در جستجوی زمان از دست رفته: بازنویسی برای تئاتر

by Harold Pinter (adopter), Di Trevis (adopter), عباس پژمان (translator)

نمایشنامه ای بر اساس رمان مارسل پروست "در جستجوی زمان از دست رفته"

Genres: Plays, Fiction, Drama

108 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Harold Pinter was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964) and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993) and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works.

Reviews

[Nick Wellings · Rating 5 out of 5]

For any fan of Proust, Pinter's screenplay is unalloyed bliss.

It distills the essence of Proust down to a manageable format for those unable or unwilling to venture too far into the novel itself. Its methods are legitimately beautiful, consonant with the tone of Proust's writing, evocative and rich and symbolically strong. If this had ever made it to film, how enigmatic to the unitiated would the opening fast cuts be, the little patch of yellow wall, the sound of the gate bell in Combray, the dancing spires. And yet by the film's close, seen in the power of memory how right, and beautiful.

Even though it has not been made (and how part of me wishes it had been completed,) for me the perfect Proust on film would always be Pinter's, if only because in having just the screenplay, we are free to populate and conjure up its particularities in our minds. Rather than taking issue with this or that actor as this or that character, rather than decide that we're not too taken with this scene of that location, we have instead what is to my mind perfection: the guide of drama, coloured by the intensity of our own imaginings.

[Roya · Rating 3 out of 5]

[2]

2.5 ⭐️

هارولد پینتر، سعی کرده که نمایشنامه‌ای بر اساس مجموعه‌ی 7 جلدی پروست بنویسه که من در مرحله‌ی اول اینجوری بودم که خب چرا؟ و اصلا آیا چنین چیزی ممکنه؟
وقتی که شروع به خوندنش کردم، دیدم تا حدی اون سیال بودن اتفاقات و خاطرات حفظ شده ولی چندان کار یک‌دست و مرتبی نیست (نمی‌دونم چجوری توضیح بدم :( ) و به نظرم اصلا نوشتن نمایشنامه از چنین اثر عظیمی ممکن نیست.
و این نمایشنامه‌ صرفا ترکیبی از اتفاقات مهم گلچین‌شده‌ی مجموعه‌ست که کسانی که خود مجموعه رو نخوندن، نمی‌تونن درک درستی ازش داشته باشن. چه بسا که فکر می‌کنم اجرای این اثر پینتر در قالب تئاتر (بدون تغییر) ممکن نباشه و در بهترین حالت بشه بر اساسش فیلم ساخت.
نمی‌دونم، در کل که به نظرم زیاد جالب نبود :(((

[Milad Ghezellu · Rating 4 out of 5]

کل هفت جلد در جستجوی زمان از دست رفته در ۱۰۰ صفحه و یکی از کارهای خیلی خیلی خوبه هارولد پینتر که یک رمان چند جلدی سیال ذهن رو که رفت و برگشت‌های زمانی داره برای اجرای تئاتر اقتباس کرده.

[Bamdad · Rating 4 out of 5]

پینتر درک درستی از پروست داره؛ حسرت، ملانکولیا، بی‌معنایی و ترس‌های درونی‌شده‌ی تمام جلدهای «در جستجو...» رو به خوبی درک کرده و نه‌تنها در کار خودش و نمایشنامه‌هایی مثل خیانت، کلکسیون و فاسق به سراغ بازنمایی نوعی جهان پروستی رفته، که مفسر بسیار خوبی از کار پروسته. در نمایشنامه‌ی در جستجو... به‌خوبی رمان‌ها و صحنه‌های مهمشون رو در قالب یک نمایشنامه‌ی کوتاه و موجز دراماتورژی کرده، و در این فیلمنامه هم تلاش کرده تا انتزاع بی‌حد رمان پروست رو کمی کنار بزنه و ازش تصویر استخراج کنه.
خوندن این دو کار می‌تونن خوندن رمان‌ها رو بارها راحت‌تر کنن.
حیف که فیلمی بر اساس این فیلمنامه ساخته نشد.

[Moeen · Rating 4 out of 5]

روش درست ریختن بحر در کوزه

[Bob Wake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harold Pinter’s unproduced 70s screenplay, intended for a collaboration with director Joseph Losey, shares an epic ambition not dissimilar from Raúl Ruiz’s lush 1999 film, Time Regained, a Wellesian-inflected fantasia based on the final volume of Proust’s masterpiece. Both Pinter and Ruiz use lots of fragmentation, involuntary flashbacks and epiphanies induced by church steeples, a garden-gate bell, uneven paving stones, a sonata. (The iconic madeleine is missing in action, perhaps wisely, given its cliched overfamiliarity.) It is Proust’s sublime—and sometimes terrifying—interiority that is unfilmable. Nonetheless, Ruiz’s film is a visual feast. Pinter’s screenplay is more dialogue-heavy, its drama more naturalistic. Ruiz, on the other hand, is a straight-up surrealist. The ideal Proust film would probably be an alchemical mixture of Pinter and Ruiz.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only Pinter could write a screenplay adaptation of Remembrance of Things Past and NOT include a madeleine-eating scene. I really enjoyed this (yet unproduced) distillation of the long work by Proust, but I can't imagine that anyone who hasn't read the novels would be able to follow it. Probably why it is still unproduced.

[Cymru Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

"PURE, UNALLOYED BLISS" said one faithful Goodreader, and it couldn't be said better.

What Pinter manages to do here, after working with two colleagues for what was according to him "the best year of his working life" (which is interesting since Pinter is a Nobel laureate) is truly special. Condensing a 3,000 page book into even a 3-hour movie script seems impossible until one is clued into exactly what Proust "does" that is so special.

There are moments that transcend time & space. We call it "nostalgia" today, but what is it really? It could be anything. Do you ever hear a sound, smell a smell, see a thing or just get wacked over the head with a strong impression from yesteryear? From the Future??? If so, then you understand Proust — for his "Lost Time" are those moments when time becomes meaningless, when we are transported by the magic of the chrono-trigger to those times in our lives that—sometimes inexplicably—matter most. The genius of M. Proust is that he can make a book glow with the secret myst of such enchantment, and Pinter has distilled this time-travel riboflavin into a tincture, the perfect intro to anyone looking to dive into La Recherche but doesn't have, say, six months of 3-hours a day to read the whole tome.

Another awesome thing about this screenplay is the way that Pinter's style comes through. I'm a big Pinter fan for his minimalist absurdist plays; what I like most is a certain atmosphere he creates, something that seems luxurious and materialist even in Beckett-ian climes of waste and disrepair. He is surprisingly more Proustian than I first expected, but he's taken on the colour palette of the aristocratic Frenchman with absolute aplomb. It's utter joy to see his stone greys & dark blacks softened into the pastel brilliance of the man from Combray. This is highly recommended, esp. for those who've cracked into Proust but are looking for something more crystalized, a more refined sugar, let's call it, added to the madeleine mix.

Payce.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summarizing Marcel Proust's "A la recherche du temps perdu" is often seen as a hopeless endeavour, an undertaking so absurd it fit in perfectly with Monty Python humour and the reader must still be content with extracts of some passage or another unless he dares conquer the whole seven-volume masterpiece. In 1972, Nicole Stephane, who held the film rights to Proust's work, asked Joseph Losey if he would like to work on a film version. Losey turned to Pinter to write the screenplay, and The Proust Screenplay was written over the following year.

The screenplay covers all of the Recherche, Pinter rejected any attempt to select one or two volumes as the center. The dramatic arc is twofold: on one hand the narrator moves toward disillusion in his personal life, but on the other hand all that has been lost (ultimately Time itself) is regained and then preserved permanently in the narrator's writing. The screenplay consists of 455 scenes, and just to give an idea of how compressed the narrative must be, the entire opening of "A la cote du chez Swann" up to "Un Amour de Swann" is represented in just fifteen pages of sparse script. But even with such trims, it is said that a film resulting from the screenplay would be about five hours long.

The action shifts among eras from scene to scene. Marcel sees M. Vinteuil's daughter and her lover in 1893, and in the next scene Albertine is telling him in 1901 of her esteem for the couple. Many scenes are single images. Scenes 134 and 135 are only of Saint-Loup looking at a photograph, 136 is only of an empty dining room in a hotel, and then 137 is of a band of girls on a cliff top in Balbec. However, there is a considerable amount of substantial dialogue here, especially in the tortured relationship of Marcel and Albertine. Of course, as this is a dramatic work by Pinter, we find the infamous "Pinter pause", but generally the voice is that of Proust, not the grim English playwright.

What a pity this film was never made. Although the common cinephile who has never read the Recherche wouldn't know the backstory of all characters and events, the film would still be a moving experience. For lovers of Proust's masterpiece, the screenplay is an opportunity to consider several portions of the novel in a new light due to Pinter's often relevatory telescoping of the story. At least the screenplay was printed and made widely available. If you've never read Proust, read him! And if you like the Recherche and are curious about a dramatization, do check out Pinter's creation.

[June Amelia Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pinter's screenplay of Lost Time is a masterful adaptation of an experimental novel into an experimental cinematic meditation on memory. The skeleton of the novel is there, with the themes and symbols coming to take center stage. Considering the way time moves back and forth in split seconds, had it been filmed it wouldve been one of the most unconventional films ever made. The film in my head while reading seems just as good.

Many fan favorite episodes and characters do get cut, such as the madeleine and Bloch, but i think Pinter's cuts and merging of characters mostly works to its benefit; he makes some very obvious decisions.

Overall, i think a worthwhile addition to any proustian's collection.

[Haman · Rating 5 out of 5]

در ستایش یاد و خاطره

[Ebrahim Refaghat · Rating 3 out of 5]

این کتاب در واقع نمایشنامه در جستجوی زمان از دست رفته است که هارولد پینتر از روی شاهکار مارسل پروست نوشته است

[Micah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memory, truth, art, secret meanings, nostalgia, regret, jealousy, hypocrisy, absurd aristocrats and even more absurd bourgeois, paradoxical sexualities - it's all here!

[Hock Tjoa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Proust Screenplay is delightful revelation--how to transmute seven volumes of dense, intense internal conversations into a slim script that takes up less space, uses fewer words, than half of one of those volumes. It does help to have read them, or at least Swann's Way, to follow/ re-imagine the movie. What a shame this movie was never made; or not, considering the blogs we would have on "was the book better than the movie?" But the script is brilliant. Proust's infatuation with female beauty, its corrupt manifestations, its privileged contexts, his memory of his mother and his confrontation with the reality of Baron Charlus' proclivities--it's all there. There is perhaps too much of switching back and forth in time; it is dizzying. Not everyone would agree that Vermeer's View of Delft and the patch of yellow in it can serve as the thread to lead one through Minotaur's lair. I for one wish Pinter found a way to include those madeleines.
Withal, a brilliant and delightful work.

[William Dearth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone knows that Harold Pinter is an excellent playwright, but I believe that this Proust screenplay is truly remarkable. How someone can take a nearly 4,000 page novel, condense it down to 176 pages and still make perfect sense is beyond me.

I am certain it may not make much sense to someone who has never read A La Recherche du Temps Perdu.

It certainly is an excellent review of the novel and only takes a day or two to read. Five stars in my mind as it does qualify as amazing.

[Catherine Corman · Rating 4 out of 5]

SWANN
To think I have wasted years of my life, that I have longed for death, that the greatest love I have ever known has been for a woman who did not appeal to me, who was not my type.

[Eli · Rating 4 out of 5]

به خودیِ خود به اندازه کافی خوب بود ولی مشخصه کتاب، بهتر خواهد بود. دوستش داشتم، با این حال.

[Vahid 22 · Rating 3 out of 5]

شايد اگر كتاب اصلى رو خونده بودم اين كتاب برام كتاب جالبترى ميبود

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 2019, after much stopping and starting and falling asleep to the audiobook (which is a lovely experience to have), I completed the first two volumes of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. I set the unrealistic goal of reading all seven volumes in time for the December 2019 Backlisted podcast on Proust. I thoroughly enjoyed the podcast despite falling fall short of the mark. It was on the podcast that I learned of Harold Pinter's brilliant screenplay of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. One of the hosts strongly recommended reading Pinter's adaptation and I am so glad that I secured a copy from the NYPL. I am a great fan of Harold Pinter, and this screenplay did not disappoint. It is tragic that the funding was never secured for the film and so the reader must imagine the film while reading the script. Pinter amazingly captures the essence of Proust's masterpiece, delineating key events while also allowing Proust's reflection of time to permeate the work. And now, it's on to Lost Time, Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp by Jozef Czapski (New York Review of Books). After sidestepping with these two books ( I am not procrastinating, I promise!), it's on to book three, The Guermantes Way.

[Lyle]

Page 50

CHARLUS
Take the Louis Quatorze chair.
MARCEL sits abruptly in the chair beside him.
CHARLUS
Ah, so that is what you call a Louis Quatorze chair! I can see you have been well educated. One of these days you’ll take Madame de Villeparisis’ lap for a lavatory and goodness knows what you’ll do in it.

Page 113

CHARLUS
I agree with you. What an immensely successful
evening. He played like a god, didn't you think? Did
you notice when that exquisite lock of hair came loose and fell onto his forehead? The Queen of Naples, confronted by the message of the miraculous lock, suddenly realised it was music they were playing and not poker.

Page 116

QUEEN OF NAPLES
You look ill, my dear cousin. Lean on my arm. It once
held the rabble at bay at Gaeta. It will serve as a
rampart for you, now.

[Heidi Burkhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I received this book I was quite curious about it because I couldn't imagine how Pinter could take Proust's mammoth volume "In Search of Lost Time" and turn it into a tiny, thin book that he converted to a screenplay. Being a big fan of Proust's works I forged ahead. Only Pinter could have made such a success of this adaptation. It was marvelous....he captured the essence of the characters beautifully.

[Federico · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent work, but I'm not sure how enjoyable for someone who has not read the book. A good refresher if you have. It's also easy to realise how this screenplay would have been a nightmare for any film producer. Luchino Visconti might have been able to pull it off, but all those different highly visual scenes are a minefield.

[Stefano · Rating 4 out of 5]

La bellezza delle atmosfere Proustiane tradotta in un linguaggio cinematografico dove bisogna cogliere il bello dell'immagine attraverso la propria immaginazione. Il che aiuta a rendere Proust ancora più vivo. C'è una frammentazione che trova significato in ogni lettore che è uno spettatore mancato

[Sina Develioglu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ir was time to begin

[Madelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Marcel's Voice Over: It was time to begin."

[Artemisia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ho conosciuto Harold Pinter come scrittore solo un mese prima della sua morte, e lo conobbi tramite Il compleanno. Da allora, passo dopo passo, piecé dopo piéce, ho provato ad inoltrarmi nel grattacielo gelido, immenso, anomalo della sua produzione. Mi sono scontrata con dialoghi fatici, impostati sulla paura, sul dato nascosto. Il mio professore mi ha insegnato che Pinter scrive Kafka attraverso Hemingway - e sulla scena si muove sempre, vivissimo, il sottotesto in vesti di parole e di situazioni di ogni giorno, e si muove come il fantasma di un serpente, che striscia tra i tavolini, i divani, arredi di quelli che sono i pinteriani drammi da camera.
Ma - c'è un ma. Tra situazioni che svelano la quantità di orrore e di incomprensione e di sconoscenza dietro le silhouette di coppie perfette (e perfettamente integrate nel mondo vedi Old Times), si erge discreto e silenzioso un capolavoro incontrastato, a mio giudizio, della sua produzione. The Proust screenplay, per l'appunto: la sceneggiatura di un film su Proust che non vide mai la sua relizzazione, per mancanza di fondi. E' un testo dolce. Dolce, malinconico, soffuso - come le notti d'estate, nella campagna francese, illuminata ad intermittenza dalle lanterne dei giardini, le luci interne delle ville. E i profumi, i profumi colorati delle aiuole, del miele. Le biciclette in lontananza, gli amori perduti, il tempo ritrovato e catturato, finalmente, nell'arte tramite due movimenti dialettici "assolutamente contrastanti: un movimento essenzialmente narrativo, verso la disillusione, e l'altro più intermittente, verso la rivelazione, che crescesse verso un tempo perduto in cui il tempo perduto è ritrovato e fissato per sempre nell'arte.

Ed è qui, in questa sceneggiatura che ho trovato finalmente la malinconia vera dei poeti, la malinconia di un uomo che svelò la poesia della vita furiosa che lo circondava, semplicemente guardando la notte e ascoltando, in lontananza il rumore della campanella di un cancello, di un giardino.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not the biggest fan of Joseph Losey. I often come away from one of his films feeling that he doesn't know how to tell a story very clearly, or that he doesn't shoot enough footage for the editor to work with. I think that his best films were written by Harold Pinter, and it is easy to see why: Pinter spells out everything for him, the shots, the edits, the music cues, everything. I don't know how this screenplay could have made a successful film for someone who had not read the book. But the book seemed quite popular in the 1970s, as Visconti was trying to adapt it prior to Pinter, and the Rothschilds threw their Proust Ball in 1971 (with Liz & Dick as the Duc and Duchesse de Guermantes). I read the book two years ago and so this script was like a refreshing of my memory. As before, it dragged for me once we got to Albertine. I was disappointed that there was not much Gilberte or even Robert, not a lot of explanation of how people ended up socially where they did by the final party, only a fleeting mention of the Great War. I'm sure I would have preferred Visconti's planned version, which would probably have been even longer, but with a decadent point of view I would have appreciated, and supposedly an old Greta Garbo out of retirement as the Queen of Naples.

[Lloyd Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this screenplay. I thought it did a terrific job of summarizing Proust’s 7 volume novel into a hundred pages. But since I’ve read “A La Recherche” so many times, the screenplay may have seemed better to me than it would to someone who had never read Proust. I feel as if I’m friends with Marcel’s friend Robert de Saint Loup. I want to warn Marcel that Albertine is not good for him. I think Baron Charlus is like a sinister but fascinating Falstaff. I think Oriane, the Duchess de Guermantes is a bit trashy. I love Francoise’s malapropisms.

[Tatjana Dzambazova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doesn't this capture it all?
' The world of society to which I unfortunately belong, displays nothing but a carefully cultivated ignorance which over the centuries has become banality of mind, masquerading behind gesture, behind manner, behind arrogance, as good breeding. It never occurs to them that their posture and pretensions have become aftophied. But in fact they know nothing and are interested in nothing except money and position. They are Philistines'

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I first saw this in the bins a a secondhand book shop, I laughed out loud that anyone would try it - but Pinter did an amazing job of catching the tone, evoking all the paranoiac loves and the withering depictions of society. Unfortunately, there's not enough exposition for it to stand alone, but people who read the book will likely enjoy it.