Reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time in 2014 discussion

Use this topic thread for all Time Regained discussions through location 51361.

Stop at paragraph beginning "My mind turned immediately to Combray, but in the past I had thought that I would lower myself in the eyes of Mme de Guermantes by confessing to the humble position which my family occupied there."

In this week's read, it got a little bit confusing for me due to the notes regarding the 1927 and 1989 editions. Some passages were added, some were removed. And apparently all are in my edition. It's difficult to understand what was really supposed to be there and what wasn't.

There are even cases where in a particular edition character's names were changed: from Brichot to Cottard, from Norpois to Brichot...

Once more, Proust casually kills other characters... this time: Mme. de Villeparisis (hasn't she been killed off before though?) and M. Verdurin. Can't say I was surprised by this as this is how he dealt with Swann's death. I'm expecting more characters to die anytime, out of the blue.

I know that Jonathan constantly re-reads entire sections, and I almost never do that (I re-read Albertine sleeping back in Vol. 5 and Proust's musings on observations after reading Goncourt's diary in this volume.. perhaps one or two more sections, if that), as if I'm saving them for my future re-read.

With this volume, though, I've been feeling the need to re-read everything... I wonder if this volume is any different or if it's because I'm so close to the end... there'll never again be a first read of ISOLT for me...

I remember back in Vol. 3 (I guess) when the narrator overheard Françoise speaking ill of him to Jupien, we wondered if he'd become someone distrustful. And then we had everything that happened to Albertine... and now he's alluded that directly:

"At a time when I believed what people told me, I should have been tempted to believe Germany, then Bulgaria, then Greece when they proclaimed their pacific intentions. But since my life with Albertine and with Françoise had accustomed me to suspect those motives they did not express, I did not allow any word, however right in appearance of William II, Ferdinand of Bulgaria or Constantine of Greece to deceive my instinct which divined what each one of them was plotting."

I guess some time has passed and I didn't realize it. I was under the impression that Morel was with Saint-Loup... and then it is said Morel fell in love with a woman and is now completely faithful to her...

Renato wrote: "There are even cases where in a particular edition character's names were changed: from Brichot to Cottard, from Norpois to Brichot..." wow, that would be confusing! I know Brichot is fairly prominent in this weeks reading in that there is a section about how Mme Verdurin snubs him. I thought Cottard was already dead, is this where he is resurrected? (I've never identified that ressurection). I don't remember Norpois mentioned this week.

Renato wrote "perhaps one or two more sections, if that), as if I'm saving them for my future re-read." It's late in the game Renato, but I'd suggest rereading as you feel inclined.

I know, very confusing. For example, this is how my edition is when the narrator is talking to Charlus:

"Now, look here," M. de Charlus said to me, "you know Brichot and Cambremer. Every time I see them, they talk to me about the extraordinary lack of psychology in Germany. Between ourselves, do you believe that until now they have cared much about psychology or that even now they are capable of proving they possess any? But, believe me, I am not exaggerating. Even when the greatest Germans are in question, Nietzsche or Goethe, you will hear Brichot say 'with that habitual lack of psychology which characterises the Teutonic race'."

But then there's a note saying that in the 1989 edition, 'Brichot' was replaced by 'Cottard' on both mentions...

Renato wrote: "I was under the impression that Morel was with Saint-Loup... a" These twists happen sometime very quickly. Yes Morel walked out on Saint-Loup, distressing him as he had his Uncle. Morel is still in Mme. Verdurin's circle.

Renato wrote: "I know, very confusing. For example, this is how my edition is when the narrator is talking to Charlus:


"Now, look here," M. de Charlus said to me, "you know Brichot and Cambremer. Every time I..."

Renato wrote: "I know, very confusing. For example, this is how my edition is when the narrator is talking to Charlus:


"Now, look here," M. de Charlus said to me, "you know Brichot and Cambremer. Every time I..."

This is exactly what I have in my Moncrieff translation. I will check my MKE, but "Cottard" would not make sense here I don't think. This is the beginning of a section that shows how Charlus then Mme. Verdurin dislike Brichot, but for different reasons.

Yep Renato, MKE has Cottard in both places in your quote. Given the academic nature of what Charlus is talking about and that Brichot is mentioned three times further down the paragraph, I believe Brichot is the correct character in your reference. Perhaps Marcelita can help us out on this. I'd also overlooked that Norpois was mentioned so much along in here.

I also think it makes sense that it's Brichot... I wonder why the 1989 edition simply decided to change it to Cottard instead... hopefully Marcelita can help us!

I really like the way Proust weaves the story along in here. Marcel is walking to Mme Verdurin's, meets Charlus then he and Charlus (mostly Charlus) talks about all sorts of things and periodically the Narrator gives these long descriptions of the Verdurin's and there life during war time. This section is like the other "journeys" in the book that are opportunities to reveal so much information - Meseglise Way, Guermantes Way, various train journys, etc.

Sounds like I'm going to have fun when I get on to this week's reading. :-) BTW I'm switching to the Penguin version for the last volume.

Jonathan wrote: "Sounds like I'm going to have fun when I get on to this week's reading. :-) BTW I'm switching to the Penguin version for the last volume."

Be sure to let us know who the fill-in-the-blank name on Renato's quote is in the Penguin edition - my vote is for Albertine ;-)

Renato wrote: "Once more, Proust casually kills other characters... this time: Mme. de Villeparisis (hasn't she been killed off before though?) and M. Verdurin. Can't say I was surprised by this as this is how he..."

Renato wrote: "Once more, Proust casually kills other characters... this time: Mme. de Villeparisis (hasn't she been killed off before though?) and M. Verdurin. Can't say I was surprised by this as this is how he..."

lol, Well Renato, we are getting toward the end of the book and many characters are getting long in the tooth. Unless A La Recherché is going to turn out to be the world's first masterpiece Zombie novel some characters have to get the axe. However, I don't see it in Proust's style to have characters staggering around from page to page singing Wagnerian arias before falling off a cliff. I could be wrong though ;)

I would add though that for me the most emotional loss of the entire book was not of a character but of a place - Combray, whose destruction is narrated in Gilberte's second letter.

LOL no, I understand people die. I was just talking about how he casually mentions their death while talking about something else, like their death is not the most important message he wants to convey in that specific section... like "the flowers are beautiful ... mme. de villeparisis died, but the flowers..."

Renato wrote: "LOL no, I understand people die. I was just talking about how he casually mentions their death while talking about something else, like their death is not the most important message he wants to con..."

A very astute observation Renato, and one we should revisit when we get to White Rabbit Land.

"This is exactly what I have in my Moncrieff translation." To correct what I wrote above, Moncrieff died before this Volume was translated. I forget who did the initial English Translation.

Renato wrote: "I remember back in Vol. 3 (I guess) when the narrator overheard Françoise speaking ill of him to Jupien, we wondered if he'd become someone distrustful. And then we had everything that happened to ..."

I'm not clear who is being talked (Francoise speaking ill of HIM) about or what your concern is here Renato.

I don't remember exactly, but the narrator overheard Françoise saying bad things about him to Jupien. Back then, I wondered if he would turn into someone with trust issues (since someone he has trusted so far was talking behing his back)... and, in this volume, he mentions how he no longer believes what people tell him since they can mean something else. I was just making that observation! :-)

Thanks for clarifying that Renato.

There is a lot of pairing and comparing going on in the first part of this volume. Internal comparing (Saint Loup as husband vs Saint Loup as "man about town") social behavior pairing ( Charlus as homosexual vs Saint Loup as homosexual), character pairing (Mme Verdurin vs Charlus), sociological pairing (life at the front vs life in Paris), comparing across time (Combray then vs Combray now), I'm sure there are others. But what to make of this? I believe it is some sort of extension of Swann's Way vs Guermantes' Way and that it anticipates the ending, but I'm still trying to process this observation to find some useful nugget.

I was wondering if the war, France vs. Germany was also some sort of analogy about the two ways (Swann's and Guermantes)... although I thought we would now see those ways unified after Gilberte and Saint-Loup's wedding...

And I still have no idea what the big white rabbit is! I've thought of so many theories... I'm working on a new one, lol. I'm wondering if the Overture section is some sort of continuation of the end of Time Regained...

I'm curious about how the two periods in the Sanitarium are used in the story. We are told the main method of treatment is isolation but given no info on why Marcel went to a sanitarium twice or what went on there. So visits seem to serve as devices in the story to remove Marcel from the story completely and then reintroduce him for limited periods of time to observe events during the war. Perhaps Proust found this the most efficient means of writing the war into the storyline since he had already more or less finished the book (except Albertine and the war) when the war broke out.

Oh true, we haven't talked about that, have we?

I figured his respiratory diseases worsened... I wish he had gone to the same sanatorium Hans Castorp was in The Magic Mountain. Now that would be really interesting, a book crossover!

In Portuguese, "sanatorium" has the connotation of "mad house", "hospice"... I don't think that's the case in English, right? Or is it the same? Anyway, I found it funny though as I can definitely see our narrator needing to go to a mad house after everything that went on on his head :-)

No, this is a mental institution. At least that is what the outside reading says. Proust checked himself into a mental sanitarium for a couple of months after his mother died. The cure was isolation. He was suppose to stay three months but left in the middle. He was a lousy patient, writing letters etc the whole time. I don't think he thought much of the value of his stay, but it may have given him this idea for the book.

Oh so it is a mental institution. That makes things more interesting! I hope this is developed in the rest of the book...

I think the sanitarium is a beacon of hope for the reader - if you've slogged your way this far through this strange book, check in here before you fall off the end of the book and are lost forever in Proustian obsession!

I think we're already forever lost, Dave!

There's no turning back now!

I'm going to try to catch up this weekend as I've been concentrating on other reading...I know, Mme Verdurin wouldn't allow such traitorous behaviour!

Looking forward to reading your comments Jonathan.

As for Mme. Verdurin, Her wartime Wednesday afternoon invitation has become one of my favorite quotes in the whole book: "Come at 5 and we shall talk about the war."

A number of outside references make general comments about the text without explaining themselves. One such comment is to liken the book to a cathedral. I have yet to see this remark with an adequate explanation of what it means. So I have made up my own explaination. I see a lot of symmetry in the book (like the placement of the summary of the Albertine relationship in Volume II and the end of that relationship in Volume VI).

I see another such symmetry in this week's reading in the episode of Mme. Verdurin's Croissants. To me this is a symmetrically placed dark parody of the Madeleine episode in Volume I.

Interesting stuff, Dave. I wonder sometimes though if this is all on purpose, choices that Proust made etc., or if it's just us readers trying to find connections everywhere. I've been wondering the same with Joyce lately as there's a podcast that explains almost word by word of Ulysses and I don't know if he indeed planned every line so meticulously or if we're the ones overthinking and overanalyzing.

What's your opinion?

Proust wrote letters and spoke to several people about the fact that his book had a structure. So I believe it is deliberate. But again, not something the reader would usually see the first time through. As you will see in coming weeks, the beginning and end are very tightly structured/aligned. There is a widely recognized middle in the 500 pages from grandmother's illness/death in Volume III to the moment of grief at Balbec in Volume IV.

So with a clearly structured beginning,middle, and ending it seems logical to me that the rest is structured as well. I have yet to see anyone propose a complete outline of the structure, but given the massive size of the book I guess that's not surprising. For me, it is enough for now just to consider that something in this part seems related to something in another part.

Beyond recognizing there is structure is the question how does the structure help the reader understand the meaning. Haven't seen anything about that in the after reading either, although I know is asked about other works of literature.

Thanks for the info, Dave! True, I didn't think of learning more about Proust's letters and what he wrote about his work. So I guess it does make sense!

Renato wrote: "In this week's read, it got a little bit confusing for me due to the notes regarding the 1927 and 1989 editions. Some passages were added, some were removed. And apparently all are in my edition. I..."

I am A LOT confused. All of sudden, every single name that's been mentioned is coming back up, and I can't seem to remember who was who!

Dave wrote: "I'm curious about how the two periods in the Sanitarium are used in the story. We are told the main method of treatment is isolation but given no info on why Marcel went to a sanitarium twice or wh..."

I don't know why the narrator went the first time, but in my edition, he had to leave because the sanitorium couldn't obtain doctors for some reason.

Ah, that would be because all the doctors were drafted.

Ah, that would be because all the doctors were drafted.

You can probably just Goggle the characters name and Proust to find who is who on the web. i.e. "Brichot Proust"

Someone here may have gone over this but I would just like to add that I felt very satisfied with the section in which the narrator really kind of thoroughly went over M.de Charlu's personality and character. I had been feeling that was missing actually, and by the end of that section I felt that no matter what happens after this I am a friend of Charlu now and understand him and the way he thinks.

He's my favorite character! I've come to think that he's a good person and just puts on a show and acts bitchy as a defense mechanism (do I sound like someone who's defending a friend?)

Sunny in Wonderland wrote: "Renato wrote:
"I am A LOT confused. All of sudden, every single name that's been mentioned is coming back up, and I can't seem to remember who was whoi..."

Be careful if you Google the characters, some webpages display SPOILERS!

Good point Marcelita. You always have the option Sunny of asking the group to help sort out characters and plot points. There is a lot going on here and it would be a shame to just soldier on as the book moves toward conclusion without remembering what events and relationships brought characters to their current circumstance.

Dave wrote: ""This is exactly what I have in my Moncrieff translation." To correct what I wrote above, Moncrieff died before this Volume was translated. I forget who did the initial English Translation."

Ah...the translations! Whole careers are based on this subject...beginning with the attempts to gather all the slips of papers from Proust's bedroom after he died. (He was transcribing to Céleste during these last days, as his handwriting had been come illegible.) Proust's brother, Robert, shepherded the last three volumes through to publication, but subsequent discoveries led to additional "translations," both of in the form of the novel and in the various foreign languages.


Regarding "Time Regained:"

The first English translation in the UK (1931) was by Stephen Hudson (a pseudonym of Sydney Schiff).

While the English translation in America (1932) was by Frederick Blossom, with a later translation by Andreas Mayor (1970).

From Richard Howard's article, "PROUST RE-ENGLISHED" in the New York Times, May 3, 1981.

The last three sections of the novel had not yet been published at the time of Proust's death, and indeed he was still correcting typescript on his deathbed. Margins of proof and typescript were covered with handwritten corrections and insertions, often overflowing onto additional sheets pasted to the galleys or to each other to form long scrolls.

The unraveling and deciphering of these additions became the intricate task of the editors, Pierre Clarac and Andre Ferre, of the three-volume Pleiade edition undertaken at the request of Proust's heirs in 1954.
[...]
The final and fulfilling volume was translated by ''Stephen Hudson'' (Sidney Schiff) in England and by Frederick Blossom in America as ''The Past Recaptured''; a third and superior version of this crucial text, ''Time Regained,'' was made by Andreas Mayor and published in 1970.

"PROUST RE-ENGLISHED"
By RICHARD HOWARD; New York Times; Published: May 3, 1981

Renato wrote: "I also think it makes sense that it's Brichot... I wonder why the 1989 edition simply decided to change it to Cottard instead... hopefully Marcelita can help us!"

Alas, these "inconsistency errors" are riddled through the last volumes and especially noticeable in "Time Regained."

It's best to accept that these passages would have been edited, re-written, had Proust lived, and that different translations may include, exclude, or attempt to explain these errors of continuity.

Proust's Deadline" by Christine M. Cano
See page 113.
http://books.google.com/books?id=2mts...

Even as late as 1986, when another manuscript by Proust was discovered in the home of his niece, Suzy Mante-Proust, we learned that he was thinking about cutting 150 pages from "The Fugitive."

This newly discovered 1987 typescript was published by Grasset, in France, as "Albertine disparue."
Marcel Proust ; édition établie par Nathalie Mauriac et Etienne Wolf. - Paris : Grasset, 1987.

http://jacbayle.perso.neuf.fr/livres/...

https://translate.google.com/translat...

Marcelita wrote: "It's best to accept that these passages would have been edited, re-written, had Proust lived."

I think that's a great advice, Marcelita!