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michaeljwarkel's review
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
heathermcnaught's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
drkottke's review against another edition
5.0
In the eleven years since I read "Swann's Way" for the first time, I started reading this twice, and reread "Swann's Way" in its entirety once, in addition to rereading a few choice sections multiple times. Then I reread the first half, listened to the audio version of it and read the graphic novel adaptation, plus the reader's guide. Over the past year, I tackled the second half in print, reread the graphic novel adaptation and listened to the audiobook of the second half. Finally, I'm done! You'd think that taking over a decade to finish just one of the volumes of Proust's epic novel might merit a one star review, but you'd be wrong. Piaget theorized that it was impossible to truly re-experience the world through the eyes of our younger selves at different stages of cognitive development, because we've undergone such radical changes in our thinking and ways of perceiving the world that we're literally evolved into different organisms than the ones who had the original experiences. While that may be true for many individuals, it's not true for Proust, who conveys very effectively in this novel the flood of impressions and sensations that accompany the onset of male puberty and the re-discovery of the opposite sex after years in a liminal state. In so many ways, this is the prototypical coming of age novel and a sublime narrative exercise of the Impressionist ethos. Onward to Guermante's Way!
kikiandarrowsfishshelf's review
5.0
“In the case of M. de Nopais, however, the most important thing was that, through long practice of diplomacy, he had deeply inbred himself with the spirit known as ‘government mentality’; that negative, ingrained conservative spirit which informs not just the mentality of all governments but in particular, inside of all governments that of the foreign office” (7).
The Claudel mentioned in this early section is Camille Claudel’s brother.
“ . . . because words have a great worth and more subtle shade of meaning, for men whose efforts over a decade to bring together two countries may amount to a single adjective in a speech or protocol but in which unremarkable though it may appear, they can read volumes.” (8) - - --Like the difference between kill (taking of a life) and murder (unlawful killing).
“Furthermore, as with all those who are too modest, my mother’s mistake came from the fact that she always ranked her own interests below those of others, and thus saw them as quite separate from others” (10).
His obsession with La Berma is like what I had when I needed to see Glenda Jackson in Lear. Oh, that was a good play.
Copenhagen Glyptothek mentioned! Loved that museum.
Sesquipedalianism – excessive use of long words.
“ . . . in politics, it was a mark of superiority rather than inferiority to repeat what everybody else thought” (31). Well, that hasn’t changed.
“The culture of these eminent men was of the alternating variety, usually triennial in its cycle” (34). Every thing old is new again. It’s what, about twenty years or so now, right?
So Odette married Swann after Gilberte was born, at times threatening to forbid him access to the children. Change in laws since Dumas than right?
Jejune – naïve
A lot of name dropping going on. How old is he supposed to be in this early love affair with Gilberte, who is 14 I believe.
“Of course, Swann many well have known that magnanimity is often nothing more than the outward appearance of a selfish impulse that we have not yet seen as such or named” (65).
Look, a sexual awakening in a garden. That’s not new at all. Seriously, how old is he? He’s not at school.
“Odette stood for everything which had just been shamed” (94).
“ . . . but then Swann, who had borrowed from the aristocracy Don Juan’s undying gift for fooling each of the commonplace women into believing she is the only one he really loves” (96).
This narrator is far to focused on what the mother of his would be girlfriend wears. “Stacy’s Mom has got it going on” indeed.
“Which is why the artist who wishes his work to find its own way must do what Vinteuil had done, and launch it as far as possible toward the unknown depths of the distant future. (106).
So is everything about Bergotte really about Anatole France?
“For genius lies in the reflective power and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected” (129).
“Peace of mind is foreign to love, since each new fulfillment one attains is never anything but a new starting point for the desire to go beyond it” (156).
“In love, happiness is an abnormal state, capable of instantly conferring on the pettiest seeming incident which can occur at any moment, a degree of gravity that in other circumstances it would never have.” (157).
“ . . . (that day when according to the guilty, their innocence will be established, which is never, for some mysterious reason, the day when they are being asked about it” (160).
“If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two” (167).
“Things one may see on or about a faithful wife, which may well have some importance for the faithful wife, are the very things that have the most importance for the courtesan. The climax of her day is not the moment when she dresses for society, but when she undresses for a man. She has to be as elegant in a housecoat or a nightgown as in an walking out dress. Other women show off their jewels,; she shares her private life with her pearls. It is a type of life that demands, and eventually gives a taste for, the enjoyment of secret luxury – that is a life which is almost one of disinterest” (169).
Is that really the case or is narrator trying to make himself feel better about women? He gives his Aunt’s furniture to some prostitutes. It sounds like it is in one display in a brothel. I can’t blame Gilberte for being fed up, considering how much he talks about Odette Swann.
“ . . . I was distressed as an invalid who has finished his vial of morphine without having another available” (185).
“Neurotics never believe people who assure them that, if they just stay in bed, read no letters, and open no newspapers, they will gradually calm down. They foresee that such a regimen can only worsen the state of their nerves” (185).
Of course, Odette prefers men to women, look who is telling the story.
On Odette’s style, “One could sense that, for her, dressing was not just a matter of comfort or adornment of the body: whatever she wore encompassed her like the delicate and etherealized epitome of civilization” (195).
This is why the young girls don’t like you Narrator, you like the moms too much.
“To be no longer in love is to know that forgetting – or even a fading memory - cause much less pain than the unhappiness of loving” (197).
“This explains why every new pain that a woman inflict on us (which she often does without meaning to) increases not only her power over us, but also the demands we make on her. By every use of her power to hurt, the woman constricts us more and more, shackling us with stronger chains; but she also shows us the weakness of those that once seemed strong enough to bind her and thus enable us to feel untroubled by her” (200-201). Odette never did anything unless she thought about it first, I am sure.
He has to be young, he keeps throwing himself in the arms of his mom or grand mere.
“For miserliness, being a vice and therefore at home in any social class, is in no way incompatible with prestige” (242).
I am not convinced he was in love with Gilberte. He sounds like he just liked looking at Madame Swann.
Does anyone else read and think of the song “Thank Heaven for Little Girls”? I found myself thinking of that and Consent: A Memoir by Vanessa Springora. Springora’s memoir details her grooming and rape by Gabriel Matzneff. It’s the little girl’s thing. And yes, Proust’s narrator is young, how young I am not sure, but young. And yes, Proust is writing this in a vastly different time, but still I keep thinking about. In part it is because the narrator has visited prostitutes and does seem older than these young girls he meets, who still seem to be in school. And that whole scene with Albertine and the bedroom, where she rings the bell. Really thinking about Consent there. I mean, the narrator visits prostitutes so he really needs to get laid. But then again, is he telling the truth or is it male bragging. He is obsessive. Are we even supposed to like him? I mean he basically refers to the group of girls that he sees on the esplanade with the same terms that the women of Francois I were referred to.
It does really make you want to visit Normandy as well.
And there is the anti-Semitism expressed by the characters. I know that Proust’s mother came from a Jewish family who had immigrated to France from Germany. Proust himself was baptized catholic, so into his father’s faith. And yes, a narrator isn’t the author, even in a book that has autobiographical connections like this one. But what is Proust trying to show? Part of it is society - the exile of Jews from certain rungs of Parisian and French society. But Bloch senior seems to be drawn in particularly cruel way. He in many ways is a poseur – in the same the narrator almost seems to be one. It’s when Charblus calls out the character’s behavior that we actually even might clap.
Did find it more engrossing than the first one, I must say.
“. . . and in relationships with such women that they make their only acquittances with morality, serve an apprenticeship in higher culture, and learn to see the value of knowledge for its own sake” (362).
“Wisdom cannot be inherited – one must discover it for oneself, but only after following a course that no one can follow in out stead; no one can spare us that experience, for wisdom is only a point of view on things” (444).
Edition cited:
Proust, Marcel. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. Trans. James Grieve. Penguin, 2002.
The Claudel mentioned in this early section is Camille Claudel’s brother.
“ . . . because words have a great worth and more subtle shade of meaning, for men whose efforts over a decade to bring together two countries may amount to a single adjective in a speech or protocol but in which unremarkable though it may appear, they can read volumes.” (8) - - --Like the difference between kill (taking of a life) and murder (unlawful killing).
“Furthermore, as with all those who are too modest, my mother’s mistake came from the fact that she always ranked her own interests below those of others, and thus saw them as quite separate from others” (10).
His obsession with La Berma is like what I had when I needed to see Glenda Jackson in Lear. Oh, that was a good play.
Copenhagen Glyptothek mentioned! Loved that museum.
Sesquipedalianism – excessive use of long words.
“ . . . in politics, it was a mark of superiority rather than inferiority to repeat what everybody else thought” (31). Well, that hasn’t changed.
“The culture of these eminent men was of the alternating variety, usually triennial in its cycle” (34). Every thing old is new again. It’s what, about twenty years or so now, right?
So Odette married Swann after Gilberte was born, at times threatening to forbid him access to the children. Change in laws since Dumas than right?
Jejune – naïve
A lot of name dropping going on. How old is he supposed to be in this early love affair with Gilberte, who is 14 I believe.
“Of course, Swann many well have known that magnanimity is often nothing more than the outward appearance of a selfish impulse that we have not yet seen as such or named” (65).
Look, a sexual awakening in a garden. That’s not new at all. Seriously, how old is he? He’s not at school.
“Odette stood for everything which had just been shamed” (94).
“ . . . but then Swann, who had borrowed from the aristocracy Don Juan’s undying gift for fooling each of the commonplace women into believing she is the only one he really loves” (96).
This narrator is far to focused on what the mother of his would be girlfriend wears. “Stacy’s Mom has got it going on” indeed.
“Which is why the artist who wishes his work to find its own way must do what Vinteuil had done, and launch it as far as possible toward the unknown depths of the distant future. (106).
So is everything about Bergotte really about Anatole France?
“For genius lies in the reflective power and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected” (129).
“Peace of mind is foreign to love, since each new fulfillment one attains is never anything but a new starting point for the desire to go beyond it” (156).
“In love, happiness is an abnormal state, capable of instantly conferring on the pettiest seeming incident which can occur at any moment, a degree of gravity that in other circumstances it would never have.” (157).
“ . . . (that day when according to the guilty, their innocence will be established, which is never, for some mysterious reason, the day when they are being asked about it” (160).
“If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two” (167).
“Things one may see on or about a faithful wife, which may well have some importance for the faithful wife, are the very things that have the most importance for the courtesan. The climax of her day is not the moment when she dresses for society, but when she undresses for a man. She has to be as elegant in a housecoat or a nightgown as in an walking out dress. Other women show off their jewels,; she shares her private life with her pearls. It is a type of life that demands, and eventually gives a taste for, the enjoyment of secret luxury – that is a life which is almost one of disinterest” (169).
Is that really the case or is narrator trying to make himself feel better about women? He gives his Aunt’s furniture to some prostitutes. It sounds like it is in one display in a brothel. I can’t blame Gilberte for being fed up, considering how much he talks about Odette Swann.
“ . . . I was distressed as an invalid who has finished his vial of morphine without having another available” (185).
“Neurotics never believe people who assure them that, if they just stay in bed, read no letters, and open no newspapers, they will gradually calm down. They foresee that such a regimen can only worsen the state of their nerves” (185).
Of course, Odette prefers men to women, look who is telling the story.
On Odette’s style, “One could sense that, for her, dressing was not just a matter of comfort or adornment of the body: whatever she wore encompassed her like the delicate and etherealized epitome of civilization” (195).
This is why the young girls don’t like you Narrator, you like the moms too much.
“To be no longer in love is to know that forgetting – or even a fading memory - cause much less pain than the unhappiness of loving” (197).
“This explains why every new pain that a woman inflict on us (which she often does without meaning to) increases not only her power over us, but also the demands we make on her. By every use of her power to hurt, the woman constricts us more and more, shackling us with stronger chains; but she also shows us the weakness of those that once seemed strong enough to bind her and thus enable us to feel untroubled by her” (200-201). Odette never did anything unless she thought about it first, I am sure.
He has to be young, he keeps throwing himself in the arms of his mom or grand mere.
“For miserliness, being a vice and therefore at home in any social class, is in no way incompatible with prestige” (242).
I am not convinced he was in love with Gilberte. He sounds like he just liked looking at Madame Swann.
Does anyone else read and think of the song “Thank Heaven for Little Girls”? I found myself thinking of that and Consent: A Memoir by Vanessa Springora. Springora’s memoir details her grooming and rape by Gabriel Matzneff. It’s the little girl’s thing. And yes, Proust’s narrator is young, how young I am not sure, but young. And yes, Proust is writing this in a vastly different time, but still I keep thinking about. In part it is because the narrator has visited prostitutes and does seem older than these young girls he meets, who still seem to be in school. And that whole scene with Albertine and the bedroom, where she rings the bell. Really thinking about Consent there. I mean, the narrator visits prostitutes so he really needs to get laid. But then again, is he telling the truth or is it male bragging. He is obsessive. Are we even supposed to like him? I mean he basically refers to the group of girls that he sees on the esplanade with the same terms that the women of Francois I were referred to.
It does really make you want to visit Normandy as well.
And there is the anti-Semitism expressed by the characters. I know that Proust’s mother came from a Jewish family who had immigrated to France from Germany. Proust himself was baptized catholic, so into his father’s faith. And yes, a narrator isn’t the author, even in a book that has autobiographical connections like this one. But what is Proust trying to show? Part of it is society - the exile of Jews from certain rungs of Parisian and French society. But Bloch senior seems to be drawn in particularly cruel way. He in many ways is a poseur – in the same the narrator almost seems to be one. It’s when Charblus calls out the character’s behavior that we actually even might clap.
Did find it more engrossing than the first one, I must say.
“. . . and in relationships with such women that they make their only acquittances with morality, serve an apprenticeship in higher culture, and learn to see the value of knowledge for its own sake” (362).
“Wisdom cannot be inherited – one must discover it for oneself, but only after following a course that no one can follow in out stead; no one can spare us that experience, for wisdom is only a point of view on things” (444).
Edition cited:
Proust, Marcel. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. Trans. James Grieve. Penguin, 2002.
grayjay's review against another edition
4.0
It is difficult after reading Proust, not to write in long meandering sentences. In this reading, I picked up more on Proust's dry wit than I did in my previous reading and actually laughed out loud at a few of his sarcasms.
Having in the previous volume been the protagonists of a frantic and troubled love affair, the Swanns find themselves in this volume disrespectably married. Our narrator finds his first love in their daughter Gilberte, thereby ingratiating himself into their home.
We spend a lot of time observing and thinking about a group of athletic girls whom the narrator is fixated with. We spend some time with the narrator's best friends—Albert Bloch, a pretentious artist, and BFF Robert de Saint-Loup, who is affluent, beautiful, and sort of hot and cold.
I was also struck by how gay it was. As readers, we must psychologically transform ourselves into the characters to empathize with them. We imagine ourselves in their places. As a queer reader, I find that there is a kind of exhaustion that comes from having to undergo this transformation over and over again, reading about mostly heterosexual characters throughout my life. It gets harder and harder to care about characters you can't identify with. I imagine the same happens to every kind of reader that is not a straight white male.
Although Marcel is suffering over the love of two young women, unlike most heterosexual romances, I don't feel the disconnect. I understand that there are more explicitly homosexual characters in other parts of the series, but Gilberte, Albertine and the little group could easily be young men, and the narrator's friendship with Saint-Loup is just as romantic.
Having in the previous volume been the protagonists of a frantic and troubled love affair, the Swanns find themselves in this volume disrespectably married. Our narrator finds his first love in their daughter Gilberte, thereby ingratiating himself into their home.
We spend a lot of time observing and thinking about a group of athletic girls whom the narrator is fixated with. We spend some time with the narrator's best friends—Albert Bloch, a pretentious artist, and BFF Robert de Saint-Loup, who is affluent, beautiful, and sort of hot and cold.
I was also struck by how gay it was. As readers, we must psychologically transform ourselves into the characters to empathize with them. We imagine ourselves in their places. As a queer reader, I find that there is a kind of exhaustion that comes from having to undergo this transformation over and over again, reading about mostly heterosexual characters throughout my life. It gets harder and harder to care about characters you can't identify with. I imagine the same happens to every kind of reader that is not a straight white male.
Although Marcel is suffering over the love of two young women, unlike most heterosexual romances, I don't feel the disconnect. I understand that there are more explicitly homosexual characters in other parts of the series, but Gilberte, Albertine and the little group could easily be young men, and the narrator's friendship with Saint-Loup is just as romantic.
philopsychia's review against another edition
5.0
I have enjoyed this even more than the first volume (inspite of the fact that surpassing the intro of the first volume is neigh impossible), and I become all the more convinced as well that reading this work without notes is amount to missing all of it, given the time period references and his allusions to ancients, this edition is seriously a godsend and undertaken with much care. There is one thing that might bother some people, namely that several annotations are taken from Proust's letters, biographical sources which make the narrator and author seem even more similar, I did not know have this problem but it is worth keeping in mind quoting Nabokov's commentary on this topic :
" one might be tempted to say that Proust is the narrator, that he is the eyes and ears of the book. But the answer is still no. The book that the narrator in Proust’s book is supposed to write is still a book-within-the-book and is not quite In Search of Lost Time—just as the narrator is not quite Proust. There is a focal shift here which produces a rainbow edge: this is the special Proustian crystal through which we read the book. It is not a mirror of manners, not an autobiography, not a historical account. It is pure fantasy on Proust’s part, just as Anna Karenin is a fantasy, just as Kafka’s "The Metamorphosis” is fantasy—just as Cornell University will be a fantasy if I ever happen to write about it some day in retrospect. The narrator in the work is one of its characters, who is trailed Marcel. In other words, there is Marcel the eavesdropper and there is Proust the author. Within the novel the narrator Marcel contemplates, in the last volume, the ideal novel he will write. Proust’s work is only a copy of that ideal novel—but what a copy!" (Nabokov's commentary is certainly worth reading, even if it won't tell you as much about the chronology of the story, but Proust's style)
Once again, I'll reiterate my attachment to this masterpiece stems from high relatability to the narrator's sensitive desposition and highly privelleged nature (complete with all its mommy fetishes, compulsive and obsessive behavior's) and even more so the theme of growing up.
Thanks to proust, I also learned a great deal of renaissance painters and sculptors.
Had I found this work in a very earlier period of my time, perhaps when i was still actually a child and expected to act as such he'd had been my favorite all the same, and I would have benefited greatly from the kind of auto-therapy that Proust's fiction is.
" one might be tempted to say that Proust is the narrator, that he is the eyes and ears of the book. But the answer is still no. The book that the narrator in Proust’s book is supposed to write is still a book-within-the-book and is not quite In Search of Lost Time—just as the narrator is not quite Proust. There is a focal shift here which produces a rainbow edge: this is the special Proustian crystal through which we read the book. It is not a mirror of manners, not an autobiography, not a historical account. It is pure fantasy on Proust’s part, just as Anna Karenin is a fantasy, just as Kafka’s "The Metamorphosis” is fantasy—just as Cornell University will be a fantasy if I ever happen to write about it some day in retrospect. The narrator in the work is one of its characters, who is trailed Marcel. In other words, there is Marcel the eavesdropper and there is Proust the author. Within the novel the narrator Marcel contemplates, in the last volume, the ideal novel he will write. Proust’s work is only a copy of that ideal novel—but what a copy!" (Nabokov's commentary is certainly worth reading, even if it won't tell you as much about the chronology of the story, but Proust's style)
Once again, I'll reiterate my attachment to this masterpiece stems from high relatability to the narrator's sensitive desposition and highly privelleged nature (complete with all its mommy fetishes, compulsive and obsessive behavior's) and even more so the theme of growing up.
Thanks to proust, I also learned a great deal of renaissance painters and sculptors.
Had I found this work in a very earlier period of my time, perhaps when i was still actually a child and expected to act as such he'd had been my favorite all the same, and I would have benefited greatly from the kind of auto-therapy that Proust's fiction is.
lauren_klebonis33's review against another edition
funny
inspiring
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
caterinasforza's review against another edition
5.0
Zamana yayarak ve sindire sindire okuduğum Proust eseri.
Yazarın kendine has bir yazım şekli var ve okudukça alışıyor, anlattıklarının derinliğine varıyorsunuz. Kayıp Zamanın İzinde serisinde ikinci kitaptı "Çiçek Açmış Genç Kızların Gölgesinde" ben daha felsefi buldum okuduklarımı, daha derin...
"Sesin, maddi özelliklerini en çok değiştiren şey düşünce içermesidir." gibi cümlelerden sonra "zevk fotoğraf gibidir. sevdiğimiz insanın yanında alınan, negatif bir klişedir sadece; bunu daha sonra, evimize döndüğümüzde, insanlarla görüştüğümüz sürece kapısı kapalı olan içimizdeki karanlık odaya girebildiğimizde banyo ederiz" gibi cümleler üzerinde uzun uzun düşündüğüm eşsiz bir yapıttı...
Kafanızın dingin zamanında mutlaka okumalısınız.
Kendi adıma tüm seriyi ilerleyen yıllarımda tekrar okumak niyetindeyim. Kaçırdıklarımı yeniden yakalamak adına bir kere ile tadına varılmayacak bir yapıt olduğunu söyleyebilirim.
Yazarın kendine has bir yazım şekli var ve okudukça alışıyor, anlattıklarının derinliğine varıyorsunuz. Kayıp Zamanın İzinde serisinde ikinci kitaptı "Çiçek Açmış Genç Kızların Gölgesinde" ben daha felsefi buldum okuduklarımı, daha derin...
"Sesin, maddi özelliklerini en çok değiştiren şey düşünce içermesidir." gibi cümlelerden sonra "zevk fotoğraf gibidir. sevdiğimiz insanın yanında alınan, negatif bir klişedir sadece; bunu daha sonra, evimize döndüğümüzde, insanlarla görüştüğümüz sürece kapısı kapalı olan içimizdeki karanlık odaya girebildiğimizde banyo ederiz" gibi cümleler üzerinde uzun uzun düşündüğüm eşsiz bir yapıttı...
Kafanızın dingin zamanında mutlaka okumalısınız.
Kendi adıma tüm seriyi ilerleyen yıllarımda tekrar okumak niyetindeyim. Kaçırdıklarımı yeniden yakalamak adına bir kere ile tadına varılmayacak bir yapıt olduğunu söyleyebilirim.
brendapike's review
3.0
I find this volume much more difficult to slog through than the first. While young Proust is childishly charming in his descriptions of his family life and yearning for the rest of the world, young adult Proust (or adult—how old is he, anyway?) is a self-absorbed ass.
His obsessions with various women get tiring—I’m sure for the women as well as the reader. It’s not any particular woman that he’s so interested in, though his attention does become fixated on a couple, but the idea of Woman. He’s a dog in heat, driven to distraction by every milk maid he glimpses from a mile away through the fog. And he’s never happy; the moment he gains what he wants, he doesn’t want it anymore. (This also includes things such as an evening at the opera and a trip to Balbec.)
What’s worse is that he makes universal pronouncements about the nature of love based on his particular experiences. He goes so far as to say that love has nothing to do with the person who is loved, but is entirely about the elevated state of mind that they can generate. This is his way of justifying the fact that despite his extreme snobbishness, he lusts after commoners. I understand his need for self-delusion, considering that the only women interested in him are the whores he sells his great-aunt’s furniture to pay, but does he need to try to delude the rest of us, too?
Proust’s falseness is clearer in this volume. For example, he and his friend Saint-Loup hear there is a painter sitting near them at a restaurant and they immediately pretend to be admirers of his work in order to meet him, just because they are told he is “famous.” Proust is constantly telling of people at the hotel who are high-class snobs who won’t talk to anyone—and then they go out of their way to be friendly to him. Not that he’s bragging or anything…
He also dissembles in order to try to gain the attention of girls. Desperately going out of his way to be introduced to the “gang of girls” he’s been stalking for days, he hangs back and looks at antiques when his painter acquaintance tries to introduce him—and then he’s upset at the painter for not pushing the issue. Late, he pretends to be in love with Albertine’s friend Andrée to make her jealous.
The anti-Semitism of his class and time period is out in force in this volume, with the addition of his embarrassing Jewish friend Bloch, Albertine’s taken-for-granted dislike of Jews, and multiple mentions of the Dreyfus Affair. This was a revelation to me, and I keep expecting someone in the book to comment on it (maybe his grandmother?), but everyone seems to think it’s normal.
I was briefly heartened by the change of setting when he traveled to Balbec. Observations of the new surroundings and of his fellow guests at the hotel pulled him out of his self-pitying navel-gazing for a time.
An especially interesting bit: his obsession with the “gang of girls” was reminiscent of Lolita. His observations about the beguiling and transitory nature of adolescence—and even Albertine’s somewhat vulgar enthusiasm—make me think that Nabokov must have read this. Proust even calls the girls “nymphs” on multiple occasions.
All in all, I don’t think I would recommend this volume. The first was very compelling, especially the strikingly different point of view of Swann in Love, but this just seems like a continuation of some of the worst characteristics of the third part of that volume. Maybe this is its Matrix Reloaded—a transition volume—and the next will be better. Here’s hoping
His obsessions with various women get tiring—I’m sure for the women as well as the reader. It’s not any particular woman that he’s so interested in, though his attention does become fixated on a couple, but the idea of Woman. He’s a dog in heat, driven to distraction by every milk maid he glimpses from a mile away through the fog. And he’s never happy; the moment he gains what he wants, he doesn’t want it anymore. (This also includes things such as an evening at the opera and a trip to Balbec.)
What’s worse is that he makes universal pronouncements about the nature of love based on his particular experiences. He goes so far as to say that love has nothing to do with the person who is loved, but is entirely about the elevated state of mind that they can generate. This is his way of justifying the fact that despite his extreme snobbishness, he lusts after commoners. I understand his need for self-delusion, considering that the only women interested in him are the whores he sells his great-aunt’s furniture to pay, but does he need to try to delude the rest of us, too?
Proust’s falseness is clearer in this volume. For example, he and his friend Saint-Loup hear there is a painter sitting near them at a restaurant and they immediately pretend to be admirers of his work in order to meet him, just because they are told he is “famous.” Proust is constantly telling of people at the hotel who are high-class snobs who won’t talk to anyone—and then they go out of their way to be friendly to him. Not that he’s bragging or anything…
He also dissembles in order to try to gain the attention of girls. Desperately going out of his way to be introduced to the “gang of girls” he’s been stalking for days, he hangs back and looks at antiques when his painter acquaintance tries to introduce him—and then he’s upset at the painter for not pushing the issue. Late, he pretends to be in love with Albertine’s friend Andrée to make her jealous.
The anti-Semitism of his class and time period is out in force in this volume, with the addition of his embarrassing Jewish friend Bloch, Albertine’s taken-for-granted dislike of Jews, and multiple mentions of the Dreyfus Affair. This was a revelation to me, and I keep expecting someone in the book to comment on it (maybe his grandmother?), but everyone seems to think it’s normal.
I was briefly heartened by the change of setting when he traveled to Balbec. Observations of the new surroundings and of his fellow guests at the hotel pulled him out of his self-pitying navel-gazing for a time.
An especially interesting bit: his obsession with the “gang of girls” was reminiscent of Lolita. His observations about the beguiling and transitory nature of adolescence—and even Albertine’s somewhat vulgar enthusiasm—make me think that Nabokov must have read this. Proust even calls the girls “nymphs” on multiple occasions.
All in all, I don’t think I would recommend this volume. The first was very compelling, especially the strikingly different point of view of Swann in Love, but this just seems like a continuation of some of the worst characteristics of the third part of that volume. Maybe this is its Matrix Reloaded—a transition volume—and the next will be better. Here’s hoping
rosecarlyle's review against another edition
I continue in my quest to read In Search of Lost Time / Remembrance of Things Past, with its wonderfully neurotic narrator and florid prose. Two volumes down, five to go.
Still loving it, still don't expect anyone else to try it! I discovered that it's longer than I thought, closer to 1,300,000 words.
They are very pretty words, and even though the sentences are ridiculously long, I find this book extremely readable and absorbing.
Still loving it, still don't expect anyone else to try it! I discovered that it's longer than I thought, closer to 1,300,000 words.
They are very pretty words, and even though the sentences are ridiculously long, I find this book extremely readable and absorbing.