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A review by attytheresa
Remembrance of Things Past, Volume I: The Captive, the Fugitive & Time Regained by Marcel Proust
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.