Reading Proust - A Running Commentary

The death in 1930 of Scott Moncrieff prevented him completing Remembrance of Things Past and it was left to Sydney Schiff, under the pseudonym of Stephen Hudson, to translate the final volume, Time Regained. I find his version awkward to read and will therefore quote instead the translation by Terence Kilmartin and Andreas Mayor, as revised by DJ Enright. For the sake of completeness, I will continue to use page references of both the 12-part Chatto & Windus edition (Scott Moncrieff and Hudson) and the three-part Kilmartin version. For this final volume I will additionally give the page references of the Enright version.  I intend to divide the volume into three sections: Marcel's return to Paris during World War I; his attendance at the new Princess de Guermantes' party; and his resolution to become a writer. That resolution occurs before he enters the party but I am going to deal with it last as it draws together a number of threads in a conclusive way.  * * * * *  ...

 The remaining three chapters* of Albertine Gone deal with Marcel coming to terms with loss, finally visiting Venice, and revisiting Combray. Chapter II It is said that there are five (or seven) stages of grief, but for Marcel there are only three: anguish; suspicion; and oblivion. Chapter II finds him fluctuating between the latter two. By the beginning of this chapter, his love for Albertine has altered. On his way to forgetting and indifference, Marcel sees his feelings go on a reverse journey. He now finds himself back at the beginning of their affair and experiences again the sentiments through which he had passed before “arriving at my great love”. His memories of those sentiments “retained the terrible force, the happy ignorance of the hope that was then yearning towards a time which has now become the past, but which a hallucination makes us for a moment mistake retrospectively for the future” ( p.195 XI Scott Moncrieff, p.569 III Kilmartin ). He presently feels a charm in ...

How to introduce characters in a novel? Here is some actual advice given to novice writers: “provide a brief description or summary of the character's physical appearance (age, height, hair colour and clothing style), personality (shy and reserved or outgoing and charismatic) and background (occupation, family and past experiences)”.  Yet this is not how the great writers go about it. There are two ways of introducing characters: by having them appear or by referring to them before they appear (Godot being the exception). At one extreme, where introduction and appearance coincide, we can think of literary characters who suddenly and dramatically appear on the scene. In Great Expectations, for example, the young narrator, Pip, has just introduced himself to the reader and is in the churchyard where his father, mother and five brothers are buried. Without any warning, Dickens then introduces the startling character of Abel Magwitch:  “‘Hold your noise!’ cried a terrible voice, a...