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    Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit. Band 1: Auf dem Weg zu Swann: Reclam Bibliothek
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    Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit. Band 1: Auf dem Weg zu Swann: Reclam Bibliothek
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    Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit. Band 1: Auf dem Weg zu Swann: Reclam Bibliothek
    Ebook810 pages15 hours

    Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit. Band 1: Auf dem Weg zu Swann: Reclam Bibliothek

    By Marcel Proust

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Bis tief ins 20. Jahrhundert wurde die "Suche" als ein Sittengemälde der Belle Époque gelesen, als ein Schlüsselroman der frivolen Pariser Oberschicht der vorletzten Jahrhundertwende. Aus heutiger Sicht geht es jedoch um Tieferliegendes, um die unaufhebbare Einbindung des Individuums in die Gesellschaft und seine Abhängigkeit von deren Entwicklung. Dabei gibt Proust das Wirken auch der unmerklichsten Einflüsse auf der Ebene des Unter- oder Unbewussten zu erkennen. Das erfordert einen ganz neuen Blick auf den Text. Eine zeitgemäße Übersetzung muss moderne Hilfsmittel der Textanalyse anwenden. Sie muss davon ausgehen, dass Proust sich gern in Etymologien verliert und über das Wirken der Zeit auf die Sprache nachdenkt. Dass er seine Wörter nicht setzt, ohne sich über deren historischen und assoziativen Hintergrund im Klaren zu sein. Aus diesem Grund ist die Übersetzung neben den notwendigen Texterläuterungen mit einem Anmerkungsapparat ausgestattet, der jene historischen und kulturhistorischen Informationen enthält, die der moderne Leser erwartet.

    E-Book mit Seitenzahlen der gedruckten Ausgabe.
    LanguageDeutsch
    PublisherReclam Verlag
    Release dateOct 11, 2013
    ISBN9783159603728
    Unavailable
    Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit. Band 1: Auf dem Weg zu Swann: Reclam Bibliothek
    Author

    Marcel Proust

    Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was a French novelist. Born in Auteuil, France at the beginning of the Third Republic, he was raised by Adrien Proust, a successful epidemiologist, and Jeanne Clémence, an educated woman from a wealthy Jewish Alsatian family. At nine, Proust suffered his first asthma attack and was sent to the village of Illiers, where much of his work is based. He experienced poor health throughout his time as a pupil at the Lycée Condorcet and then as a member of the French army in Orléans. Living in Paris, Proust managed to make connections with prominent social and literary circles that would enrich his writing as well as help him find publication later in life. In 1896, with the help of acclaimed poet and novelist Anatole France, Proust published his debut book Les plaisirs et les jours, a collection of prose poems and novellas. As his health deteriorated, Proust confined himself to his bedroom at his parents’ apartment, where he slept during the day and worked all night on his magnum opus In Search of Lost Time, a seven-part novel published between 1913 and 1927. Beginning with Swann’s Way (1913) and ending with Time Regained (1927), In Search of Lost Time is a semi-autobiographical work of fiction in which Proust explores the nature of memory, the decline of the French aristocracy, and aspects of his personal identity, including his homosexuality. Considered a masterpiece of Modernist literature, Proust’s novel has inspired and mystified generations of readers, including Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Graham Greene, and Somerset Maugham.

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    Reviews for Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit. Band 1

    4.5/5

    1,400 ratings56 reviews

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    • 3/5
      The only way I can truly describe this book is by analogy. You know when you have a really sore spot on your gum, and it hurts, and you are compelled to press on it, which doesn't relieve the pain but changes the sensation to something strangely enjoyable (or at least less painful), then you remove the pressure and the pain returns? That is reading this book. It has been lauded as a masterpiece, so I tried to get it, but all I came away with was a very original, sometimes sublimely written, self-indulgent piece of inner vision. It makes sense to me it was written by a guy in a room lined by cork. Short on story and action, long on self-consciousness. The breathtaking prose is oddly compelling, but I often felt cheated. Unlike others, I will not be reading the other volumes. I saw the beautiful movie, "Time Regained", and that satisfied my need to find out what happens/doesn't happen in the opus, but I'm not so masochistic that I'll actually read page after page of description of a leaf. I'll just accept my philistine status when it comes to Proust.
    • 4/5
      amazing writing...
    • 4/5
      Eerste deel van 7. Heerlijke scenes (het wakker worden, de madeleine-ervaring, ....). Trage, spiraliserende zinnen. Ogenschijnlijk niet spectaculair, maar Proust blijft ook lang na de lectuur door je hoofd spoken.
    • 3/5
      I'm not sure what to make of this. At one level, nothing much happens - the first 20 odd pages are about him struggling to go to sleep and how is mind wanders when it does. It wanders back to his childhood and his relationship with his mother and father. this then moves on to where he spent childhood holidays, and the village. It introduces Swann, who is then the topic of the second section, which retells a love affair in his life. The third section is back with the narrator, and feels to be later than the first section. In the book not a lot actually happens. It does, however, do not a lot it in very languid and descriptive prose. It almost seduces you.
    • 3/5
      Not going to lie, this was a challenge to read and it took me 4 months. "A Love of Swann's" was the biggest chore as it was just energy draining to read about Swann's fanatical jealousy of Odette's imagined (or not) other lovers for two hundred pages. For a few weeks I only managed a page a day. The comparative lightness of the introductory "Combray" and the charm of the childhood crush in the concluding "Place-names: The Name" sections were a relief in comparison.TriviaAn observation from mid-read:I'm very keen on ASMR* these days, so re-reading the madeleine passage now, it seems very ASMRish to me: "I carried to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had let soften a piece of madeleine. But at the very instant when the mouthful of tea mixed with cake-crumbs touched my palate, I quivered, attentive to the extraordinary thing that was happening in me. A delicious pleasure had invaded me, isolated me, without my having any notion as to its cause. It had immediately made the vicissitudes of life unimportant to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory, acting in the same way that love acts, by filling me with a precious essence: or rather this essence was not in me, it was me." - pg. 49 in the Lydia Davis translation.Previously the only literature that has had any ASMR association is a passage from Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf: ""'K . . . R . . .' said the nursemaid, and Septimus heard her say “Kay Arr” close to his ear, deeply, softly, like a mellow organ, but with a roughness in her voice like a grasshopper’s, which rasped his spine deliciously and sent running up into his brain waves of sound which, concussing, broke. A marvellous discovery indeed—that the human voice in certain atmospheric conditions (for one must be scientific, above all scientific) can quicken trees into life!"*Autonomic Sensory Meridian Response = a pleasurable tingling sensation in the head that radiates down the spine and sometimes further throughout the body. Very few people have this and the apocryphal story is that those who have it will never physically meet any other person that does have it (I can personally vouch for this). With the advent of the internet, experiencers have made connections esp. through cult videos on YouTube where ASMRtists speak softly and perform friction sounds which are the most likely to trigger the response. Painting videos by Bob Ross are also well known to trigger the response due to his gentle, pleasant manner of speaking.
    • 3/5
      I read the first part, Combray, which was reasonably enjoyable. But then the part about Swanns love became more and more annoying and I gave up, restarting at the last part which unfortunately continued with the endless philosophies about love, this time as experienced by the young author. Reading the afterword in the Dutch translation tells you more or less what you may learn from the novel, but then in a few pages only! If you love the authors style, you may enjoy entire 500 pages. For me, the authors style doesn't really add to the content of the story. I prefer Flaubert.
    • 5/5
      The opening book of In Search of Lost Time is Swann's Way. It in turn is divided into three sections, the first being Combray. We enter the world of the narrator as a young boy when he is trying to sleep while being interrupted by his thoughts. It is these thoughts, described as "reflections on what I had just read" that engage us on the first page of this first section of the first of many volumes. The young boy gradually returns to sleep only to find himself dreaming of the origins of woman from the rib of the first man. It may be that this is one way to view the beginnings of Proust's long tale as the origin of the story of one man's life from the imagination of our narrator as he remembers the events of his life as a young boy at the village of Combray in the house of his Aunt Leonie with his parents. Why is it that reading generates in the imagination of the young boy such strong reflections that they interrupt his sleep? One way to answer this is to look first at the mind from which the imagination emanates. It is a mind described thusly,"And wasn't my mind also like another crib in the depths of which I felt I remained ensconced . . . When I saw an external object, my awareness that I was seeing it would remain between me and it, lining it with a thin spiritual border that prevented me from ever directly touching its substance; it would volatize in some way before I could make contact with it, just as an incandescent body brought near a wet object never touches its moisture because it is always preceded by a zone of evaporation." (p 85)Marcel's mind (for Marcel is his name) is invigorated by his reading "from inside to outside, toward the discovery of the truth," reading that aroused his emotions as he experienced the dramatic events in the book. It is these emotions that bring with them an intensity that makes Marcel feel more alive than any other activity. He relates,"And once the novelist has put us in that state, in which, as in all purely internal states, every emotion is multiplied tenfold, in which his book will disturb us as might a dream but a dream more lucid than those we have while sleeping and whose memory will last longer, then see how he provokes us within one hour all possible happiness and all possible unhappiness just a few of which we would spend years of our lives coming to know and the most intense of which would never be revealed to us because the slowness with which they occur prevents us from perceiving them" (p 87)It is not only reading that defines young Marcel, but also his relationships with people around him, not only his mother and aunt, but others including the faithful servant Francoise, the wealthy Jewish neighbor Swann, also Legrandin and Bloch who are introduced to him at Combray. Bloch is interesting in part because he introduces Marcel to the writing of Bergotte. It is Bergotte who above all others entrances the young boy."In the first few days, like a melody with which one will become infatuated but which one cannot yet make out, what I was to love so much in his style was not apparent to me. I could no put down the novel of his that I was reading, but thought I was interested only in the subject, as during that first period of love when you go to meet a woman every day at some gathering, some entertainment, thinking you are drawn to it by its pleasures. Then I noticed the rare, almost archaic expressions he liked to use at certain moments, when a hidden wave of harmony, an inner prelude, would heighten his style; and it was also at theses moments that he would speak of the "vain dream of life," the "inexhaustible torrent of beautiful appearance," the "moving effigies that forever ennoble the venerable and charming facades of our cathedrals," that he expressed an entire philosophy, new to me, through marvelous images" (pp 95-96)Reading Bergotte yields a "joy" within Marcel that allowed him to experience "a deeper, vaster, more unified region" of himself. It is through such experiences of reading and the resulting flights of imagination that the reader is introduced to the book that to be read and understood must yield similar emotions for the reader. Yet it is not only reading that thrills Marcel in Proust's story but also, as can be seen from the description of Bergotte's novel, music and its even stronger impact on his imagination.
    • 5/5
      It's probably a rather banal thing to say, but what I really noticed when I picked up the first volume of À la recherche du temps perdu again after a long Proust-free period was that I'd completely forgotten how good he is at getting his complicated ideas about art, society, nature and mind across. The story might be frustratingly slow in getting anywhere, but on just about every page there was a phrase that seemed exactly to capture something I could relate to my own experience and give it an extra dimension. One part of you wants to tell the narrator not to fret and reassure him that his mother is going to come up to say good night to him after all in about 500 pages from now, but at the same time you're surfing the ideas as they roll towards you with a reassuringly predictable rhythm that's modulated just enough to keep you alert and focussed as they come at you. The first-person sections are more immediately and obviously appealing than "Un amour de Swann", of course - I even caught myself checking "that most erotic of books, the railway timetable", to see whether I might be able to fit in a trip to Normandy next year to have a look at "Combray" and "Balbec" in real life. It's much easier to identify with the narrator-as-a-small-boy than with Swann the Parisian sophisticate falling for the courtesan Odette, but even so there is a remarkable amount in the development of his affection, need, jealousy and mistrust that strikes a chord. And the Duchess is magnificent!I don't think I could read all seven volumes straight through without a break - I need a bit of laughter and flippancy from time to time, and that's something Proust would dismiss as the unworthy province of the small-minded Verdurins. But now that I've started the re-read, I am in the mood again, and the other volumes are going to have to follow sooner or later. As a pastime, re-reading Proust certainly beats "strangling animals, golf and masturbating"...
    • 5/5
      Five stars. Review to come. This volume alone, of course, could inspire multiple volumes of reactions and analysis, but it would only be fair to add my meager offerings after I close Volume VII.
    • 4/5
      I'm conflicted. I started off thinking that the writing was lovely and evocative, although the young narrator perhaps provides detail that one might politely call "a little excessive" about such things as bedtime routines and the importance of the narrator receiving a goodnight kiss from his mother. Within a few percentage points (I read this on the kindle, so instead of seeing the pages of the book move from the "unread" side to the "read" side, I only had the agonizingly slow movement of the percentages as feedback - flip, no change, flip, flip, flip, no change, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip ... ah, finally!), where was I? Oh right, within a few percentage points I was hoping to never hear about the layout of the French town of Combray, church spires, walks, weather, hawthorn bushes, or the narrator's damned mother again. I was moderately enlivened for a while by the story of his great-aunt Leonie's invalid behavior. She entertainingly always managed to be too ill to do the things she didn't want to, but healthy enough to manage the things she did.We've been introduced to M. Swann through his interactions with the narrator's family, although Swann's wife and daughter are off-limits as the wife is not one to be introduced to polite company, and therefore neither is the daughter. Eventually we start into the meat of it, talking about M. Swann. And we are with him for what seems like a million years as he is enchanted by Odette, a woman of dubious moral character. Much is made of who is associating with whom, who is going to the theater, the opera, riding home in carriages together, having dinner at whose house, etc. We are spared no detail of Swann's thoughts about Odette and how he spends seemingly every waking moment. The last section returns to our child narrator and his love for (or really, fixation on) Gilberte Swann. Once I discovered that Gilberte had red hair, I couldn't stop thinking of the narrator as a Parisian Charlie Brown, obsessed with his little red-haired girl. Definitely not the mood Proust was going for. I will say, though, that as frustrated as I was with this book at times (and boy was I - telling myself "I'll read 2 percent of this thing today if it kills me"), I'm glad I made it through. The last page threw the whole thing into a more positive light and gave me more to think about, as well as the motivation to continue on with the next volume. I just wish that change in perspective had taken place a little earlier.Recommended for: fans of Ingmar Bergman, Francophiles, people who like to be honest when they say, "I read that."Quote: "I do feel that it's really absurd that a man of his intelligence should let himself be made to suffer by a creature of that kind, who isn't even interesting, for they tell me, she's an absolute idiot!" she concluded with the wisdom invariably shewn by people who, not being in love themselves, feel that a clever man ought to be unhappy only about such persons as are worth his while; which is rather like being astonished that anyone should condescend to die of cholera at the bidding of so insignificant a creature as the common bacillus."
    • 4/5
      Swann's Way is an opening of this life work and serves to present all kinds of ideas, and all the characters, too. I must admit that I found the book to be much "smaller" and "larger" at the same time. Some passages lead into a great unknkown realm of new ideas and are very philosophical, too, wheras other seem to busy themselves with stuff one could consider to be gossip. It was difficult for me to decide what to think, really, because the ideas I liked were sometimes buried under the rambling of the society. I suppose this is exactly how Proust felt himself most of the time and just shows his genious, but it made reading somewhat laborious. As many readers before me, I also wished I were able to read it in French, because somehow I am not sure whether English does Proust justice. I also compared it with a German translation and I almost think this works better.
    • 3/5
      I have a love-hate relationship with this book, or more accurately, a 'occastionally like - often hate' relationship. The prose is lyrical with amazing word selection. Listening to this in audio felt like I was hearing poetry. Much of the story describes Swann falling in love with his mistress who has several affairs with other men. The feelings of jealousy and frustration were so incredibly written and described. But several things drove me absolutely crazy about this book. First, the structure. The sentences are long making it difficult to parse and follow a thought. I read along with this on my Nook and many sentences took more than a screen so that I had to flip back and forth just to capture the entire thought. Much of the story is stream of consciousness musings about memory and the past making it hard to completely grasp. But my biggest complaint is that the two major characters, Swann and the narrator Marcel (Proust as a young boy perhaps?) were over the top as far as expressing their emotions. Marcel, a young boy, is devastated when his mother does not kiss him good night and when he leaves Combray, he weeps over the fact that he won't see the beautiful hawthorns. Swann's angst over his cheating lover was genuine and well described but the emotions associated with it were way too intense. This is only the first book of seven in this very LONG series. I'll definitely wait before picking up the next one.
    • 4/5
      I finally finished this after I made myself avoid other more entertaining books and buckled down for the ride.

      Proust is not easy reading, and to this day I'm only marginally aware of what actually happened in this book. That said, there is a plot to it if you can pay attention and make it through the stream-of-consciousness meanderings. The way he plays with words makes it worth the price of entry, mind you; but this is not for plot and action junkies. In fact I'm not even sure you'll care much for the characters. Near as I can tell, it's about a kid remembering a rich guy he knew as a kid, who fell in love with a slutty chick and married her despite not liking her, and then the kid falls for the rich guy's daughter.

      The worst part? I kinda miss the style and voice, and feel compelled to keep reading the remaining five books in the series. Help me.
    • 4/5
      More than a commentary on Swann’s jealousy or M. Charlus’s homosexuality or the frivolity of the Guermantes’ sorties, Marcel Proust’s monumental work In Search of Lost Time paints the unsuccessful reconstruction of a forgone world and a lost existence from fickle memories, which like morning mists would fade with the rising sun. The narrator Marcel, longing for a past that didn’t exist but must be created, sought to experience Bergson’s continuous time rather than the fragmented and still-framed instantaneous moments by attempting to blur the boundaries between Cambray and Paris, childhood and adolescence, and Swann and himself and integrate here and there, before and after, and him and me through memory fragments of previous objects, people and sensations. As in a neural network or a mind-map, the madeleine linked his aunt to his mother, who in turn was linked to Albertine through jealousy, which also connected Marcel with Saint Loop and Swann, who, as with his (Marcel’s) grandmother, linked his childhood and adolescence. And through recollection, Marcel would try to relive the buried years and resurrect his grandmother and Albertine.But even during the narrative, Marcel realized memory’s willfulness and the variation in hues, shapes, pitch and timbre between the actual object and its mental reconstruction. When he encountered an old friend, the facial features were so different from his recollection and reconstruction, for better or for worse pregnant with all the emotions, preoccupation, biases, that he could not match face with voice.Because recollected sensation can never equate with the actual experience and time, like a patient thief, steals memories a morsel at a time until one day the owner would realize he was ruined, Marcel ultimately would fail to recapture and assemble stolen sensations and decayed seconds and in the end, must create new moments, new sensations and ultimately a new biography, through the synergy between past experiences and creative imagination. From those deceased hours and decayed memories sprouted In Search of Lost Time, not only Proust’s novel but also that of the narrator. Whether we savor Marcel’s frailness, Swann’s infatuation, Charlus’s pompousness, Franscoise’s independent-mindedness, the sorties’ frivolousness or the social revelation of the Dreyfuss Affair, we can enjoy Proust’s classic without resorting to Marxist or Freudian or Feminist critique. And the sentences, like the serpentine Amazon, seemed to flow unceasingly into the distant horizon carrying with it the sparkling sunlight. Although ascending the novel’s three thousand pages appears precipitous, the effort will be well worth the while and, at the end of the adventure, the reader can rest on the crisp apex and savor time’s transience and memory’s playfulness as if they were alpine zephyrs.
    • 5/5
      Proust describes everything beautifully...and I do mean everything. When he's describing something that you care about - books, say, or love, or music - it's pretty great to read. When it's something else - flowers, medieval painters, more fucking flowers - it gets a little boring. So next time you hear people arguing about Proust, and one person says he's one of the most gorgeous writers ever, and the other person says he's fucking boring...they're both right.
    • 2/5
      Was this ever a slow, difficult read! Though I typically become very absorbed in novels (even lousy or trashy ones), I never managed to truly get into this. I love Lydia Davis's other work, so I don't think the problem is the translation.

      I'm generally a very fast reader, but this was impossible to take at anything but a glacial pace--the sentences are so long and ponderous that it's easy to lose the thread of meaning unless you focus intensely. The payoff was not always equal to the effort expended.

      I will say that there were many staggeringly beautiful descriptions, especially of flowers.

      On top of all that, at times I was frustrated and disappointed by both the narrator and Swann. I just wanted them to build a bridge and get over their issues.
    • 5/5
      The last time I read this was in the early 1980s and so it is with a nearly empty set of preconceptions that I am returning to it now to begin this centennial Year of Reading Proust. I do remember the sensation of the words just washing over me, not being quite sure what they were describing (now I can see that the book has virtually no plot and just enough action to keep the prose stirred up a little), and no clear impression of where the rest of the series would go, except certainly later in the life of the Narrator. Proust writes as if he can divide up perception into its constituent atoms and chart the way their paths evolve over time, assembling these bits into a portrait fixed at a particular time and place only if it suits his purposes of depicting a certain character or spotlighting some aspect of his theme. Thus, it is very easy to get disoriented, especially a century after it came out.

      I'm boosting my rating a star now over what I had previously. Swann's Way really does belong among the first rank of novels ever written.

      It is fascinating to see how certain motifs are woven in and out: music, flowers, social convention, and the advent of the modern world. I am looking forward to watching how these develop over the remaining volumes. If the effect of reading this work is really as life-changing as some have claimed, I am still uncertain, or rather I cannot tell whether it is more so than any other monumental work of literature to which one has been exposed.
    • 4/5
      My summer of re-reading Proust got off to a great start; it turns out that I hadn't forgotten everything about Swann's Way (which I read about 10 years ago), but that I was also much better equipped to deal with it now. It's really not that hard, it's a lot funnier than I'd realized as an undergrad, and I no longer feel the need to take all the essayistic interludes as gospel truth. This translation is beautiful, whatever it demerits when it comes to literal meaning; Proust really is an extraordinary observer of mental habits, and this volume has enough variation that you won't get bored slogging through too much of the same sort of stuff.

      But that variation comes at a price: there is no obvious reason for 'Swann in Love,' which is the central third of the novel (and, let's be honest, a free standing novel), to be there at all. The narrator can't possibly know much more of the story than 'Swann fell in love with a hussy, and eventually married her,' but the tale itself is narrated by an omniscient observer. It's great, and I'd much rather read it a third or fourth time than tackle the Albertine novels (Fugitive/Prisoner) again. But it makes Swann's Way very disjointed. Yes, Swann in Love raises many of the issues that A la Recherche will tackle for the next however many thousand pages (jealousy and homosexuality as types of the difficulty of knowing others from their actions, or the difficulty of properly predicting our own behavior or that of others etc etc...). But I can't help thinking it would have made more sense to publish it separately, and then mix the rest of Swann's Way (including the famous cake and tea scene) into the next volume. That said, I am not Proust, and what the hell do I know? I know that this is well worth reading, and re-read. And I can't wait to get onto 'Within a Budding Grove.'
    • 5/5
      I’m on a life raft floating across a sea of words, pulled into swirling tidal pools to observe the rich, vibrant forms spawning like phantasmagoric aliens (forms that once appeared mundane but only because, previously, no one had observed them as closely), pulled deep down by the undertow—note the hilarious mating habits in-situ of the foolish Parrot Fish—pulled out across hyaline waters sparkling like blue diamonds to drift peacefully in the doldrums before being abruptly dashed over great cataclysms of horror and despair; I’m a fool, a madman, an obsessive-compulsive; I’m fragile like a porcelain flower, a mother whose son was taken from her before it could breast-feed; I’m a laser, a microscope, a telescope, a catalog, a representation of the inner life of an artist much deeper than any Portrait of. I am going Swann’s Way.

      If one were a close observer of both (in)humanity and other (in)organic states with an addiction to the documentation of one’s thoughts, one might spend a lifetime writing a never-ending story in an inevitable (and eternally recurring in its inevitability because words can never capture the entirety of reality) failed attempt to capture all of life in a mad swoop. Much of literature (if not all) is an attempt to capture at least some corner of this life (whether it be outer or inner), but for Proust that corner bursts out tesseract to encompass the very existence of a man from childhood until elderhood through the prism of memory (and not just anyone’s memory, but clearly the memory of an autistic savant who can conjure up the texture of a grain of sand in the crease of the toe of a boot worn on the day a particular slant of light reached through a window that was normally closed but on this particular day was opened due to some certain random but explicable convergence of events). The unfurling of these thoughts is as delicate as the dance of a sea anemone in a gentle undersea breeze, if a breeze that occasionally rips the limbs off the anemone and taunts you with the inner juices dripping from the dismembered tentacle. At times, I could not take this torture, the agony and horror of Swann’s idiotic, naïve love (and, perhaps, even more so, the horror of seeing my own reflection in Swann’s way); and knowing how he ends up if not knowing how he gets to ending up that way (because I have not yet read the subsequent books of In Search of Lost Time), made it all the more painful. Thank Proust for the slapstick hypochondria of Auntie Leonie and the aristocratic wit and folly to brighten the murder of love.

      Softly flowing linguistic slitherings mingle with crisp literary devices, even mundane ones—such as cliffhangers—profoundly philosophical musings that achieve near Zen-states of enlightenment, and an unparalleled grasp of language induces me to declare Swann’s Way to be the work of a schizophrenic witch, and the greatest work of literature ever written…and this is only book one. But nothing I’ve ever read, certainly, compares to it. Which isn’t to say I haven’t received a greater degree of pleasure from other works, but pleasure is not the only measure of success. In fact, as Buddhism would ask you to consider, pleasure is ephemeral and disappointing. One doesn’t read Proust for “fun.” One reads Proust to become lost, amazed, and weakened, to learn, struggle, and grow, and, in the end, to admire what it is possible to create with dedication and passion and skill.

      On a final mundane note, I do highly recommend this edition. Although I have not read the Moncrieff version, based upon the quality of Lydia Davis’ gorgeous translation, and the notes in the preface regarding the errors and personal emendations made by Moncrieff to Proust’s writing, I would hazard that this is a superior version. Welcome to a peculiar world.
    • 5/5
      This is a book you very much have to be in the mood for. You can't rush it and you need to be in the position when you can honestly read as if you had all the time in the world. It's a contemplative book, the kind that reads like a long poem. Not to say that there is no plot, that would be unfair - the plot is there and the characters are well fleshed out, but Proust takes the time to really analyse every single feeling and emotion and you shut this book looking at the world differently. It's an experience in itself and I'm changed for having read this. I know that I'll appreciate the complexity of every moment more.
      Proust isn't an elitist writer, anyone can read this. His writing isn't obscure or prone to pedantism, it's honest and beautiful and very often funny, the out loud kind. I loved this so much. My favourite part was the first as I think Proust really shines when he talks about his own direct experience and his memories of Combray had me completely fall in love with his writing and with little Marcel. I'll reread this for sure.
    • 5/5
      To try to review a masterwork like this would be silly, so instead I will simply say (as I did for Crime and Punishment) that this novel is difficult for contemporary American readers--approach with lots of time on your hands. Where my note here differs from my note re: Crime and Punishment is that with this book I say "do approach!" There is a powerful, multi-generational story, here, and it's heartbreaking and lovely. WELL worth your time.
    • 5/5
      There are already many reviews of this book, and I don't want to repeat what has already been written quite well by others. What I would like to add is what a pleasure it is to read this particular translation of Swann's Way by Lydia Davis. Davis and Proust are an odd pair. He is best known for labyrinthine sentences that meander through time and space, while fusing similes and metaphors and myth. The description of the scent of a particular flower or the taste of a particular food could stretch for pages. One party scene is hundreds of pages long. Davis, on the other hand, is known for whole stories that are only a page long, sometimes only a few sentences. She would seem a poor choice to translate Proust, but the tension that arises from their very different writing styles makes for an excellent read. The text is lively and well-paced--I can't believe I'm writing this either, but it's true--once you allow yourself to sink into Proust's world. It is infinitely more readable than the Moncrieff translation.
    • 5/5
      A friend on LT recommended I read In Search of Lost Time, and after resisting for a while, I finally dove in. This is now my summer reading project. First, this is an intimidating book. It is volume one of six, and they are long volumes, with very long paragraphs and long sentences. (I tracked one sentence for two pages.) Second, it is, so far, well worth the read. Proust is doing something entirely different here. He is taking us inside his own mind, and to my way of thinking, he does this better than Joyce. Marcel, the narrator is reliving his life, and taking you with him, and he is not leaving a lot out. In one sense his story is everyone's story. We all have our minor issues as kids, fall in love with the girl next door, and think our world is immense. We all have infatuations, both romantic and non-romantic. HIs telling of Swann falling in love is both touching and hilarious. Proust pokes gentle jabs into the belly of the French aristocracy, while at the same time realizing that is the world he knows. Is there a theme here? I think "LOST" is essential. Marcel cannot really hold on to anything, or really enjoy anything, because he realizes it is merely a moment that cannot last. This is not for everyone...the plot is almost non-existant, and Marcel as a character is both highly interesting and higly irritating. (I was relieved we got to spend so much time with Swann in this volume.) But for reasons I don't understand, I keep reading. Perhaps perception is the content of reality.
    • 4/5
      Proust’s epic opens with what I can only describe as an extended prose-poem on the subject of memory which will continue as the most important theme of the novel. The action, such as it is, begins with the description of the childhood vacations the narrator (never named) spent in Combray surrounded by his rather eccentric family and neighbors. One senses that many of these characters will appear again as the novel progresses, but from the start it is clear that chief among them is a dilettante bourgeois, friend of the family - one M. Swann, whose chief failing is that he “married poorly.” Towards the end of the first section the narrator happens to see Gilberte, Swann’s daughter at a distance during a walk through M. Swann’s property. The memory of this first sighting sparks what might be considered the longest digression in literary history as the narrator proceeds to recount the story of M. Swann’s love affair with Odette de Crécy. The book closes, once again, with the narrator in Paris and his childhood friendship there with Gilberte. For such a long book, there is in fact very little plot. My Modern Library edition includes a synopsis which condenses the 600 pages of text into less than 5. But, after all, plot isn’t really the point. The characters and the actions are merely the starting point for Proust’s descriptive apostrophe on the human condition. Specifically, on the way in which our memory is not a simple record of past events, but is rather in a constant interplay with our emotions. And even in translation, Proust has created in these lush descriptions some of the most beautiful prose I have ever read. It is for the language, not the story that one reads Proust.So why give the novel less than a classic (5 star) rating? For all of the beauty of the writing, I found that I was simply unable to identify with the character of Swann. So throughout the soaring and crashing emotional journey of his affair with Odette I remained at a distance, and this detracted from my experience.
    • 5/5
      One of the most amazing books written. This book will change your life. I think about this book on a weekly basis. The master of long sentences.
    • 5/5
      In search of lost timeI would like some feedback on Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. I just started reading the book and have been struck by the sensory nature of the writing. Also Picasso and the theory's of space and time came to mind. In Leonard Shlain's book Art and Physics he has a brief discussion of the book in a chapter titled "Literary Forms/ Physics Formulas. David Perrings
    • 5/5
      Wow! An incredible reading experience. I've hankered after reading Proust for over 40 years, I'm now 63 (retired) and have the time for big reading projects. To be read slowly and carefully so as not to miss the wonderfully descriptive pieces, whether about people, places, flowers, churches, the weather and so on. It makes me want to delve into books about French high society at that time, although what Proust has to say probably says it all. I promised myself to read one volume a year, but I already have an urge to take down volume 2 and begin it very soon.
    • 5/5
      The writing in this book is absolutely exquisite. Proust's narrator inspects each nuance of consciousness and the opening scene in which he discusses waking is fabulous. There is more in one page of this book to ponder than I'm sure I even caught! Time stands still in this book - or moves so swiftly that it gives the impression that time is something completely independent of reality. The author/narrator/Swann is obsessive and parnoid, "And from then on, I forced myself to turn my thoughts away from the words I would have liked her to write to me, for fear that by articulating them, I would exclude precisely those - the dearest, the most desired - from the field of all possible compositions."
    • 5/5
      Delicious exposition on falling asleep. Author very econimcal with periods.
    • 5/5
      Even better than you've been told. Except, it can be pretty wearing to start. I recommend reading the beginning up to the madeleine section (less than 20 pages), then skipping to chapter 2, which is far more engaging. You can always go back once you've fallen in love with it.