Time regained ; A Guide to Proust

by Marcel Proust

Other authorsTerence Kilmartin (Translator), D.J. Enright (Contributor), Joanna Kilmartin (Contributor), Andreas Mayor (Translator)
Hardcover, 1993

Status

Available

Publication

New York, NY : Modern Library, 1993.

Description

"Time Regained," the final volume of "In Search of Lost Time," begins in the bleak and uncertain years of World War I. Years later, after the war' s end, Proust' s narrator returns to Paris and reflects on time, reality, jealousy, artistic creation, and the raw material of literature-- his past life. This Modern Library edition also includes the indispensable "Guide to Proust," compiled by Terence Kilmartin and revised by Joanna Kilmartin. For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin' s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff' s translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of "Á la recherché du temps perdu" (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothè que de la Plé iade in 1989).… (more)

Media reviews

The Guardian
K. Scott-Moncrieff died he had translated seven out of the eight books of Proust's "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu." The last volume, " Le Temps Rctrouve," has been done by Mr. Stephen Hudson...With these expository passages Mr. Hudson is fairly happy; he goes at them with resolution and wrests from
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them something at least as intelligible as the French. Where he falls short is in the narrative.
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1 more
The Daily Telegraph
Neither the original nor the translation is satisfactory. The stars have conspired against them Le Temps Retrouve was written when Proust was already a dying man and quite unable not only to revise such gross errors as the description of characters by phrases (amounting sometimes to whole
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paragraphs) which he has used to describe other characters in previous volumes, but even to use his own distinctive stylistic instruments
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User reviews

LibraryThing member lauralkeet
Time Regained opens with Marcel visiting Combray, the village of his childhood which figured prominently in the first volume of In Search of Lost Time. He has reconnected with his first love, Gilberte, who is now married to one of Marcel’s best friends. Soon, World War I is upon them and the
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narrative shifts to the impact of war on the village, on Paris, and on the society in which Marcel circulates. Much later (in the novel as well as in Marcel’s life), he attends a party and encounters many people he doesn’t recognize. This is not because he doesn’t know them, but because Marcel has been absent and everyone has aged considerably. And besides aging, some have fallen in the social hierarchy while others have made astonishing moves up the ladder.

Analysis of society, and the motivations of individuals, is a central theme throughout the work. In this volume, Marcel also reflects on how memories of the same event can vary widely from person to person, and how decisions or actions that seem inconsequential can have long-term effects:
But the truth, even more, is that life is perpetually weaving fresh threads which link one individual and one event to another, and that these threads are crossed and recrossed, doubled and redoubled to thicken the web, so that between any slightest point of our past and all the others a rich network of memories gives us an almost infinite variety of communicating paths to choose from.

And finally, as Proust closes a circle by connecting back to the first pages of In Search of Lost Time, I began to grasp the genius of this work. I say “began” because I sense that more insight can be gained by re-reading Proust from time to time. Will I do so? Only time will tell. For now I am perfectly happy to have read it once
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LibraryThing member jscape2000
I slogged my way through the final "book." In Time Regained, the narrator has completely taken over the plot- rather than a novel, it is more an extended meditation on art, society and death. I don't believe there were any scenes that took place on their own; instead, the narrator told us about a
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scene that had previously happened. Mercifully, at only 500 pages, this was the shortest installment.
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LibraryThing member P_S_Patrick
In several senses this volume seems quite different from the previous ones; It is translated by a different person, Proust's character seems to have grown up in age and attitude, and more sober matters take the focus of the narration. Less than half way through we pass through a Kafkaesque episode
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in a shady hotel, and while much of this volume is darker, in a more melancholy and even morbid sense, this bit stood out in being sinister, which none of the rest of the work was. The second half is spent in a party at the Guermantes, and it is here that Proust does much of his thinking upon aging and death.
Despite reviews I have read that claim the translator of the final volume does not do as good a job as Moncrieff does on all the other ones, I found this volume refreshing in its different tone, though after half way through I ceased to notice any of the differences in style between the two that were apparent to begin with.
Why this book is called time regained escaped me until very near the end, as most of this volume is about the way time has fled Proust, who realises he has become old. Much of the book consists of his lamentations of departed youth; a more relevant title that suggested itself to me would simply be “Temps Disparu”, Time Disappeared, as his search for lost time throughout the book has ended in the lost time not in a reality being found, with the revelation that he has little time left. But, in some senses, he does find his lost time, in one way in his observation that time repeats itself, that situations occur again, are never annihilated for good, and in a second sense, that he finally manages to pin down his lost time by recording it all in his novel, which ends at the point that he begins to write it.
I was beginning to suspect, at some point nearing the end of the novel, that I would be disappointed with its conclusion, but after spending no time reflecting upon it, having only just finished it, it is quite clear that the ending is fitting to the work, and that it makes worth while the reading of the whole.
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LibraryThing member zip_000
What is there to say about this book. It wasn't as good as the earlier parts of the work, but that is easily attributable to the posthumous publication and lack of final editing. Still though an amazing work.

The shocking thing that you discover - or at least that I discovered - in this book is how
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little of the narrator's life is actually portrayed in the text. The text is so nuanced and subtle that I often was left with the impression that I completely knew the character, but that just isn't the case. We see in the part that the narrator has suddenly gotten old...hard to say how old...in his 50's I think. And retrospectively, we see that he may have been older in the past several books than we thought.

In passing he mentions having fought duels and his military service. These things don't jive with the picture of the narrator that I had in my mind, but that is because we cannot really know the narrator based on the brief - though lengthy in text - encounters that we've had with him. Each part of the larger work only really describes a moment or an afternoon or a summer in the entire life of the character.

I am sad that I am finished and have no more Proust to look forward to.
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LibraryThing member jorgearanda
The final, shining volume of "In Search of Lost Time;" partly about the war, partly (and most importantly) about a meditation and a rediscovery of the progress of time in our lives, about memory, the many and varied encounters we have with the characters that form the story of our lives, and
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ultimately about finding the inspiration to give meaning to all of this, to record it all as a literary masterpiece, in a way turning "In Search of Lost Time" into an astonishingly beautiful and delicate story about its own creation and reason of being.
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LibraryThing member Leonard_Seet
More than a commentary on Swann’s jealousy or M. Charlus’s homosexuality or the frivolity of the Guermantes’ sorties, Marcel Proust’s monumental work In Search of Lost Time paints the unsuccessful reconstruction of a forgone world and a lost existence from fickle memories, which like
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morning mists would fade with the rising sun. The narrator Marcel, longing for a past that didn’t exist but must be created, sought to experience Bergson’s continuous time rather than the fragmented and still-framed instantaneous moments by attempting to blur the boundaries between Cambray and Paris, childhood and adolescence, and Swann and himself and integrate here and there, before and after, and him and me through memory fragments of previous objects, people and sensations. As in a neural network or a mind-map, the madeleine linked his aunt to his mother, who in turn was linked to Albertine through jealousy, which also connected Marcel with Saint Loop and Swann, who, as with his (Marcel’s) grandmother, linked his childhood and adolescence. And through recollection, Marcel would try to relive the buried years and resurrect his grandmother and Albertine.

But even during the narrative, Marcel realized memory’s willfulness and the variation in hues, shapes, pitch and timbre between the actual object and its mental reconstruction. When he encountered an old friend, the facial features were so different from his recollection and reconstruction, for better or for worse pregnant with all the emotions, preoccupation, biases, that he could not match face with voice.

Because recollected sensation can never equate with the actual experience and time, like a patient thief, steals memories a morsel at a time until one day the owner would realize he was ruined, Marcel ultimately would fail to recapture and assemble stolen sensations and decayed seconds and in the end, must create new moments, new sensations and ultimately a new biography, through the synergy between past experiences and creative imagination. From those deceased hours and decayed memories sprouted In Search of Lost Time, not only Proust’s novel but also that of the narrator.

Whether we savor Marcel’s frailness, Swann’s infatuation, Charlus’s pompousness, Franscoise’s independent-mindedness, the sorties’ frivolousness or the social revelation of the Dreyfuss Affair, we can enjoy Proust’s classic without resorting to Marxist or Freudian or Feminist critique. And the sentences, like the serpentine Amazon, seemed to flow unceasingly into the distant horizon carrying with it the sparkling sunlight. Although ascending the novel’s three thousand pages appears precipitous, the effort will be well worth the while and, at the end of the adventure, the reader can rest on the crisp apex and savor time’s transience and memory’s playfulness as if they were alpine zephyrs.
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LibraryThing member stillatim
An amazing conclusion, but also a little sad- what would Proust have done with this volume had he lived just a year or two longer? There are obvious problems (characters die, then reappear; Marcel meets people and then says he hasn't seen them etc...), but the more important problem is with the
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theory. Is Proust's experience meant to be a yardstick for *all* literature, or only for his novel? Would he have ended up more with a 'other people's books help you to read yourself' theory, or with a 'your book helps you to read yourself, insofar as you're the author' theory? Because these two things are very different, and depending on which way he went, the reading of the conclusion to A la recherche will be wildly different. Most readers would hope that Proust believes there's a good reason for them to read his book, and so will seek themselves in it; but you can't deny that the opposite possibility exists. It might just be that Proust should send us not to other novels, but to writing bad memoirs.

Theory aside, this is one of the stronger volumes on its own terms- the war adds spice, there's no denying it, and, well, there's lots more BDSM.
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LibraryThing member nog
Despite not being subject to a final edit (Proust died before he might have done so), this volume is a definite rebound from the boring "Captive" and "Fugitive" volumes. Since much of it was written much earlier, he could have worked out most of its textual issues; still, it contains errors in it
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(as described in specific endnotes). Our narrator comes up with his "mission statement" about halfway through, although his epiphany is undercut by the usual overly verbose analysis. Then we get the final 100 or so pages, a section which is often called the "Bal de tetes" by critics, but which I affectionately call the "Night of the Living Dead" (okay, it takes place in the afternoon). Here we get the final look at the salon, which neatly pulls all the themes of the book together in a most sadly humorous way.

I guess my final impression is that Proust's novel is undeniably an important one, a classic whose major flaws are ones of length and repetition. I don't agree with all those Proust "experts" who call it a comic masterpiece or one of the funniest books ever written. Yes, it has wit, but you aren't going to find any knee-slappers here. You don't find this book on any of those lists of funniest books. I tried to find some critics who had written about the book's flaws. Apparently there aren't any. There are only superlatives -- it's got everything, you know, and if you haven't realized that, then maybe you need to read the whole 3,300 pages a few more times. Sure thing...
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LibraryThing member amerynth
I feel like I should throw myself party, finally having finished "Time Regained" -- the final volume in Marcel Proust's magnum opus "In Search of Lost Time." Like other volumes, this book alternated between brilliant and maddening. No one can make an observation that so fundamentally demonstrates
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the human character like Proust; and I'm fairly certain no one can go on and on about such strange and small details, such as slipping on a flagstone.

In the final installment, our narrator attends a party after decades absence from the social scene to find with shock that they have all aged considerably, and hence so has he. He spends much of the novel trying to reconcile his vision of these people with the differing characters they are now.

Even though "In Search of Lost Time" was very challenging and slow going for me, I am so very glad to have read the series. It is certainly deserving of its reputation as one of the great modern novels.
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LibraryThing member viscount
Wow. I finished it. And then a sigh of relief, mixed with sadness, and with satisfaction, as upon the end of a magnificent feast. Sigh. It took me about a year to read the whole series, starting soon after the coronavirus pandemic hit and shut everything down, and now finishing just as we are
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gradually opening up again.

That was my reaction on reaching the final line of Proust’s masterwork, and no doubt the reaction of most others.

The seventh and final volume has its own new developments, along with some revisiting of earlier episodes, such as M’s discussion with Gilberte about that day when they first saw each other in Combray.

There are some vivid scenes of wartime Paris in 1916, and wild sexual nightlife beyond anything hinted at earlier, involving, of course, Charlus.

Later, when M returns to Paris after the war, after a longer absence, he sees his old society friends - the ones that are still alive - and we get their updated status. The one misstep I see is the new marriage of Mme. Verduran - I just don’t buy it.

M himself, the narrator, does seem older in personality, somewhat wiser, more measured and more likeable.

The highlight of this volume is M’s flash of inspiration about the book he must write, inspired by additional incidents of “involuntary memory”, and reflections on the madeleine episode from the very first volume.

Proust more or less directly states the intention and themes of the book, although of course it is not something to be summed up in a sentence or two, or three; I will need to reread it to more fully understand. Yet it is great to hear Proust talk about what the book is going to be, and how it will be something that has never been done before.

And looking at the full seven-volume work, the themes of deep time, of memory (both voluntary and involuntary), of moving our consciousness in time and outside of time, and of art, are all there, deeply embedded in the narrator and all his thoughts, experiences, and the people he knows.

I still question Proust’s intentions on some of the other themes, and two in particular. First, the enormous amount of the work that is spent at dinner parties and similar society events, reciting the meaningless small talk and wry glances passed back and forth. Why does Proust spend so much time and energy on these scenes?

And secondly, the recurring theme of jealous, suspicious love, and specifically the love of men for younger, poorer and more vivacious women (sometimes men). The kind of love that makes the man suffer and lose sleep, distracts him from any other productive life. What is Proust trying to say by going into such psychological depth relating how these men experience such loves?

But the great distinction of Proust is the texture and flow of his sentences, those long rivers stuffed with subclause upon subclause. You have to be in the right mood, and correctly attuned to the rhythm of his prose, to really enter into the work. Some days my mind was flowing along with Proust’s sentences, like a raft handling every little bend in the river; on other days it was a struggle, and I had to reread every sentence multiple times before getting a partial understanding of what it was saying.

The most difficult part of the whole work, for me, was that first few pages of Swann’s Way. Pages with no plot, no clear characters, nothing that really happens, and full of difficult thoughts expressed in roundabout phrasings. But was that difficulty because of Proust’s writing there, because he hadn’t yet mastered his true style? Or was it me, because I was new to Proust, and new to the Moncrieffian prose of the English translation. Before I start delving into the secondary literature, I think I might just open Swann’s Way again, to check on this.
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LibraryThing member viscount
Wow. I finished it. And then a sigh of relief, mixed with sadness, and with satisfaction, as upon the end of a magnificent feast. Sigh. It took me about a year to read the whole series, starting soon after the coronavirus pandemic hit and shut everything down, and now finishing just as we are
Show More
gradually opening up again.

That was my reaction on reaching the final line of Proust’s masterwork, and no doubt the reaction of most others.

The seventh and final volume has its own new developments, along with some revisiting of earlier episodes, such as M’s discussion with Gilberte about that day when they first saw each other in Combray.

There are some vivid scenes of wartime Paris in 1916, and wild sexual nightlife beyond anything hinted at earlier, involving, of course, Charlus.

Later, when M returns to Paris after the war, after a longer absence, he sees his old society friends - the ones that are still alive - and we get their updated status. The one misstep I see is the new marriage of Mme. Verduran - I just don’t buy it.

M himself, the narrator, does seem older in personality, somewhat wiser, more measured and more likeable.

The highlight of this volume is M’s flash of inspiration about the book he must write, inspired by additional incidents of “involuntary memory”, and reflections on the madeleine episode from the very first volume.

Proust more or less directly states the intention and themes of the book, although of course it is not something to be summed up in a sentence or two, or three; I will need to reread it to more fully understand. Yet it is great to hear Proust talk about what the book is going to be, and how it will be something that has never been done before.

And looking at the full seven-volume work, the themes of deep time, of memory (both voluntary and involuntary), of moving our consciousness in time and outside of time, and of art, are all there, deeply embedded in the narrator and all his thoughts, experiences, and the people he knows.

I still question Proust’s intentions on some of the other themes, and two in particular. First, the enormous amount of the work that is spent at dinner parties and similar society events, reciting the meaningless small talk and wry glances passed back and forth. Why does Proust spend so much time and energy on these scenes?

And secondly, the recurring theme of jealous, suspicious love, and specifically the love of men for younger, poorer and more vivacious women (sometimes men). The kind of love that makes the man suffer and lose sleep, distracts him from any other productive life. What is Proust trying to say by going into such psychological depth relating how these men experience such loves?

But the great distinction of Proust is the texture and flow of his sentences, those long rivers stuffed with subclause upon subclause. You have to be in the right mood, and correctly attuned to the rhythm of his prose, to really enter into the work. Some days my mind was flowing along with Proust’s sentences, like a raft handling every little bend in the river; on other days it was a struggle, and I had to reread every sentence multiple times before getting a partial understanding of what it was saying.

The most difficult part of the whole work, for me, was that first few pages of Swann’s Way. Pages with no plot, no clear characters, nothing that really happens, and full of difficult thoughts expressed in roundabout phrasings. But was that difficulty because of Proust’s writing there, because he hadn’t yet mastered his true style? Or was it me, because I was new to Proust, and new to the Moncrieffian prose of the English translation. Before I start delving into the secondary literature, I think I might just open Swann’s Way again, to check on this.
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LibraryThing member japaul22
In Time Regained, Proust finds his way back to his initial brilliance after the weaker volumes 5 and 6. Time Regained is a beautiful summing up of this 4000 page book. The beginning of this volume takes place during WWI, though the narrator spends much of it at a sanatarium trying to recover his
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health. After the war, the narrator returns to Paris and attends a reception at the home of the Princesse de Guermantes. The surprise to the reader is that the title is not held by the Princesse we remember, but now by Mme Verdurin who has finally ascended to the Faubourg St. Germain set. Many of our old favorites are at this reception or remembered in detail by the narrator (even if dead or not present) at it: the Duchesse de Guermantes, Gilberte, Odette, Charlus, Robert Saint-Loup, Rachel, Albertine, grandmother, Francoise, all the artists, etc. At the reception, the narrator comes to the conclusion that he has a special talent for making connections and memory and seeing the whole picture of life and concludes that he must write a book describing it. Of course, death hangs over him and he worries that he won't have time to complete his work.

This volume was an extremely satisfying and poignant conclusion to an unforgettable reading experience. I look forward to thumbing through all of the volumes to look at my notes and highlighted passages before writing and overall conclusion of this reading experience.
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LibraryThing member soraxtm
It seems too short. Like it just scratches the surface. It does make the world seem larger . This last volume is much more depressing than the others mainly because everyone gets old and no one learns anything. i appreciated the philosophical discussions about art. In the end it does give you new
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eyes to see with but now i want to put on dark glasses and go back into my cave.
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LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
I had to roll my eyes when I saw Gilberte and Albertine's names as early as page two. Was this going to be another obsessive missive about these women? Had Albertine lived! That is the refrain. Not exactly. Time Regained, as the final installment of Remembrance of Things Past is exactly that - a
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circling back to remembering people, places, and experiences long since past. It is a mediation on society, aging, relationships, art, beauty, and truth. Proust even goes back to the first moments with his mother detailed in the first volume, Swann's Way. We all grow old and we all learn things along the way. I am not sure what message Proust is trying to make with the aging of his nameless protagonist. He never really learns anything profound except that relationships are precious. Gilberte and Albertine are two women he never should have taken for granted.
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LibraryThing member Cecrow
In this final volume I anticipated - and found - the narrator's examination of his writing skill, style and motivation to write this enormous biography. He begins to reflect again on writing, and how others' writing stirs him for being a reflection of what they see, a gift of having listened to and
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absorbed all, while previously he was making the error of dismissing and focusing too narrowly. He makes the argument however, that while he is unable to describe someone in vast physical detail (and we have actually seen that's not true, but ...), what he captures instead is an analysis of that person's inner being, and isn't that more important, more artistic? And I can't say he's wrong. These and other reflections bring his story full-circle, offering the key and solution to why he has been writing this way. He has some startlingly perceptive things to say about the true nature of inspiration and of art that really give me pause. And then his contemplation of the pressures of mortality, and whether enough time is allowed to finish his work (which is what Proust was up against), his views on a critique of his work, the novel's possible legacy, and then the closer about the vertigo of old age... wow.

Before all of this, World War One enters the story in this volume. The narrator learns that Combray has become a torn-up battleground. The drawing-room salons have to reduce their grandeur in wartime, and high society takes an awkward line between ignoring and acknowledging the war in their behaviours and discussion. This is a part of the final volume's reflections upon change, upon the divergences that emerge between past and present that can never be reconciled except in memory. There's some measure here of reconciling Saint-Loupe's present and former selves which heals one of my gripes I had, and again ties into the theme. But nothing happens to smooth over the Albertine debacle. In fact the narrator just keeps doing the same horrible thing over and over, baldly stating that his memories of her now stir absolutely no feelings in him, and it made me angrier every time. It's disturbing how little he learned from the experience. When his future love is introduced to him I wanted to yell at her to run, run while she still can.

And now it's done. Hard to believe. "We accept the thought that in ten years we ourselves, in a hundred years our books, will have ceased to exist," he writes. It's now a hundred years later and this is still top of the heap.

I both love ISOLT and have a problem with it. My love stems from Proust's readiness to smell each and every rose along the path, without seeming to have the least concern for where the path is taking him or being in any rush to get there. He has minute observations on everything and anything. If you're reading for plot, it'll drive you mad. If you can remember being a child who found wonder in every cloud and blade of grass, maybe you'll be entranced by this adult who does the equivalent: stops to examine every emotion, every link to memory, every gesture, expression, etc. Nothing passes his notice or lies beneath it that he won't stop and study. The consequence is that again and again he makes observations about everyday things that ring absolutely true and yet I'd never stopped to consider them myself. And on the subject of love, the dominant topic, I've gathered more insights about it from Proust than from anyone else I can name. Some parts have even served as a kind of therapy for various regrets I've harboured, and I feel stronger for having taken this journey with him.

My problem with ISOLT is its narrator. He's an unknown entity for the first half or two thirds, then comes into focus as an overbearingly jealous lover who at the same time is a philanderer - a terrible kind of hypocrite, in other words, who becomes impossible to respect unless he can demonstrate remorse after he learns his lesson. Instead he does no such thing, blaming his victim and carrying on with his ironclad selfishness, discarding his obsessive love after the fact like it was nothing, the same love that almost literally destroyed her. For all of his brilliant observation skills, I can't possibly like this guy.

The only slack I'll give him is the acknowledgement that he is a heterosexual who finds himself surrounded by homosexuality (an inversion of Proust's personal state and thus a way for the author to more safely explore and share the scenario with his readers). He is surprised at every turn by those whose true pleasure is revealed to be their own sex. Under these circumstances, his paranoia is arguably more rational and it could reflect Proust's personal frustrations: "Is that man attracted to me, or am I only mistaking him for a homosexual? Is he my lover by actual inclination, or only experimenting?" That would be difficult, especially in a culture where homosexuality remained largely underground. ISOLT is not on its surface sympathetic to homosexuality, but scratch just beyond that and it's clearly otherwise.
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Language

Original language

French

Barcode

1392
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