One Year In Search of Lost Time ~ 2015 discussion

We finish Swann's Way this week. Stick with it. It's a long road but such a fantastic journey!

At the 95% mark of my edition, Gilberte says that from her friend's windows, she will watch King Theodosius arrive. Googling the monarch, I found this:

"The first Theodosius (Roman Emperor) outlawed homosexuality in CE 390, punishable by death.
The second Theodosius (Eastern Roman Emperor) in CE 438 codified all existing law into the Theodosian Code, which also expanded proscriptions against homosexuality."

http://readproust.blogspot.com/2010/0...

The Penguin/Davis edition has this footnote:
King Theodosius: probably an allusion to the visit of Czar Nicholas II in 1896.

still of course the name likely is taken from those emperors you researched.

i finished too and i don't know what to say as it doesn't end spectacularly, but brings this part full circle by Marcel's love for Gilberte, Swann's daughter. And i don't have my PC right now. I only now realized how strange it is that Swann marries Odette after he realized their relationship was doomed to fail at the end of the penultimate chapter.
I can only say that it was more than worth it and i'm still of the opinion that Swann's Way is an excellent standalone novel. From page 200 on or so i already wouldn't need to read another word to be completely amazed. Even if some say that Swann's Way only has its meaning in relation to the whole of ISOLT, i've already seen more than enough.

I remember being completely shocked when it was revealed that Mme. Swann was Odette! I thought for sure they had broken up!

Renato wrote: "I remember being completely shocked when it was revealed that Mme. Swann was Odette! I thought for sure they had broken up!"

When I read this passage for the first time...I thought it was strange that Odette would be away for more than a year. Then, I remembered the child, Gilberte.
.
Once, when they had gone away ostensibly for a month only, either they succumbed to a series of temptations, or else M. Verdurin had cunningly arranged everything beforehand to please his wife, and disclosed his plans to the “faithful” only as time went on; at all events, from Algiers they flitted to Tunis; then to Italy, Greece, Constantinople, Asia Minor. They had been absent for nearly a year, and Swann felt perfectly at ease and almost happy. MP

Renato wrote: "I remember being completely shocked when it was revealed that Mme. Swann was Odette! I thought for sure they had broken up!"

I wasn't completely shocked, Renato, but only because I kept remembering how unsuitable his wife was said to be in the beginning.

Marcelita, I didn't connect those dots! Thank you! Wow, even after two reads there's things to find and understand!

Teresa, I made a whole plot in my head that he ended up marrying Mme. de Cambremer instead and that she was seen as unsuitable because she had been previously married and cheated on her husband with Swann. I wasn't aware of Proust's 'games' yet!

I was also really surprised that Mme. Swann and Odette are the same. Then again, I'm a rather naive reader and often surprised by plot points I should have foreseen.

I didn't connect Odette's absence with the birth of Gilberte either. I don't think we have any reason to suspect that Swann knows at the time, right? He's happy, as I remember, because she's so far away and beyond his jealousy.

Jacob wrote: "He's happy, as I remember, because she's so far away and beyond his jealousy."

That's how I took it. I'm not so sure he would've been happy then to know about a child. And what I wondered, and am wondering if he did too, is how he can he be sure the child is his.

Same surprise about Mme Swann and Odette for me, too.
And good point, Teresa, i guess he cannot be sure. Either this worry didn't find its way into the novel (yet), or Swann is just pretty sure from what he knows about Odette's activities in that period.

Simon wrote: "Same surprise about Mme Swann and Odette for me, too.
And good point, Teresa, i guess he cannot be sure. Either this worry didn't find its way into the novel (yet), or Swann is just pretty sure fro..."

I am quite shocked that people doubted for a second that Mme. Swann is Odette. Throughout Swann in Love we are made to know that the realtionship between these two is not approved by anyone-which the narrator tells us is the cause that he has never been introduced to Swann's wife.