Reading Proust - A Running Commentary

  Finally in the Combray section (which consists almost entirely of the remembrance of his youth in that Norman village by an older Marcel while lying in bed somewhere else unspecified), we come to the Guermantes way. This is a longer walk than Swann's way (aka the M éséglise way) and so the family only embark on it when the weather is fine ( p.227 Scott Moncrieff, p.180 Kilmartin ). The route runs alongside the Vivonne river where, on each stroll, Marcel observes a single lily “which the current, across whose path it had unfortunately grown, would never leave at rest for a moment, so that, like a ferry-boat mechanically propelled, it would drift over to one bank only to return to the other, eternally repeating its double journey.” The lily's plight is first compared to that of neurasthenics such as his Aunt L é onie and then to the never-ending repetitions of the inhabitants of the Inferno, to whom Dante would like to have talked for longer had he not been whisked away by h...

The narrative so far has mainly concentrated on Combray and its inhabitants. It is now time to take a look at its immediate surroundings. When Marcel's family go for a walk, they can take one of two routes: one which they call “Swann's way”, which is the route to the nearby village of M ésé glise that goes past Swann's country residence; or one which they call the “Guermantes way”, which goes to the seat of the aristocratic Guermantes family ( p.183 Scott Moncrieff, p.146 Kilmartin ). We are introduced first to Swann's way. During the family's walk along it, Marcel hopes to catch sight for the first time of the young Mlle Swann, with whom he already imagines himself in love after he discovered from her father that the distinguished novelist Bergotte is a frequent visitor and her “greatest friend” ( p.133 SM, p.107 TK ). As they pass by the grounds of Swann's house, “ an invisible bird, desperately attempting to make the day seem shorter, was exploring with a...

 In the second chapter of Combray (or the only chapter called Combray in the Scott Moncrieff (SM) and Kilmartin (TK) editions, their having called the first chapter Overture instead), we are introduced to a number of  characters, mainly local and of varying degrees of importance such as Aunt Léonie, M. Legrandin, Uncle Adolphe, the Lady in Pink, Bloch, M. Vinteuil, Gilberte, and Mme de Guermantes, and also to places and things which figure largely in Marcel's mind such as the church of Saint Hilaire, Swann's Way (also referred to as the Méséglise Way), the Guermantes Way and hawthorn blossom. Proust animates each brilliantly by a variety of techniques. Even buildings such as the church spring to life: "the worn old stones of [its spire] the setting sun now illumined no more than the topmost pinnacles, which, at the point where they entered that zone of sunlight and were softened and sweetened by it, seemed to have mounted suddenly far higher, to have become truly remot...

 And so we come to the one part of the novel that everyone who has heard of Proust, non-readers included, knows: the episode of the madeleine. Proust prepares by introducing the idea of voluntary memory. He describes this as the memory of the intellect and does not prize it very highly because "the pictures which that kind of memory shows us preserve nothing of the past itself" ( p.57 Scott Moncrieff, p.47 Terence Kilmartin ). Of our own past, he says: "It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm and reach of the intellect in some material object ... which we do not suspect", or to be more precise "in the sensation which that material object will give us". Rather, we can only recapture the past by way of an involuntary memory (a term which Proust coined) and we will discover in the final part of the novel, after a series of similar but lesser known ...

We have already referred to Marcel's dread of bedtime at Combray as usually having started towards the end of the afternoon and lasted several hours before he actually went up to bed ( p.9 Scott Moncrieff, p.9 Terence Kilmartin ). His sole consolation was that his mother would come to kiss him goodnight. However, in the same way as his anxiety starts before his bedtime, the sound of his mother coming up the stairs to bestow that kiss would usually be "a moment of the keenest sorrow" ( p.14 SM, p.13 KM ). His anticipation extends the duration of his misery. And when the brief ceremony was over, he would long, but never dare, to call her back for another kiss. Artist: Paul Helleu But even those short visits were better than when she did not come at all because they had guests (mainly Swann) to dinner. As a teenager, Proust had answered a questionnaire in which he revealed that his greatest misery would be to be separated from his mother. There is some confusion as to his ag...

During the summers of his childhood, Marcel's mother and father would take him to stay at his great-aunt's house in Combray with other members of the family. His remembrance of Combray starts with the bedtime anxiety he suffered there over whether his mother would come to kiss him goodnight or whether his father would dissuade her from this pampering ( p.9 Scott Moncrieff, p.9 T Kilmartin ). It is perhaps noteworthy that he usually refers to her as "Mamma" ("maman") whereas he always refers to "my father" ("mon père" never "papa"). When he does refer to "my mother" ("ma mère") it is often because he has just mentioned "my father".  Marcel is either a highly sensitive child or his suffering is disproportionate to its cause: indeed, his fear of possibly having to forgo his mother's kiss draws a dark cloud not just over bedtime but over the end of each afternoon, in the same way as Mondays cast a p...

The first time I read the opening page, I was hooked because Proust described a phenomenon that I thought only I experienced. The narrator (not yet named as Marcel) falls asleep while reading in bed and would sometimes, in that brief period of hypnagogic confusion, thinking he was still awake and it was time to go to sleep, try to put away his book and extinguish the candle. Also during this transitional state, he would feel he had become the subject of his book, be it something concrete such as a building, something less solid such as a piece of music, or even an abstract relationship between two historical figures. Artist: Yehuda Pen What I didn't know then, and still don't, is whether it is an occurrence with which all, or many, bedtime readers are familiar. At that time, my experience was very slightly different, but later became identical with Proust's depiction, and is now slightly different again. It now seems as though, having not noticed I have turned off the light...

I am referring to the English translation as Remembrance of Things Past (RoTP), as per the CK Scott Moncrieff (SM) and Terence Kilmartin (TK) editions. I understand that it is nowadays customary to translate A la recherche du temps perdu as In Search of Lost Time (ISoLT), as per DJ Enright, in preference to SM's Shakespearean quotation. The reasons in support of ISoLT  are two-fold: it is a more direct translation of the French; and Proust himself disliked RoTP. My own reasons for persisting with RoTP are three-fold. First, I am using the SM and TK translations for this blog. Secondly, Proust could not speak English (although that did not stop him translating in to French - word by word using an Anglo-French dictionary - Ruskin's Bible of Amiens and Sesame and Lilies). Thirdly, and most importantly, one of the biggest themes of RoTP is, as we shall see, the concept of involuntary memory and "remembrance", which can be either passive or active can thus better capture t...

Before starting my commentary on the text of Remembrance of Things Past (RoTP), it might be helpful if I outline my personal history in relation to it. About 40 years ago I was at some friends' house in Camberwell. Their dinner party had not been the most riveting and after the meal I had wandered into one of the bedrooms for a moment of solitude. On the bedside table was a copy of RoTP. I sat down on the bed and read the first page. By the age of 25, I had read most of the great works of literature (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Joyce, etc), but this opening grabbed me like no other. I thereupon set about reading RoTP for the first time. I bought an English version published in three volumes by Penguin. The back cover claimed it was a new translation by Terence Kilmartin (TK), but it is generally thought of as a revision of the CK Scott Moncrieff (SM) original translation. Thirty years passed before I undertook my second reading, or first rereading. By this stage, I had managed to find in ...

I am about to embark on my third reading of Remembrance of Things Past. The aim of the blog is simple: to create a community of Proust readers commenting on passages which they find interesting, beautiful, insightful or puzzling. I intend to make my own comments and analyses weekly as I proceed through Proust's 3,000 pages and I hope thereby to prompt a discussion with fellow readers. I should note that I am a slow reader, and the additional burden of blogging will make the process even slower.