Time Regained (32nd post)
I view the middle section of Time Regained as being the real conclusion of the novel and the the last section covering Marcel's attendance at the Prince and Princesse de Guermantes' as being a swansong as he departs Parisian society before entering the private world of the writer who will pen the book we have just read. The middle section draws together the recurring themes of the novel, such as Marcel's wavering hopes of becoming a writer and the epiphanies, and by this synthesis shows how time lost to the past can be retrieved. But before he can achieve this breakthrough, he must undergo more disillusionment. The volume opens with Marcel as a guest of Gilberte at Tansonville. On the final evening of his stay, she lends him a newly published part of the Goncourts' Journal. The journal has a mixed effect on Marcel: it makes him think he lacks any aptitude for literature because, unlike its author, he does not know how to look or listen and so cannot write like that...