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Marcel Proust

À la recherche du temps perdu (Parts 1-4)

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I would have thought that after over a hundred hours listening to In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust that starting a post about it would be easier. I seem to be most focused on how much closer I am to finishing. (For those keeping track along with me, I have 33 hours left and then book seven to read in paperback. I am currently paused before starting book five, The Captive.) If you include that I first listened to Swann’s Way and Within a Budding Grove last Winter, that’s slightly over 150 hours of Proust I’ve heard within the last year. It is not entirely about reaching the end. I am attempting to digest it all.

Paris, France

I can say that Swann’s Way made much more of an impact the second time around. Once I had a better idea of whom Marcel was growing up to be, revisiting his childhood made more of an impression. It almost seems worth it to read Time Regained (part VII) and then backtrack to V and VI. Is that some kind of heresy? Maybe not. I imagine that Proust had a fairly good idea on how his story was going to end before he got started, given his protagonist was loosely based upon himself. It may bring me closer to the sense of nostalgia that drove him to start writing in the first place.

I feel like I am currently paused at the silliest point in the protagonists’ life. For me, Marcel is not a very likeable as a young man. He’s obsessive, duplicitous, manipulative, and selfish. I am hoping that he will grow up and become more tolerable soon. For example, there is a moment where Marcel is traveling with his girlfriend Albertine. Also present in the scene are two male friends of his. One friend is asking him to step away from Albertine to greet his dying father, while the other is near enough that Albertine may be drawn into conversation with him while Marcel is away. Marcel does not trust either his friend or Albertine, so he declines the request. Marcel knows that refusing his friend will be hurtful. He knows that how the situation looks will cause the other man insult. However, Marcel snubs his friend with the aim of controlling his girlfriend, and decides it is better to let the friendship die than to find a way to explain his reticence.

Carcassonne, France

To me, this means they were never actually friends as Marcel purports. It means that Marcel ought not be attached to Albertine, or the friend he trusts so little with her. These superficial relationships appear to be largely underscored by Marcel’s lack of confidence which he tries to shroud with indifference and pretense. What I await is for Marcel to apply his keen gift for insight upon himself. Why, when he feels certain that Albertine is at least bisexual, is he maddened with jealousy but also seriously considering leaving her for her friend Andrée? Why does he hop from clinging to his mother, his servant Françoise, his grandmother, to Gilberte, Bloch, Albertine, etc? Marcel will claim that he does just fine on his own once he’s been left to his own devices. However, he very clearly yearns to be fawned over, looked after, and admired.

What else is an aristocratic Frenchman to in the early 1900s to do?

Tea time?

I do like that Marcel’s insights into high society can be biting. After all, this scathing adroitness is why many people like reading Jonathan Swift. I’ve been enjoying Neville Jason as narrator. I’ve been saddened that this allegedly gay man (Marcel, protagonist) apparently felt the need to repress his true self in favor of the flippant dalliances society expected of him. I have been agitated twice now (part III and IV) that the pacing of these novels seems to malinger until the very end. (Swann’s Way, part one, is thus far the best paced of the first four parts in my opinion.)

Even so, there are countless moments that I have laughed aloud, smirked at shrewd remarks, and have even shared instances of particular amusement with others as I’ve listened along. Sometimes it is a matter of minutes between a chuckle and snort; Sometimes hours. I do feel as though it has been worth my time, even despite my reservations.

It has been quite the journey, reading À la recherche du temps perdu. I’d like to hope that maybe the experience has helped me to read people better. I imagine that when I approach the last three parts of this novel, it will be with this goal in mind. For now, I’m going to let parts one through four settle in my mind. (When “taking a breather” before the next part involves short stories by Dostoevsky, then its probably time to step back for a bit.)

Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust

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It was only after I embarked upon my quest to read the Greatest Books top 100 novels of all time that I was aware of Proust. Marcel Proust, born 1871 and died 1922 was a French author responsible for penning À la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Depending on the translator, Charles K. Scott-Moncrieff or Terence Kilmartin, this works out to be Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time, respectively. À la Recherche du Temps Perdu is an ambling 4,438-page masterpiece loosely framed against Proust’s own lifetime and tops the Greatest Books list at number one. Even after I abandoned the last 30% of that list to curate my own, I decided that the top contender was not a title I should pass up.

Last December I started collecting the volumes of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu on audiobook. Naxos audio put out a 7-part recording of the unabridged novel with acclaimed actor/narrator Neville Jason. The first six parts of this recording, Swann’s Way, Within a Budding Grove, Guermantes Way, Sodom and Gomorrah, The Captive and The Fugitive are available on Audible. The seventh book, due to copyright restrictions, is not due to hit the United States until January 1, 2023. If you are patient and wait, this is 150 hours of listening that took Jason six years to record.

  • Marcel Proust

In 2020, I made it through both Swann’s Way and Within a Budding Grove. (I then shifted gears to read the entirety of the Harry Potter series for the first time, which if you include The Cursed Child, is very nearly the same length as À la Recherche du Temps Perdu from start to finish.) This August, I started from the beginning of Proust’s’ masterwork again. Though I remembered the overall plot of the first two parts, the subtleties and insights from the very beginning of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu were worth revisiting.

I like the way that Nevile Jason describes Prousts’ writing. He cites a minuteness of observation, depth of psychological understanding, and vivid descriptive powers. Jason describes the main character as having keen powers of observation that pierce through the urbane exteriors of the people he meets, so to expose the pretention and hypocrisy that lies beneath. In his words, À la Recherche du Temps Perdu is one of “the most poetic and magical works in all literature.”

Take the idea that human nature has yet to change over the course of hundreds of years (even though the culture has) and what you have is a vast collection of observations as to how people relate to each other. In the portion of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu I have listened to so far, there have been several times where I have been guilty of an observation Proust makes about people. Many more instances have I observed in others. I am an American born almost sixty years after Marcel died. I feel that in this way, À la Recherche du Temps Perdu is timeless.

Sigmund Freud (left), Shakespeare (right)

Other aspects of this novel that might interest a reader include a taste of Freudian philosophy. Proust understood that the past influences the present. He knew that developing an understanding of whom he was as a child would confer an understanding of whom he had become as an adult. There are also references to Shakespeare, in that “nothing is, but thinking makes it so.” Characters are not wholly who the protagonist thinks they are, despite his keen observational skills, but often whom he makes them out to be. He falls in love instantly with Gilberte, whom he has only seen once. His world is rattled when he realizes the face shown to him by his housekeeper is not the same that she shares with her romantic interest. There are nuances and complexities in every moment of this work.

I still have a way to go. I am only three hours into Guermantes Way. My extracurricular reading about À la Recherche du Temps Perdu informs me that I will see replaying themes of second chances as the story progresses. Nothing seems to happen very quickly, and the level of detail included in each scene can make this read feel unrelenting at times. However, it is this same minutia that develops the realism of the story. One of the most referenced moments in Swann’s Way is about nothing more than the taste of a cookie. There is a beauty in it.

Cabourg, France (aka Balbec) beachfront restaurant & hotel

I imagine that I’ll be through with the entirety of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu with a feeling of surprise. (Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield was a bit that way for me. I knew it was going to be a long story as every bildungsroman tends to be, but then by the end I was amazed that it was over. Richard Armitage is exceptional in his rendition of David Copperfield by the way, while it is a free listen on Audible for members. I highly recommend it.) Even though Prousts’ work is quite a bit longer, I anticipate a similar sensation. There is an alacrity to the novel rather than tedium. Even though I am not remotely close to the end, I already suspect À la Recherche du Temps Perdu may be something I end up reading again.