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A review by batbones
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
5.0
...how paradoxical it is to seek in reality for the pictures that are stored in one's memory, which must inevitably lose their charm that comes to them from memory itself and from their not been apprehended by the senses. [...] The places we have known do not belong only to the world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. They were only a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time, the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.'
A novel that has lived up to every good thing that has been said of it. To the extent that the trepidation and reluctance with which this reader had embarked on this colossus (the first of a larger and more intimidating monster of a series) had been at half-mark entirely swept away into oblivion, the turning of the pages driven solely by the feverish desire to know what happened next and if it would be just as or far better than what had already happened. Its readability is a surprising point. The 'Combray' section is a tad sluggish when read for the first time but it seems, from the perspective of someone at the last page, that the novel was only biding its time, its beauty that of a slow-budding bloom gradually unfurling itself. Thankfully it does not take too long to be accustomed to its discursive rhythms and thereafter, to enjoy a sentence as it winds its way down the page. Its generosity of language, however, feels precise rather than excessive; its texture and willingness to give pause and add colour gives the novel its aesthetic and emotional richness. To catalogue it as an elaborate meditation on the pangs of emotion and an education on its mercurial nature, and also a study of character and behaviour (especially behaviour around our social betters), and which is also a young man's reflection on his self-education, is to diminish it without fully explaining it. Proust on the other hand, is intent on fully explaining without diminishing the very illumination, the spark of an event or an idea or a person, that had motivated these enthusiastic digressions in the first place.
It is a novel of infinite depths. 'One of the qualities that mark a masterwork is the inability of readers ever to feel that they have quite grasped it, or at any rate grasped it in its entirety, its wholeness.' (Joseph Epstein, 'Monsieur Proust’s masterwork') Now at the last page, the first chapter feels ripe for re-reading already. And fruitful years of companionship lie ahead.
(Side note: Fine artists know other fine artists. Thank you Yves Saint Laurent.)
A novel that has lived up to every good thing that has been said of it. To the extent that the trepidation and reluctance with which this reader had embarked on this colossus (the first of a larger and more intimidating monster of a series) had been at half-mark entirely swept away into oblivion, the turning of the pages driven solely by the feverish desire to know what happened next and if it would be just as or far better than what had already happened. Its readability is a surprising point. The 'Combray' section is a tad sluggish when read for the first time but it seems, from the perspective of someone at the last page, that the novel was only biding its time, its beauty that of a slow-budding bloom gradually unfurling itself. Thankfully it does not take too long to be accustomed to its discursive rhythms and thereafter, to enjoy a sentence as it winds its way down the page. Its generosity of language, however, feels precise rather than excessive; its texture and willingness to give pause and add colour gives the novel its aesthetic and emotional richness. To catalogue it as an elaborate meditation on the pangs of emotion and an education on its mercurial nature, and also a study of character and behaviour (especially behaviour around our social betters), and which is also a young man's reflection on his self-education, is to diminish it without fully explaining it. Proust on the other hand, is intent on fully explaining without diminishing the very illumination, the spark of an event or an idea or a person, that had motivated these enthusiastic digressions in the first place.
It is a novel of infinite depths. 'One of the qualities that mark a masterwork is the inability of readers ever to feel that they have quite grasped it, or at any rate grasped it in its entirety, its wholeness.' (Joseph Epstein, 'Monsieur Proust’s masterwork') Now at the last page, the first chapter feels ripe for re-reading already. And fruitful years of companionship lie ahead.
(Side note: Fine artists know other fine artists. Thank you Yves Saint Laurent.)