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An authoritative new edition of the third volume in Marcel Proust's epic masterwork, In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust's monumental seven-part novel In Search of Lost Time is considered by many to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century. This edition of volume three, The Guermantes Way, is edited and annotated by noted Proust scholar William C. Carter, who endeavors to bring the classic C. K. Scott Moncrieff translation closer to the spirit and style of the author's original text. Continuing the story begun in Swann's Way and In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, The Guermantes Way follows Proust's young protagonist as he advances through aristocratic French society in late-nineteenth-century Paris. A departure from the intimacy of the sprawling novel's previous two installments, part three unfolds against a colorful backdrop of Parisian life, moving from literary salon to opulent social gathering to provide a biting and satirical commentary on culture, human foibles, the ways of the world, and the irretrievable loss of time.… (more)
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In part one of this volume, our hero and his family move into the Guermantes Hotel. He becomes enchanted with the Duchess de Guermantes and begins to dream about
In part two, his beloved grandmother falls ill and dies. Albertine re-enters his life, and he tries to embark on a romance with a mystery woman. He has an interesting encounter with de Charlus again. By the end of the book, he finds himself finally accepted into the high society of the Guermantes family - and it is much more ordinary than he expected it would be.
Proust continues to delve into human minds and behavior. There's a lot of hypocrisy in these books...people who act one way when they are really feeling differently. The narrator exposes them wonderfully.
As usual, Proust's prose is beautiful. And relaxing. I find myself being lulled to dreamland by his words.
I keep mentioning what an EASY read these books are! If you are intrigued by Proust but have been too intimidated to start - just TRY the first one, Swann's Way. You might be surprised.
On the last day of the year, I finished The Guermantes Way, the third volume of Marcel Proust's magnum opus, In Search of Lost Time. At the beginning of the book, nothing much
"The alleged 'sensitivity' of neurotic people is matched by their egotism; they cannot abide the flaunting by others of the sufferings to which they pay an ever-increasing attention in themselves."
His impressions of the social pecking order at the theatre:
"For the folding seats on its shore and the forms of the monsters in the stalls were mirrored in those eyes in simple obedience to the laws of optics and according to their angle of incidence, as happens with those two sections of external reality to which, knowing that they do not possess any soul, however rudimentary, that can be considered analogous to our own, we should think ourselves insane to address a smile or a glance: namely, minerals and people to whom we have not been introduced."
And a foreshadowing of what he is to learn of the aristocracy whose company he craves:
"I realised that it is not only the physical world that differs from the aspect in which we see it; that all reality is perhaps equally dissimilar from what we believe ourselves to be directly perceiving and which we compose with the aid of ideas that do not reveal themselves but are none the less efficacious."
The beginning of the book is a trifle frustrating as the reader is delivered much more of the same from the first two volumes. But then, the curtain, both figurative and literal in some cases, is lifted and we see where Proust is to take us next. The aristocracy is exposed as an illusion, that something strange and unknown that may be craved until its true nature is revealed. The social elite have become in many instances financially destitute as well as morally suspect and intellectually pedestrian. The story of the day, the Dreyfus affair, becomes an instrument with which they may exclude their Jewish friends from their inner circle.
As Marcel becomes more and more disillusioned with the life he has chosen for himself, the hand of the writer shows through the text revealing a Proustian belief that great art is created in isolation. Social climbing amidst a vacant and decaying aristocratic set can yield nothing but a time drain whose reversal could yield a creative product of great worth.
There is much to love here. The nearly 100 page long description of one afternoon in the salon of Mme. de Villeparisis is masterful, written as if in real time with all the subtle machinations one expects from Proust. The language as always is entrancing, languorous and lovely. And just at the end, just as one begins to wonder if more of this same loveliness will be required, all of this disillusionment and social strife comes to a head in the story of M. Swann again, and one yearns to see the new direction in which this story might turn. So I will read on. Perhaps the last three volumes in 2010.
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.
I sum up 'The Guermantes Way' this way: at one point Proust's narrator suggests that society would "become secretly more hierarchical as it became outwardly more democratic." Shortly afterwards he launches into a long song and dance about how the Duchess de Guermantes performs in public, saying things that are contrary to conventional wisdom almost purely for the purpose of increasing her own notoriety. This kind of double-edged humor reaches its height in the closing pages, which are simultaneously the funniest and must disturbing I've ever read- but look almost completely innocuous at first blush.
This volume is also notable because Proust makes it clear that, for all his perspectivalism when it comes to truth, he believes that a genuine, authentic understanding of each other is possible, because "sometimes in this life, under the stress of an exceptional emotion, people do say what they think."
Proust is too long-winded for my tastes hence my lowish rating. When I finish reading/listening a bit, I would paraphrase what had happened during that section & the plot, such as it is, was interesting to me but it was
Back in Paris, there are two long set pieces at parties that sort of build on and contrast with each other. The first is at Mme Villeparisis's house and the second is at the Duchesse of Guermantes (finally!!). In the middle there is a long section on the death of the narrator's grandmother. The dinner party at Mme Villeparisis's is pretty entertaining to read - lots of familiar characters and a few new, talk of the Dreyfus affair, and an appearance by the highly intriguing Baron de Charlus at the end. The section at the Duchess's home was pretty boring, but it occurred to me that that was sort of the point - the fascinating-from-afar Duchesse of Guermantes is in reality quite boring and predictable (though still striking in her presence). I like how Proust chooses ordinary objects to create a thread through the novel. Some of these recur through all of the volumes (so far), like the hawthorn bush, and some are present in one section only (like the hats at the parties or the Elstir works of art). Some seem to have some deep significance and I think that some really are just memory triggers. It's a neat effect.
I'm really enjoying this book. This volume was very character-driven which was a little easier to read than some of the dreamier diversions in the previous two volumes and it was a nice change. I'm still very much seeing the work as a whole and not as separate volumes. I kind of want to go right on to the next volume, but as I have some other reading plans in July, I think I'll stick with my schedule and wait til August.
This third installment brings our narrator
Proust's prose is beautiful and challenging... enough that I need a bit of a break before heading onto then next book in the series.
I was much more conscious this time of how the narrator lays claim to perfect knowledge. Frequently he is reading minds, relating the very thoughts of others. While the story is always told in first person, there are things only an omniscient narrator could know, such as what Rachel is actually plotting or will do when the narrator is not around, and the way that he relates two separate conversations line for line in a drawing room, happening simultaneously and at opposite room ends that he could not possibly both be following. The narrator's commentary on those conversations is also flawless. He is either the most adept and insightful person in the room even at his young and inexperienced age, or we must allow he is able to combine perfect memory with carefully studied retrospection. This first person omniscient perspective makes it difficult, if not impossible, to judge or assess the narrator as a character. I do not know if he is admiring or poking fun at society, if he is being objective or being judgmental of women, etc. Consequently, I can't even say whether I like him or empathize with him. I choose to trust him as being faithful to what he is depicting, and that's as far as it goes. To the extent that he does exist as a character, I'm not entirely convinced of the means by which he gets access to this highest echelon of society. He seems a bit surprised himself, so perhaps that will emerge later.
There's not as many observations this time on the nature of memory that hit home with me; although I've had the same experience of some sound or event happening as I'm recalling something unrelated, followed by having that become a trigger to recall the same unrelated thing on another occasion. Some other observations he makes which seem deeply insightful could be taken as critiques of fiction under a thin veneer. When he observes that old loves do not actually disappear from one's life forever but tend to crop back up, that's observant of life; or it's a critique of how many novels quietly shuffle an unwanted character offstage and conveniently never feel the need to reintroduce him/her again. Where the narrator's romances are concerned, they continue to be a haunting reflection of my own experiences in a way that is almost maddening. I have to believe he is just that good, that he can write in such a way to make anyone feel it relates to whatever their own story may be.
Proust can be funny, as when Oriane speaks of her cousin: "I always ask myself, when she comes here, whether the moment may not have arrived at which her intelligence is going to dawn, which makes me a little nervous always." (Only to be surpassed later by her brother-in-law: "You offer your hindquarters a Directory fireside chair as a Louis XIV bergere. One of these days you'll be mistaking Mme de Villeparisis' lap for the lavatory, and goodness knows what you'll do in it.") Proust can also be exasperating. As the Guermantes are sitting down to dinner and are about to engage in conversation, the narrator chooses this moment to dive into a sixty page digression about their general treatment of guests and whatnot. It might be the longest dinner party every recorded in fiction. The ending is sharp: the joke with the envelope, and then the prioritization of a social event - or the shoes to be worn to one - over the death or dying of friends. This strange ordering of values was itself about to die off, and none too soon.
My advice to the narrator: now that M. de Charlus has shown his true colours, keep well away.