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...

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.  * * * * *  ...

 I have already indicated (see my 22 nd post) that for this part of the novel, I would be departing from Scott Moncrieff's volume titles as I find his use of The Sweet Cheat Gone, a line from Walter de la Mare's poem Ghost, to be forced, awkward and unsuitable. The title in French is Albertine disparue, but it was originally going to be La Fugitive, and publishers sometimes still use this latter title. That has prompted a number of English translators to call the volume The Fugitive, which has the merit of following on logically from The Captive. However, I think Albertine Gone is to be preferred because, although she was subject to Marcel's controlling behaviour, Albertine was not a prisoner as she was free to leave (see my 25 th and 27 th posts), which she did at the end of the previous volume. Accordingly, as she has not escaped, she is not a fugitive either. Albertine Gone is a more literal translation of Albertine disparue and importantly, like the French, contains ...

 The third and final chapter of The Captive marks a dramatic change in Marcel and Albertine's relationship. After returning from the Verdurins' soir é e (see my 26 th post), which he had dissuaded Albertine from attending and to which he had then secretly gone himself, Marcel finds her waiting up for him in her room. She is annoyed by his revelation that he has been to the Verdurins'. She asks whether Mlle Vinteuil had attended, which for him confirms his suspicion that she had intended to meet the composer's daughter there (see my 25 th and 26 th posts) ( pp.175-176 X Scott Moncrieff, p.338 III Kilmartin ). Albertine confesses to Marcel that when she had told him that she had been a friend of Mlle Vinteuil's friend (see my 24 th post), she had been lying to make herself more interesting to him by pretending she was connected with the great composer. Marcel feels sorry that Albertine thinks the Verdurin circle look down on her and he offers to pay several hund...

 The Verdurins, who figured largely in Swann in Love and then reappeared at la Raspeli è re near Balbec in Cities of the Plain (see my 23 rd post), are once more central to the narrative in this chapter. Marcel is visiting their Parisian salon in the Quai Conti and is longing to see the room where Swann used to meet Odette. His wish is disappointed when, on the way there, he learns from Brichot that the couple had frequented the salon when it was at the Verdurins' former home in the rue Montalivet, before it was partially destroyed by fire. Marcel now reveals that Swann's death, which had been briefly mentioned in passing in Cities of the Plain, had been a “crushing blow” to him and he quotes a newspaper obituary before reflecting that, as a result of his “remarkable personality in both the intellectual and the artistic worlds”, his name could survive for a while after his death. Le Cercle de la rue Royale by James Tissot. Charles Haas is furthest right. There follows a stran...

 When Descartes sought to discover what he could know for certain, he discarded everything he could doubt, and by this method found that the only thing he knew for sure was that in doubting, he was thinking . Hence, the famous “cogito, ergo sum”. However, Descartes' certainty is solipsistic and this creates other philosophical problems, in particular what philosophers call the “problem of other minds”. Any Proust reader who has studied philosophy will have noticed passages over which the ghost of Descartes (and sometimes Plato) seems to hover. For instance, in the first chapter of The Captive, taking the Cartesian method one step further, Marcel tells us that the real life of another person is unknowable to us ( p.74 IX Scott Moncrieff, p.56 III Kilmartin ). This could be taken as the theme of this section of the novel: the impossibility of Marcel knowing what is going on in Albertine's mind. All he has to go one are suspicions, confessions and the reports of others: each of w...

  The second chapter of Cities of the Plain sees the development of Marcel's relationship with Albertine, the commencement of the amorous entanglement of Charlus and the fianc é of Jupien's niece, and the reappearance of the Verdurins. We have already observed Marcel's duplicitous approach to relationships when he feigned indifference to Albertine and a preference for Andr é e (see my 17 th  post). Despite his now having grown closer to Albertine, he is still acting in the same manner, and has added suspicion and jealousy to this unhealthy romance. It is hard for the reader to judge the validity of Marcel's suspicions that Albertine is lying and cheating on him because we are only presented with his thought processes, not hers; he is not honest with her and is maybe not being honest in his narration; his distrust is largely the result of inferences rather than direct evidence; and the suspicions are so recurrent as to suggest he is suffering from a paranoid personali...