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bgatsch's review against another edition
I may need a minute before I can process this
aceface's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
attytheresa's review against another edition
5.0
I have come to the end of my Proust journey; our affair has ended. It was exhilerating, often difficult, I got really behind and had to push to finish by the last discussion group, but not only did the entire book reach a satisfying end, I totally get why anyone who has taken this journey finds themselves revisiting Proust - either reading again in its entirety or just dipping back.
There are spoilers - if you think you truly might read it, stop here. But everyone else continue, even if you might read but are on the fence.
The last volume starts off with The Captive or The Prisoner as sometimes translated. Albertine has come to Paris and is living with Proust in his family home while his parents are elsewhere for an extended period. She has her own room, but there is intimacy between then. He basically keeps her hidden away, no one knows she is living with him. He becomes more and more obsessed with her relationships with others, particularly women, convinced he can by essentially locking her up keep her from entering into lesbian relationships or being attracted to other women. Almost all this book takes place over a single day, at the end of which she leaves him in the manner he's spent much of the book stating he intends to end it with her. Coincidentally, this book came up to read just as COVID-19 led to social distancing and shelter in place world wide. We all sympathized with Albertine! Of course, much of the question is who was really the prisoner - the narrator or Albertine?
Next up is Albertine Disparue, or The Fugitive, where the narrator copes with her departure, schemes to get her back, continues to hide from the world in his room, and ultimately has to cope with the grief of her permanent departure when news of her death reaches him. There are long sections in which grief is explored and exposed, some of it quite beautiful. He also learns a great deal from others as to just what Albertine had done, with whom, and just how many lies she told him. Of course, some of these 'facts' are highly suspicious to the reader given their source.
Through all these books, we meet up again with various familiar characters - Charlus, the Verdurins, Saint-Loup, Morel, Francoise, and all we have become familiar, their stories interweaving in and around that of Albertine and the narrator. Much is revealed and dang but it seems everyone is gay!
Now we come to the the final volume, in which all is tied up, all is revealed. It's an open ending but its also closure. After all, this has been the journey of a man finally coming into his artistry, of writing a book, this very book we have just read. Here is philosophy shall we say is summarized and defined, a point to which we have spent over 3,000 pages reaching. And too, we attend one more dinner party/salon that is described for pages and pages, where we meet up with all the primary characters of his life, much older, and we get one more glimpse of society. This also allows Proust to talk about aging, allows him to express his concern that he may not live long enough to write the book he now knows he can write. Also the beginning of this book has us in Paris and Combray during WWI.
I'm feeling a little lost. I've been looking forward to finishing and reading some light stuff for a while. Yet I'm reaching for that fat silver paperback with the scribbles and post-its on the pages. Just like any affair, it's hard to let it just 'go'. This books is truly amazing, as relevant today as it was 100 years ago when first published. It does not read in a dated way, the language feels modern. Rarely has there been a book that I have so sunk into, the way you allow long slow indolent days of summer pass when you were young with fewer responsibilities. Remember when summers seemed ot go on forever? Reading Proust is like that. You cannot rush it, even skim it. You can read it a little bit every day, never losing your place. Proust is to be savored. Allowed to just 'be' and to settle into you as no other book ever has.
There are spoilers - if you think you truly might read it, stop here. But everyone else continue, even if you might read but are on the fence.
The last volume starts off with The Captive or The Prisoner as sometimes translated. Albertine has come to Paris and is living with Proust in his family home while his parents are elsewhere for an extended period. She has her own room, but there is intimacy between then. He basically keeps her hidden away, no one knows she is living with him. He becomes more and more obsessed with her relationships with others, particularly women, convinced he can by essentially locking her up keep her from entering into lesbian relationships or being attracted to other women. Almost all this book takes place over a single day, at the end of which she leaves him in the manner he's spent much of the book stating he intends to end it with her. Coincidentally, this book came up to read just as COVID-19 led to social distancing and shelter in place world wide. We all sympathized with Albertine! Of course, much of the question is who was really the prisoner - the narrator or Albertine?
Next up is Albertine Disparue, or The Fugitive, where the narrator copes with her departure, schemes to get her back, continues to hide from the world in his room, and ultimately has to cope with the grief of her permanent departure when news of her death reaches him. There are long sections in which grief is explored and exposed, some of it quite beautiful. He also learns a great deal from others as to just what Albertine had done, with whom, and just how many lies she told him. Of course, some of these 'facts' are highly suspicious to the reader given their source.
Through all these books, we meet up again with various familiar characters - Charlus, the Verdurins, Saint-Loup, Morel, Francoise, and all we have become familiar, their stories interweaving in and around that of Albertine and the narrator. Much is revealed and dang but it seems everyone is gay!
Now we come to the the final volume, in which all is tied up, all is revealed. It's an open ending but its also closure. After all, this has been the journey of a man finally coming into his artistry, of writing a book, this very book we have just read. Here is philosophy shall we say is summarized and defined, a point to which we have spent over 3,000 pages reaching. And too, we attend one more dinner party/salon that is described for pages and pages, where we meet up with all the primary characters of his life, much older, and we get one more glimpse of society. This also allows Proust to talk about aging, allows him to express his concern that he may not live long enough to write the book he now knows he can write. Also the beginning of this book has us in Paris and Combray during WWI.
I'm feeling a little lost. I've been looking forward to finishing and reading some light stuff for a while. Yet I'm reaching for that fat silver paperback with the scribbles and post-its on the pages. Just like any affair, it's hard to let it just 'go'. This books is truly amazing, as relevant today as it was 100 years ago when first published. It does not read in a dated way, the language feels modern. Rarely has there been a book that I have so sunk into, the way you allow long slow indolent days of summer pass when you were young with fewer responsibilities. Remember when summers seemed ot go on forever? Reading Proust is like that. You cannot rush it, even skim it. You can read it a little bit every day, never losing your place. Proust is to be savored. Allowed to just 'be' and to settle into you as no other book ever has.
kdavis's review against another edition
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.
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.
smcleish's review against another edition
4.0
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.
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.
lnatal's review against another edition
5.0
Free download available at Project Gutenberg
I made the proofing of this book for Free Literature and it will be published by Project Gutenberg.
Le texte dactylographié du présent, qui
forme le tome VI d'À la recherche du temps perdu,
nous avait été remis par Marcel Proust peu de temps
avant sa mort. La maladie ne lui ayant pas laissé
la force de corriger complètement ce texte, une révision
très soigneuse sur le manuscrit en fut entreprise après
sa mort par le Dr Robert Proust et, par Jacques Rivière.
C'est le résultat de ce travail, où nous espérons qu'un
minimum d'imperfections se laissera découvrir, que
nous publions aujourd'hui.
L'ÉDITEUR.
I made the proofing of this book for Free Literature and it will be published by Project Gutenberg.
Le texte dactylographié du présent, qui
forme le tome VI d'À la recherche du temps perdu,
nous avait été remis par Marcel Proust peu de temps
avant sa mort. La maladie ne lui ayant pas laissé
la force de corriger complètement ce texte, une révision
très soigneuse sur le manuscrit en fut entreprise après
sa mort par le Dr Robert Proust et, par Jacques Rivière.
C'est le résultat de ce travail, où nous espérons qu'un
minimum d'imperfections se laissera découvrir, que
nous publions aujourd'hui.
L'ÉDITEUR.
More...