Reviews

‘Even when he was not thinking of the little phrase [of music], it existed, latent, in his mind, in the same way as certain other conceptions without material equivalent, such as our notions of light, of sound, of perspective, of bodily desire, the rich possessions wherewith our inner temple is diversified and adorned. Perhaps we shall lose them, perhaps they will be obliterated, if we return to nothing in the dust. But so long as we are alive, we can no more bring ourselves to a state in which we shall not have known them than we can with regard to any material object, than we can, for example, doubt the luminosity of a lamp that has just been lighted, in view of the changed aspect of everything in the room, from which has vanished even the memory of the darkness. […] Its destiny was linked, for the future, with that of the human soul, of which it was one of the special, the most distinctive ornaments. Perhaps it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dream of life is without existence; but, if so, we feel that it must be that these phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, are nothing either. We shall perish, but we have for our hostages these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And death in their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less certain.'

‘I looked at her, at first with the sort of gaze that is not merely the messenger of the eyes, but a window at which all the senses lean out, anxious and petrified, a gaze that would like to touch the body it is looking at, capture it, take it away and the soul along with it...'

Cried while reading about a man who cried while listening to a sonata. This book perfectly captures the emotion evoked by a piece of art, in itself proving the point it seeks to convey. Never have I wanted to hear a fictional piece of music more.

https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/paintings-in-proust-vol-1-swann-s-way/

spenkevich's review against another edition

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5.0

'reality will take shape in the memory alone...’

For 100 years now, Swann’s Way, the first volume of Marcel Proust’s masterpiece, has engaged and enchanted readers. Within moments of turning back the cover and dropping your eyes into the trenches of text, the reader is sent to soaring heights of rapture while clinging to Proust prose, leaving no room for doubt that this is well-deserving of it’s honor among the timeless classics. In swirling passages of poetic ecstasy, the whole of his life and memories dance upon the page, carefully dissecting the personages that surrounded his childhood and illustrating a vibrant account of the society and social manners. Swann’s Way is a powerful love story capturing the romance between Proust and his existence as he wields sprawling lyricism like tender touch and kisses in order to sensually undress the world, revealing all the poetic beauty that hides within the garments of reality.

Open the novel to any page and you are likely to find a long, flowing sentence full of love and longing for the depths of existence. Proust is a virtuoso. His famously complex sentences rise and fall in dramatic fashion, carefully pulling incredible aerobatics of emotion across the page like a violinist does with sound in only the most elite of classical compositions. If it isn’t obvious, I quickly became utterly smitten with Proust. Even Virginia Woolf read Proust in awe. Some of the finest passages that have ever graced my eyes are found in this volume. Take for example this exquisite passage on the power of music:

’Even when he was not thinking of the little phrase, it existed, latent, in his mind, in the same way as certain other conceptions without material equivalent, such as our notions of light, of sound, of perspective, of bodily desire, the rich possessions wherewith our inner temple is diversified and adorned. Perhaps we shall lose them, perhaps they will be obliterated, if we return to nothing in the dust. But so long as we are alive, we can no more bring ourselves to a state in which we shall not have known them than we can with regard to any material object, than we can, for example, doubt the luminosity of a lamp that has just been lighted, in view of the changed aspect of everything in the room, from which has vanished even the memory of the darkness. In that way Vinteuil's phrase, like some theme, say, inTristan, which represents to us also a certain acquisition of sentiment, has espoused our mortal state, had endued a vesture of humanity that was affecting enough. Its destiny was linked, for the future, with that of the human soul, of which it was one of the special, the most distinctive ornaments. Perhaps it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dream of life is without existence; but, if so, we feel that it must be that these phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, are nothing either. We shall perish, but we have for our hostages these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And death in their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less certain.’

Beautiful. Throughout Swann’s Way we see this sentiment expressed to cover all of reality in a blanket of art; by reshaping what we perceive into beautiful notions of prose, music, sculpture, architecture, or any other form of aesthetics, Proust seeks to discover the true shape of meaning and cling to an ideal, an ideal that will linger like a sweet perfume long after the actual object of desire and reflection has either faded or reared it’s ugly head and begun to rot.

By exploring memory, Proust is able to wrap all his sensory perceptions, all the external stimuli experienced over a lifetime, into a charming bouquet of words in order grant them a linguistic weight in which they can be shared and enjoyed by others. He despairs when contemplating that his experiences were not shared by other people and didn’t have ‘any reality outside of me. They now seemed to me no more than the purely subjective, impotent, illusory creations of my temperament. They no longer had any attachment to nature, to reality, which from then on lost all its charm and significance…’. He finds solace in literature and his greatest hopes are to become a writer because it grants the power to capture the true essence of anything. By contemplating an object he finds it is ‘so ready to open, to yield me the thing for which they themselves were merely a cover’, and language is the snare to capture and immortalize these fleeting impressions and moments of glowing epiphany. For it is the impressions, the inner beauty, that matter to him instead of the objects themselves. He falls in love with Mlle. Swann because she connotes ‘the cathedrals, the charm of the hills of Île-de-France, the plains of Normandy’, as well as her association with his beloved Bergote – he loves the idea of her more than the physical being.

The centerpiece of the novel, Swann in Love, is an emotionally jarring ride from sublime romance and intimacy to the obsessive, nerve wracking depression of love being ripped to pieces in its fiery tailspin downward. This story, practically a novella that could work well as a stand-alone piece, gripped me the strongest. Perhaps it was the bruised memories of similar circumstances, but my heart went out to Swann despite all his flaws, self pity and shameful actions. Proust creates near-Greek tragedy in him by creating a man of legendary proportions and casting him down upon the rocks. Story aside, Swann too seeks the ideal, even to the point of self-destructive monomania. A man of the arts, Swann associates his image of ideal with aesthetics, but unlike the narrator, brings it to life through sculpture, paintings and music. Odette becomes most beautiful to him when he can appraise her like a sculpture:

’[E]ven though he probably valued the Florentine masterpiece only because he fount it again in her, nevertheless that resemblance conferred a certain beauty on her too, made her more precious…and he felt happy that his pleasure in seeing Odette could be be justified by his own aesthetic culture.’

Lovemaking for the couple becomes more personal, more artistic in his eyes through their personal euphemism ‘make cattleya’ as it brings all further acts of intimacy performed under such a title an extension to the first, passionate and idealized union of their bodies. The act ‘lived on in their language’ and offered Swann a sense of possession over the act by creating with the phrase an ‘entirely individual and new’ action. The ‘little phrase’ played by the pianist during their first encounter at the Verdurin’s becomes the anthem of their love, and it’s melody carries the image of his ideal Odette, the Odette that swooned over his every word and loved him deeply, the Odette that he will always hold to his heart and pursue even when the Odette he can physically hold comes up as a pale shell of the ideal (I've been reading to much Derrida lately to not comment that we can never achieve the ideal, which makes his downfall inevitable. The lack of sound logic in his thinking is apparent all through his romantic decline too). Sometimes when you have lost everything, you fight for that ideal that has already dissipated in order to uphold some sort of self-dignity, even though it is just that dignity which will be lost in the process. Proust delivers love and tragedy at it’s finest.

Through each marvelous passage, Proust gives a fleshed out portrayal of the people and places n his life. His family and friends are given a second life through his words, which paint such a lifelike portrayal, examining their greatest traits, their habits and not shying away from unveiling even their flaws, that they practically breath on the page. Proust has an acute eye for social manners, and the reader can pick up on even the most subtle of vanities, ill-manners, or kind-heartedness of all those encountered. Of particular interest is Proust’s brutal portrayal of the Verdurins and their group of the ‘faithful’, refraining from casting judgment while letting their actions speak for themselves to betray their ignorance of the ideas they speak so highly of. The Verdurin scenes bring back memories of college parties where less-than-sober members speak so highly of art yet have little of value to discuss when pressed, the same people who label everyone around them and sneer at those without their same ‘high standards’ of art (which, okay, sometimes that person is me). Proust immortalizes these fakes forever in his words, making me think he was getting the last laugh at a group that once condescended him.

I urge anyone with even the slightest interest in the novel to find it and read it immediately. The language simply blossoms, even after being run through the presses of translation. First loves, heartbreaks, losses of many kinds, and the exciting phase of childhood when our understanding of the world around us begins to reveal itself, all come to life in a book that will make your emotions dance and sway. 100 years after it was written, Proust still holds weight in the world today and remains high and above many of the authors who have followed him. I cannot stress how incredible his prose is, I have found a new author to hold close to my heart and savor each blessed word. Take the Swann’s Way.
5/5

‘I looked at her, at first with the sort of gaze that is not merely the messenger of the eyes, but a window at which all the senses lean out, anxious and petrified, a gaze that would like to touch the body it is looking at, capture it, take it away and the soul along with it…’

echooutside's review against another edition

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2.0

I don't care what literature laws I am breaking by saying this, PROUST SUCKS. Listen listen, their writing style was so elegantly beautiful but just the plot?? and the philosophy?? I genuinely could not tell wtf the storyline even was and what the relevance was. Jk it was about the art of reflecting back on one's life and love BUT LIKE it was just told so horribly and like the main point was made through way too many details it just I hated it I hated every single second I spent reading this book if you could not tell by the almost month long time period it took me to finish. Anyways, Proust is a well respected author, and again, wrote so intricately and graceful that I have to appreciate some of the magnificent quotes from this book:

"But when nothing else is left of one's remote past, when the people one knew are dead and buried and the things they used have disintegrated, two survivors will live among the ruins, more delicate but more indestructible, more immaterial but more persistent and faithful than all the rest: the smell and the taste of things, prevailing like disembodied spirits, remebering, waiting, hoping and holding up on their frail but unfaltering foundation the immense edifice of Memory."

"We invariably take a long time to recognize in the individuality of a new writer's characteristics a replica of the prototype labelled "Great Talent" in our private museum of concept. For the very reason that his characteristics are new, they do not appear to be an accurate likeness of what we call talent. So instead we talk of his originality, his charm, the delicacy or power of his writing; until one day it occurs to us that those very qualities are the definition of talent."

"Of all the conditions that determine the birth of love, the one that is most essential and which can enable love to forgo all the others is that we should believe that a fellow creature partakes of an unknown mode of existence which we too could share if only that person were in love with us."

"Fact has no access to the world where beliefs grow; it had no hands in their birth and cannot bring about their deaths; it can give them the most unremitting lie without managing to discredit them, and a family may be overwhelmed by a welter of misfortunes and maladies without once questioning the clemency of their god or the competence of their doctor."

"But there were other times when we would be caught by the rain with which the little weather-man hanging outside the optician's shop had threatened us; the drops of water, like migratory birds all setting off in a body at the same moment, would fall from the sky in close formation. During their rapid flight, they do not separate or fall at random, but each drop holds to its position and attracts the following one after itself, so that the sky is as dark as whem the swallows leave. We could take refuge in the woods. When the migration seemed to be over, there wouldf always be some stragglers dawdling down late. But we would leave our shelter, for raindrops enjoy foliage and by the time the earth underneath had almost dried out there would still be one or two playing about on the veins of a leaf, hanging motionless from the top and flashing in the sun, and then sliding over the edge and dropping from a height into one's face."

"[W]hen for us the rain was already over, or else being forgiven by the Lord as His sun came out again and sent down to it, like the rays from a monstrance on an altar, golden shafts fraying into uneven lengths of light."

"But what did rain and thunderstorms matter? Bad weather in summer, unlike the shifty, unreliable fair weather of winter, is only a surface disturbance, a passing whim of the prevailing but underlying fine weather which has settled over the land, consolidating its position with thickets of foliage and festooning for the whole season village streets, the walls of houses and back gardens with its buntinhg of white or violet silks. From the little drawing-room, where I would sit reading until dinner-time, I could hear the water dripping off our horse-chestnuts, but I knew the torrents of rain would only smarten up the leaves and that the trees, like pledges of summer's good intentions, promised to stay there throughout the stormy hours of darkness and to ensure the continuation of the fine weather; that the rain could do its worst, but tomorrow at Tansonville there would be just as many little heart-shaped leaves waving at me over the white fence; and so it was without sadness that I watched the popular out in the Rue des Perchamps desparately bowing and scraping before the storm and heard from the bottom of the garden the last muffled thunder murmuring among the lilacs."

"Thus, at an age when it would appear (wince what one seeks above all in love is a subjective pleasure) that one's taste for a certain woman's beauty should motivate in large measure the love one feels for her, that same love can arise, and exist at the most carnal level, without ever having been preceded by any desire for her. At that stage of life, one has already experienced several bouts of love; it no longer goes through its spontaneous evolution, in accordance with its own fateful mysterious laws, in the presence of one's astonished and passive heart. One helps it along, tampering with its progress through memory or suggestion; one recognizes a simgle sympton of it, and remembers or recreats the rest. It is a melody we know by heart, imprinted in us in its entirety, and one has no need to be reminded by a women of its opening notes in order to recall how it goes on. And if she starts in the middle of it, at the point where two hearts are feeling closer, where one beings to speak of being unable to go on existing without eachh other, then the tune is familiar enough for us to be able to join in with her at the right bar."

"The reality I had oncce known no longer existed...Places we used to know are not situated solely in the world of space; that is merely where the mind puts them, for the sake of convenience. They were never anything more than a slender slice of reality, surrounded by the mass of contiguous impressions which composed our total life at a particular time. The memory of a certain impression is nothing other than one's regret for a certain moment; and houses, thoroughfares and paths through the woods are, alas, as fleeting as the years."

AHHHHHHHHH

carameliced's review against another edition

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emotional funny inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

purplewaterbottle's review against another edition

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(had to read Combray for school - will come back to the book one day)

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