico del Quijote, la búsqueda del tiempo perdido se resuelve cuando el tiempo, en verdad, ya se fue.

[John Hilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

(More of a personal reaction, not so much a "review" ...)

It is difficult to circle back and arrive a starting point for discussing these volumes that, off and on, I have been easing through for over 6 years now. Norman Mailer answered an interview question as to what single book he would bring to a desert island with him with "In Search of Lost Time" (which I think is the better translation of the work's title, and a more accurate one than the very passive-sounding "Remembrance of Things Past").

I think that's right. I would, too, if for no other reason than, having finally finished it, I walk away with the firm conviction that I must read it again. (And that I want to spend some time talking about it with other people who have also just finished it. Where are those people? I miss being a college English major and reading great works of literature communally, although I would not have liked to read this under the deadline gun.) I would bring this to a desert island simply because nothing else would be required.

Even while still in the first volumes of "In Search of Lost Time," without understanding Proust's efforts to "regain time" through the writing of the work, I comprehended that he had managed, in his time and place (late 19th and early 20th century Paris, through and beyond World War I), to perfectly photograph every intricate intercourse and discourse that can occur between people, both closely and casually related. It was clear to me that, technology aside, not much has changed in that regard, either ... Proust got them all down cold.

Every detail of humanity's brushing and pushing against itself is all here: the passing glances, the abject longing, the dismissive brushing-aside, the obsessions and passions, the acquaintances that pass, those that return with profound impact, the involuntary movement past loss and death and the transformation that brings with it. It's all here.

Goofily, probably, I think of my favorite song, Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane," (not that "Live 1969" version, the original "Loaded" version, without that "heavenly wine and roses" middle section stuck in) in the same way: all of life's little loves and striving and movement is captured there, too, in those quick verses (that stupid "heavenly wine" throwaway section adds nothing!). All other pop songs are redundant beside it.

Same here. That still is not the point of "In Search of Lost Time," however: it is just the result of the search. Proust finishes with the point (SPOILER alert, sort of): "... at least, if strength were granted me for long enough to accomplish my work, I should not fail, even if the results were to make them resemble monsters, to describe men first and foremost as occupying a place, a very considerable place compared with the restricted one which is allotted to them in space, a place on the contrary prolonged by past measure--for simultaneously, like giants plunged into the years, they touch epochs that are immensely far apart, separated by the slow accretion of many, many days--in the dimension of Time."

We die and are reborn as new creatures, again and again, as time and events overtake us, as those we love die and pass out of the immediate moment. What we loved, when it is gone, we may no longer love. Those we loved existed in that space of Time only, and, when that Time is lost, the person we were when we so loved is lost, too. To search out and recover, then, lost Time, is to recover those people, others as well as our own former selves, who occupied that "considerable place," expansively, yes, but also briefly.

So I get it, yes. I think I do, anyway. I need to re-read this, though, not "to get it" so much as to re-live it, to conduct my own search for lost time--which is the opportunity that this work provides us--better. Properly this time. Understanding is not the issue. Proust brings this at-first apparently rambling thought-poem together in the last 300 or 400 or so pages of the final volume, "Time Regained," and I understand now what it was I was doing when I was reading the first few volumes. It infuriates me all the more, now, that someone who shall remain nameless, in response to my pointing out a volume in a bookstore and indicating that I was enjoying it, should have contemptuously dismissed it as "pretentious." (For lack of being a science fiction novel, I guess.)

To read this, and especially as slowly as I did, pausing to read other things in between before returning to it, was an involved process that took me, personally, through some strange years and events: later-in-life law school graduation, divorce, death of my oldest and dearest friend, relocation to a new city and a ghost-like, withdrawn life there with largely only my beloved, departed cat Julip at my side, my return home from that city, waking back up, career picking up, re-marriage, birth of my first child, straight through 11:03 PM yesterday, August 17, 2015, when I read the final sentence of "Time Regained." I sort of lived it as I read it, in other words, and it feels strange to complete it only to find so much lost time so recently at my heels.

It is without a doubt the most worthwhile thing that I have ever read. It has been a meandering river that I have bobbed along for a long time. Now, however, having read it, what do I do with it?

Time will tell.

[Adam Krasnoff]

Thus ends the most formative and inspiring reading year of my life. I thought for so long I wanted it to be over, but all I hoped for as I was finishing was that there might be another seven volumes someplace. Books for a whole life.

[Brett · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you scroll through the reviews of this book, you'll see that it speaks deeply to many people. I don't mean to deny their experience; obviously it is considered a classic of world literature and has been read for over a 100 years now. But, good lord, I do not see where these positive reviews are coming from. To me, Remembrance of Things Past is turgid, endless, navel-gazing.

This 1100 page tome contains the final three segments of the seven-part series. Something like 900 of these pages is dedicated to a feeling of extended petty jealousy that our narrator's girlfriend may be having an affair with another woman, or may have done so at some point in the past. I'm only barely exaggerating. There are hundreds of pages devoted to this theme. It. is. so. tiresome.

The layout of the writing very much shows its age, with page after page continuing on without so much as a new paragraph. Just walls of text, repeating and repeating the same suspicions.

By the time you reach the end, after slogging through a total of somewhere over 3000 pages, you don't feel any sense of wholeness or insight into the scope of Proust's life. For me, I just felt a sense of relief that I could finally move on to something else. The entirety of this work could have been better executed as a two page poem.

[Mark Spano · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am writing a single review for all volumes. Proust discovered why we read and spent the greater part of his years presenting us a learner's manual for reading, writing and living. Alain de Botton is quite correct Proust CAN change your life. I promise if you devote yourself to this set of works, you will never regret, and you will be changed for life. How? Guess!

[burt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary lovely passages and sections embedded in daily narrative; sometimes I wondered why am I staying with these people most of whom I don't like and then, whoosh, I get hit with a wonderful wind taking me thru another hundred pages evoking deep connections and feelings.

[Rhoda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just as good the second time around!

[Ed Smiley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review cointains ***SPOILERS***

Proust being Proust he uses a scale of time and detail that is more in keeping with the pace of real life--which has its tedious aspects--but that scale seems to make the transitions of the characters seem natural even though he exaggerates their abruptness, a little. Proust is sometimes like those directors who do continuous takes with deep focus and lots of slow motion contemplation of the scenery. Sometimes it gets stifling, the number of overlays, like he is following the advice of Titian: "glazes? oh forty or fifty."

Proust explains:
And, without question, all those different planes, upon which Time, since I had regained it at this reception, had exhibited my life, by reminding me that in a book which gave the history of one, it would be necessary to make use of a sort of spatial psychology as opposed to the usual flat psychology, added a new beauty to the resurrections my memory was operating during my solitary reflections in the library, since memory, by introducing the past into the present without modification, as though it were the present, eliminates precisely that great Time-dimension in accordance with which life is realised.

Early on, he uses the metaphor of the the magic lantern. It is like Plato's cave shadows, but Proust colors it so, for Proust, the experience of the the shadow-figures itself has equal weight, instead of being an illusion. Another key theme is the motif (e.g. the madeleines) that links the past and present.

Proustian characters seem to agonize over their obsessions and then go in a diametrically opposite direction than they intended, or that we expect; and this seems to be a theme, that of opposites of mood and character sometimes partaking of an underlying emotional synthesis, so that they are in some sense more alike than other characteristics that are less dissimilar.

The personalities are mulit-dimensional, psychological Multiples, perhaps, normal people are really many different personalities with different emotions and capabilities--that normal people maintain integration because of shared memories. People with multiple personality disorders get too far disassociated, to the point that there is not enough shared memory to integrate the personalities, but even normal people vary in what they recall based on the sub-personality they are at the time--state dependent memory. He refuses to give his characters a "character", instead they have characters, depending on where they are or who they are with or what is triggered in their internal landscape. The motif, tends to thread these together. You start to realize how inconsistent one is. And memory! The work is called Recovery of Lost Times or Remberance of Things Past... ...that's the link between our mini-personalities! And as for the composite creature, the author-protagonist, I recall that in eastern meditation, there is the concept of the Watcher, which looks upon the activity of the mind and the partial churning personalities, and yet stands outside them. In what sense is the narrator, as author, as writer, like the Watcher (imperishable Self)? And what good is that, in that precisely by standing outside consciousness and making consciousness a subject of perception, it is knowing but strangely powerless? At the end, we see a resolution in the vocation of Art--The Rememberance of Things Past being, in one sense, a ginormous treatise on writer's block.


I would say that one of the major themes is progressive layers of enchantment and obsession, followed by disappointment, disenchantment and grief. And this relies on the reader's familiarity (at least at the skimming level) with what has gone before. Each involves an enfolding and unfolding, as each progression of the narrator's tale, and the life process of many of the central characters mirror this, seems to be saturated by, and receive its depth from, all that has gone before.The Buddha said that the cause of sorrow is desire (or attachment), but it is sometimes forgotten that he taught that this was the proximate cause of sorrow, the ULTIMATE cause being not seeing reality for what it is.

There is a multiply threaded connection between the little phrase of Swan's leitmotiv of his involvement with Odette and its composer's sorrow and his daughter's posthumous betrayal of his memory, and the narrator's memory of his grandmother, and the narrator's bivalent feelings for the pretty obviously bisexual pretty Albertine and his terror of confirmation of her lesbian relationships. There is a sublime passage where the newly uncovered septept by Ventueil is first performed with Morel and other musicians at the Vendurins under the sponsership of the Baron de Charulus! The passage of time is also suggested subtly: technology is accelerating as the years pass? Airplanes, telephones, automobiles. First as minor asides in passing, then more and more in the substance of daily life. The plane passing in the sky and then the aerodrome for example.

One subtheme is intolerence asd anti-semitism and the Dreyfus affair, for a long time it was _the_ topic, and socially terrifying for hosts as it could completely wreck an otherwise friendly gathering. There is a famous cartoon from the time that shows a dinner party in two panels, before and after discussing it. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia...) He wants the characters to play it in an iffy and inconsistent way. (Think of what thoughts and words you would put in the mouths of characters when writing about the time when Watergate was a third rate burglary in November 1972.) That they might privately think one thing and say another is almost certain; or think one thing and then be horrified after the fact for thinking it. And as for anti-semitism, I do not think Proust depicts it in a positive way, but he does not treat it in an Upton Sinclair manner either: good guys and bad guys and stack the deck is not his way. He condemns as much by implication as anything else: he seems to relish his analytical voice and explore the natural history of the contagion: an epidemiologist, not a general physician. Proust seems to say, that's how it works, this is what people felt, and what they said, this is what they did, and this is what they wanted to do, or inconsistenly, didn't want to do, this is the essence of the thing, and what do you think about it, and have you felt this way, or another, or said or thought one thing or another, how do you experience injustice, how to you treat the outsider, I showed you what we (M and all his characters) are, what are you then?


Another theme, that of sexual minorities, is another subtheme about the social insider/outsider duality and the paradoxes of the same. In the most extreme case, it is that of the Baron de Charlus, but many other characters are covertly bisexual. (Hence, Vol. IV "Sodom and Gomorrah".) The narrator is obsessed with Alberine's love for young women, and I do have to warn you who are squeamish, the Baron gets even weirder before he descends finally into old age, so don't be too shocked. Suffice it to say he purchases his own orgiastic irregular house, and pays street toughs to subject him to severe masochistic abuse. The Vedurins conspire to break his relationship with Morel, and there are scandals. When the Baron gets about as hold as he can get this side of the veil, there are touching passages about the care that Jupien exercises in caring for the old man.

The final volume is the great divide. All the previous volumes precede the Great War. He describes the supplanting of the old way with the new generation. You will have several new overlays of character for those you have experienced before, when you reach this point. The characters, as you would expect, are getting older, are dying off. The narrator is mindful of death (there are several deaths in the course of the novel.) However I think that he is also mindful of the death of the person one was, the death of a person inside oneself (ones projection of that person), and the death of love (which is sort of a composite person). And the personification of this theme of death is the untimely end of Albertine; she, for a while, lives on more fully in his mind than when she was alive and in an ironic sense communicates with him from beyond the grave through the poor handwriting in a letter. The war is the great separation between the last and the earlier volumes; lives are destroeyd on a massive scale, as is much of the landscape. Robert gets himself deliberately sent to the front where the action is hottest, that does not appear to be a positive development from an actuarial perspective. This suicidal flowering of noblesse obige is accompanied with no rancor against the Germans, such is his sense of duty and honor. Proust goes away, too, for a while to regain his health, and returns to a social gathering to see the same characters in a beautifully and tragically written description of the masquerade of old age.


In all previous volumes the narrator has frittered away his vocation. In this one, he has a fresh and electrifying revelation, in which he absorbs and transcends the tragedy. He gets a multi-front assault of vastness triggered by sensory cues and gets suspended outside Time. He arrives to late, and has to wait in the library, while a musical piece is finished--where he arrives at his Vocation.
He transcends Time. Then he leaves the library, and goes back into society. And what a shock is waiting for him, in one of the weirdest and saddest passages--everyone is in disguise. But the disguise consists in the ravages of Time. For many years have passed.
It was quite a journey, and it was worth it.

Final note: I found out is that there are inconsistencies in some of the later volumes, as Proust died before he had a chance to clean them up. So one tip is, especially from the Fugitive on, read the footnotes, if you haven't before.

[Kristin Davis]

Well, after seven long months, I’m finally done with In Search of Lost Time a/k/a Remembrance of Things Past. Surprisingly, I can honestly say that I would like to read it again sometime.

Rating this particular book, which is actually the last three volumes of Proust’s novel is tricky so I'm not going to do it. As I mentioned in my updates, I didn’t care for The Captive or The Fugitive at all. Those volumes are largely about the jealous, dysfunctional relationship between the narrator and Albertine. I found them both to be very emotionally taxing. However, I found the final volume, Time Regained, to be very enjoyable. In that volume, the narrator has an epiphany while he is at a social event with the usual suspects. He looks around and suddenly notices that everyone is old and decrepit, even to the point that he can't recognize them, including himself. He decides that he should write a novel. (I don’t think that’s really a spoiler, is it?) For me, the hidden gem in Time Regained was a long, but really lovely essay on artists and the creative process. In the end, I was very impressed that despite the fact that Proust died before he could really smooth out the inconsistencies with some of the characters (they disappear, reappear, die, come back to life), the ending still makes sense and all seven volumes truly read like one novel.

In the unlikely event that any of my friends out there want to tackle this project, here’s what I wish I had known seven months ago:

1. Slow down. This novel can’t be read quickly without missing important details.
2. Pay attention. Nothing is in the novel just for the heck of it. It all relates to each other by the end.
3. Be ready to look up lots of words you don’t know. I also used Google translate frequently, because when Proust quotes other authors or artists it isn’t translated.
4. The novel is semi-autobiographical. Knowing a little background about Proust would have been helpful. He was one strange dude, and you will be reading some strange things.
5. When I finally picked up one of the audiobooks, I realized that I was mispronouncing almost all of the names of the characters in my head.
6. Be patient. Proust is like your old great-great-uncle who traps you in a corner at a family gathering to tell you stories about when he was your age. He has a point, eventually. Just sit back and enjoy the story.
7. This sounds a little cheesy, but if you let it, this book will change the way you see the world around you. Proust was an artist at heart, and he observed everything around him with great intensity. I found the fact that he could translate this into words really fascinating.
8. Know why you are reading this. The first question out of peoples mouths when you tell them you are reading Proust will be "Why?". My usual answer, accompanied by a shrug was, "I was bored."

The surprise benefit of reading all seven volumes of Proust? Everything else I read from here on out will seem really, really short.

[William Shieber · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are some personal observations on completing "Remembrance of Things Past." They do not cohere into a review.

1. "For regret, like desire, seeks not to analyze but to gratify itself." I wrote this statement down in a notebook when I began reading Proust a long time ago, to make sure I remembered it, but I've never needed to look it up.

2. The goodreads star review system is subjective and imperfect. But how does one delineate between five star books and masterpieces? Even calling "Remembrance of Things Past" a transcendent masterpiece in a written review is hackneyed. Whatever: "Remembrance of Things Past" is a transcendent masterpiece.

3. I've not read all of the so-called "great" novels -- not even close. However, of the ones I've read, until now, I always thought that "War and Peace" was the greatest. Now, I have added "Remembrance of Things Past" next to it on the pinnacle.

4. I've never bought into the notion that reading great novels can change your life. In Proust, the central characters, while in love, make the same mistakes over and over again. (Marcel in dealing with Albertine makes the same mistakes that Swan made in dealing with Odette and that Robert made in dealing with Rachel.) The best that can be hoped for is that we understand the process, not that we change it.

5. I first tried to read "Remembrance of Things Past" over twenty years ago, but couldn't finish it. When I picked it up again last month, I couldn't put it down. If you tried before, don't be afraid to try again.

[Alexandros Dourtmes · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author, got to meet people, fall in love, lose people, mourn. There was ww1, where he lost friends, but found his childhood sweetheart Gilberte, again. Finding himself among a dying French aristocracy and in the middle of a party, the author delves into existentialism. Sounds, colours, faces and places of the past come to mind and in the end there's this realisation of futility in everything and everyone, a fear of losing the ones you love while the rest of the world keeps turning and life simply goes on. I'm so happy I got to read the whole of this amazing book.

[Trinity Benstock · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Proustian reveal is one of two things: the character is gay, or dead (shout out to bestie Albertine for putting the bi in lesbian libido)


Despite this, every reveal I am gagged and verbally muttering astonishments.

To think I have but one book left 😭😭

[Amir · Rating 5 out of 5]

نام کتاب: در جستجوی زمان از دست رفته جلد هفتم (زمان بازیافته)
نویسنده: مارسل پروست
مترجم: مهدی سحابی
تعداد صفحات کتاب: 443 صفحه این کتاب یه مجموعه 7 جلدی هست (یه جلدش دو قسمت هست یعنی در مجموع میشه 8 جلد). به طور متوسط هم جلدهاش در حدود 500 صفحه هستن. این مجموعه رو مهدی سحابی ترجمه کرده و نشر مرکز هم چاپ کرده. کتاب یه جور حالت اتوبیوگرافی داره و به حالات درونی آدمها به دقت و با جزئیات خیلی زیاد پرداخته شده. مجموعه اش یه اثر خیلی سطح بالا هست. هم از لحاظ ادبی هم از لحاظ دقتی که در پرداختن به موضوعات درونی داره. جلدهای مختلفش هر کدوم مربوط به مراحل مختلف زندگی و روحیات نویسنده هست و به موضوعات مختلفی هم پرداخته. این کتاب رو اوایل که ترجمه شده بود هر جلدش رو جدا میفروختن (چون یه جور حالت استقلال داره جلدهای مختلفش که میشه جدا جدا هم خوند) الان ولی دیگه همش با هم شده.از بین این 7 جلد من جلد آخر که عنوانش "زمان بازیافته" هست رو خوندم.
کتاب از لحاظ سطح نوشته ها و موضوعاتی که بهش پرداخته شده واقعا سطح بالا هست. کتاب پر از حرفها و عبارات قشنگ هست و ایده های خیلی نابی درش پرداخته شده. این مجموعه یه شاهکار ادبی هست که هیچ کتاب دیگه ای شبیه بهش نیست. با این حال من این کتاب رو برای خوندن به کسی توصیه نمیکنم. کتاب ممکن هست که خیلی وقتها خسته کننده بشه و در بعضی از بخشها هم به موضوعاتی پرداخته که خاص کشور فرانسه هست و برای ما کمتر جذابیت داره. برای من خوندن پراکنده همین جلدش در حدود یک سال طول کشید.
بخشی از کتاب رو که به نظرم قشنگ بود هم با هدف اینکه با سبک کتاب آشنا بشین هم به خاطر مفهوم قشنگی که داشت براتون می نویسم:
باید به جای این که صدمین بار با این واژه ها خود را لالایی بدهی: "چقدر نازنین بود"، از ورای آنها چنین بخوانی: "خوش داشتم او را ببوسم". بدون شک آنچه را که من در آن ساعتهای عشق حس کرده بودم همه آدمها هم حس می کنند. حس می کنیم، اما آنچه حس کرده ایم شبیه برخی فیلم هایی است که تا نزدیک چراغشان نبرده ای فقط سیاهی را نشان می دهند و آنها را هم باید وارونه نگاه کنی، حس را هم تا نزدیک عقل نبرده باشی نمی دانی چیست. وقتی عقل آن را روشن کرد، وقتی عقلانی اش کرد تازه آن هم با چه زحمتی تصویر آنچه را که حس کرده ای می بینی.

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I made my way through the entirety of Proust's massive work over the course of July and August of the past year. Overall, I enjoyed A la Recherche etc etc etc a great deal, as there are any number of highly interesting situations and scenarios within the 4000 pages of the work, and Proust's insights into human behavior, especially with regard to duplicity and sociality, are dead-on.

However, there is also no denying that Proust's sentences can sometimes seem as if they could encircle the equator of the planet Earth, and he sometimes goes into the most boring of subjects in such depth that you have to force yourself to continue and tell yourself that eventually it will get better. I've often wondered how many people turn away from this book because it doesn't even really get interesting until maybe midway through Swann's Way. And such roadblocks crop up later in the work as well.

Overall, a very good read but one that will try your patience more than a few times and, at nearly 4000 pages, is not for the faint of heart. This edition, btw, is outdated, as is the translation. However, as I already owned it, it is the one I read, and I don't think there's a soul alive that could convince me to re-read a different version of this massive work anytime soon.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marcel pays the waiter Aimee to find out who Albertine really was. When Aimee reports back about her liasons with girls at the baths and of another with a laundry girl near the banks of the Loire who she happened to bite in her pleasure, Marcel is pissed since Albertine is dead, she will never know that he knows what's she has done. "...if I could have succeeded in invoking her by table-turning...or in meeting her in the other life...I would have wished to do so only in order to say to her: I know about the laundry girl. You said to her: 'Oh, it's too heavenly,' and I've seen the bite." Maybe you had to have been with Marcel for 2500 pages as I have, but this is as delicious as it gets!

Honestly, don't know how I am going to survive without Marcel in the aftermath of this great fusion. Getting into bed each night to read is like visiting with an old and thoroughly known friend who can put into words the deepest moments of my life or anyone's life, which until meeting Marcel, remained outside the realm of transmission.

Finally, after 18 months, I am finished. Long journey, but well worth it. I feel like I have climbed one of the Mt. Everests of the literary world and I have seen the world from its summit. Very good feeling.

[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.

[Lawrence A · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Volume I (Swann's Way and Within A Budding Grove) in 1985, Volume II (The Guermantes Way and Cities of the Plain) in 1995, and I should have read Volume III (The Captive, The Fugitive, and Time Regained) in 2005 for consistency, but I instead waited until 2014-2015. [I reread Swann's Way in 1998 for my book discussion group.] It was worth the wait. Although this translation is dense, and the sledding was rough at times, the interior monologues of the narrator---a neurotic, neurasthenic, and fledgling CREATIVE FORCE---are deep in perspective and as detailed as one could conceivably describe thought, feeling, and memory.

[Steve Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have perceived in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity..." In the end, this is the primary genius of "Search" - the ability to allow the reader to seek out the same paths in themselves that Proust explored. Couple this with his brilliant imagery and Balzacian detail... well... it's surely at the top of the heap.

[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!