Reading Proust - A Running Commentary

 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...

 In the first half of Time Regained, as we have just seen, Marcel finds himself in wartime Paris following “long years” in a sanatorium. He then leaves the city and spends “many years” in a second sanatorium before once again returning to Paris in the final part of the novel. The trees no longer speak to Marcel. Pic: Narcisse Virgilio Diaz De La Pena On the journey back to Paris, Marcel's recurring doubts about his literary talent surface once more when the train stops in open countryside. “The sun was shining on a row of trees that followed the railway line, flooding the upper halves of their trunks with light. 'Trees,' I thought, 'you no longer have anything to say to me. My heart has grown cold and no longer hears you' ( Hudson XII p.195, Kilmartin III p.886, Enright VI p.202 ). We have already noted a similarity between Proust's reflections on immortality and Wordsworth's ode on the subject (see my 25 th post), and here again we could compare Marcel...