Time Regained: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. VI (Modern Library Classics)

Four decades ago, I first read the subject quote in Simone de Beauvoir’s seminal work, The Coming of Age . She properly credits Marcel Proust with the quote, stating that it is with “great accuracy.” ‘Lo these several decades later, I finally read the quote in Proust’s work, which is this final volume of “In Search of Lost Time,” entitled “Time Regained.” There are long (naturally!) passages, with his signature subordinate clause after subordinate clause which ruminate on aging and the fleetness of time. The numerous characters from his intense portrait of a sliver of French salon society have both aged, physically and mentally, yet have also retain key aspects of their more youthful being. As Proust said: “Some women no doubt were still easily recognizable: their faces had remained almost the same and they had merely, out of propriety and in harmony with the season, put on the grey hair which was their autumn attire.” Some have stopped aging, the “alternative,” as the quip has it: Albertine, who had first caught the narrator’s eye, frolicking on the beach at Balbec, died in the previous volume, and Robert St. Loup is killed in this volume, as a French Army officer, in “the Great War,” as it was once called. Proust raises the question: Did he want to get himself killed due to an unhappy domestic situation? 1914. That watershed year that denotes the end of what Barbara Tuckman called The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 , of which Proust’s salon society was a cornerstone. Hopefully a “Proust scholar” will correct me if I am wrong, since “google” made no mention of it, but I believe it is that date, in this volume, which is the first time a particular date is given. And I struggled in previous volumes trying to guess the year, confused at times by the juxtaposition of the Dreyfus Affair and airplanes. Time, previously “lost,” and now in this volume, suddenly “regained.” One of several possible meanings, I am sure. I’ve read these volumes in the “Modern Library” version, in paperback, but if I had read it on my Kindle, I could readily determine how many times Proust mentioned “1914.” It must have been five or six. In general, the war is still at a distance, with the principal impact being the lack of men in the Guermantes salons, and debates on how a society woman should now dress: austerely, or flashy, for the “morale of the men”? Proust does describe the impact of the bombing raids on Paris, conducted by Zeppelins and Gothas. And during the war the pleasures (and pain) of the flesh must not be forgotten. Proust depicts a house of assignation in which the pro-German M. de Charles takes delight in being chained to a bed and whipped. Shades of Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, Book 1) . And there is even the strong inference that his favorite target are 10-year old boys. Perversions to complement the ultimate perversion of war itself. There are equally long passages on the importance of literature, and how essential it is for the reader to develop an empathy for the other. Of the various works mentioned, he highlights the works of one of my favorite French writers, George Sand, and in particular François le champi (French Edition) which he particularly admires. So much so, that it will be the next book in French that I read. Proust reflects on his own mortality, and would there be enough time left to finish his magnum opus? He would die at the age of 51, still far too young, in 1922, with this work unfinished. Proust is justifiable famous for giving the world the metaphor of the madeleine dipped in tea, bringing back a rush of memories. So too with “the bell” above the backyard gate, which was rung during my visit to his home in Illiers-Combray in 1989. The following is a closing passage: “When the bell of the garden gate had pealed, I already existed and from that moment onwards, for me still to be able to hear that peal, there must have been no break in continuity, no single second at which I had ceased or rested from existing, from thinking, from being conscious of myself, since that moment from long ago still adhered to me and I could still find it again, could retrace my steps to it, merely by descending to a greater depth within myself.” Alas, I heard the peal of the bell of his youth. It would subsequently be stolen, now the exclusive preserve of a “collector” who wanted to “corner” Time, the last word in the book. “Regained.” Hopefully that is the operative word, and all that lost time at the Ile de France recovered, and intensely enjoyed even though the attire is now autumnal. Of the various fantasies to be fulfilled, one would be the granting of enough of that ever-so-elusive Time to read Proust’s magnum opus as it was written, in French. 5-stars, plus.

I've been reading Proust's novel off and on since about 2002. Having read the first four volumes consecutively, I got burned out on young M, took a seven year hiatus, and eventually returned to the Albertine volumes and Time Regained in 2012. The particular edition I'm reviewing here, the Modern Library Classics edition, with its extensive list of characters, places, and persons, is a book I wish I'd purchased early in my reading of Proust since it would have helped me in dealing with the vast number of characters that pop in and out of the novel. I always admired those who had managed to read through the entire novel, since I knew that for every one who finally finished it there were probably at least a hundred more who abandoned it at some point. Now that I am one of those weird individuals who did finish the novel, I have a lot of sympathy for those who are fallen by the wayside. At the risk of sounding a contrarian note, I feel like the Time Lost in reading Proust will never be Regained. Was it wasted time? Perhaps all time must be wasted in one way or another. Using the time as money metaphor, which is essentially untrue, a product of our capitalist-consumer culture, I could have "spent" my time better perhaps by "investing" it wisely in closely reading market-timing newsletters, Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, etc., etc. But instead, I wasted my time on M. All those fallen-by-the-waysiders know what I mean. Life is short, and there are a lot of other things one could be doing, besides scaling this monstrosity. And Proust's novel is a monstrous edifice, imposing like the height of a skyscraper seen close up, but fundamentally an imperfect work of art which may still be acknowledged as a masterpiece just as a painting by Jackson Pollock might appear somewhat shoddy and haphazard when viewed close up, while still remaining priceless from a distance. In Time Regained, Proust lets it all hang out. The description of Jupien's brothel and what happens inside it, especially with respect to Baron de Charlus, is probably the part that sticks most in my mind. But the great afternoon party given by the Princesse de Guermantes (the former Mme Verdurin) which occupies the entire last half of the novel is the main event which brings most of the main characters of the novel together again for a final reprise. There is a fair amount of dross scattered about in the text amidst much extraordinary, unforgettable writing. One outstanding example of the latter is the precious description of the Duc de Guermantes in his extreme old age and his pathetic love affair with Mme de Forcheville (Odette), which takes up pages 486-491. Time Regained should probably be considered the climax and the cornerstone of the entire novel, but instead, it is more like an epilogue. The novel does not really end on a positive note either. It's not a whimper exactly but sort of a muffled affirmation that the art of writing down the past and transforming it will in the end make some sort of difference in the grand scheme of things, whatever that might be. The great, obsessional love-affair with Albertine, which seems to be the highlight of the novel, is mercifully over with, and the author is older, wiser, resigned, deeply committed to the realization of his life's work, the great book he has perennially put off writing. Now, as his own death draws near, he realizes that the time has now come to begin the Great Work. No one who reads the entire novel ever seems to say much about how they felt on finally completing the last sentence on the last page. In my own case, there was a touch of sadness in my heart when the novel came to an end, and even a brief, crazy desire to return to Swann's Way and the two paths. But I quickly laid that idea aside. But in the end I'm glad that I wasted so many days in the company of Marcel. Proust's achievement will remain a monument in my own life to lost and happily wasted time.

Volume VII of Proust revolves around the character Marcel’s discovery of the project which will become In Search of Lost Time. While the Middle Ages saw the world as so many symbols pointing towards a heavenly reality the first modernists wrote stories about what can be accessed in this world by reason. For example, Hugo wrote the Hunchback of Notre Dame as both a modern novel and as a meta-narrative of the printing press replacing the cathedral. Proust is arguably the first post-modernist novelist. Instead of a rational narrative, Proust wants to use the material objects imbued with meaning by men, the description of a gesture and, more generally, to make explicit all that the unconscious perceives to create a new kind of novel. A novel that no longer tells a story but one that so captures his life that the reader can see how Proust perceived the world. One that accesses the real and fixes this era in a work of art that makes previous fiction look make believe by comparison. Was he ultimately victorious? Joyce, Woolf and Faulkner all tended to follow this reverse Copernican turn. Of course, many contemporary works continue to follow a traditional narrative form. But after Proust literary fiction was changed forever. After reading more than one and a half million words all I can say is that it was worth it. Some tedium but at the end a whole new perspective on literature and art. Proust reflects in the last pages that his work may not last a hundred years. It has been almost a century and In Search of Lost Time continues to be read! Vive À la recherche du temps perdu! Vive Proust!

There are three qualities to comment upon: the complete novel, the translation, and the kindle specifics. I'm going to post this review for all six volumes of the Prendergast series. If you've read it elsewhere, I apologise. I'd guess that my most helpful remarks will be about the kindle implementation. I'll cover all six books of this Prendergast edition. There is nothing in the general formatting to deter purchase of the kindle version. The complete novel is so large and there are so many characters that X-Ray would have been good. This series doesn't have it. But each volume does have a synopsis at the end which lists the elements of the narrative (for example “Swann's first meeting with Odette”; “Odette's vulgarity”), together with the page number. At the time of writing (June 2015), the usefulness of this feature varies from volume to volume. Its value is greatest in “In the shadow of young girls”, “The Guermantes Way”, and “The Prisoner and the Fugitive”. In all three the page number is a link, enabling one to jump directly to the page referenced. If, like me, you want to re-read passages, this feature is excellent. In “The Way by Swann's” and “Finding time again” the page numbers don't link directly to the referenced passages: you have to Go To the page number. Finally “Sodom and Gomorrah” doesn't contain page numbers, so those quoted in the Synopsis are almost useless. I assume that this is a production error, and I've informed Amazon. I've read that the Kilmartin/Enright edition has an index of place names and proper names and a thematic index, but I've no idea how well these are implemented on the kindle. I enjoyed the novel, but it has its weaknesses: the long sentences are quite often hard to comprehend without re-reading, and some passages are over-long. So I wouldn't expect everyone to enjoy it. You just have to try it. I opted to spend about £30 on the Predergast series, after starting the free (for kindle) Scott Moncrieff edition. I could have lived with the Scott Moncrieff but I just preferred a more modern text. I'm not able to compare the Prendergast series translations with Kilmartin and Enright's. Occasionally I wanted to compare the translation with Proust's French. This was hampered by the Prendergast series being based on the 1987 Pléiade edition, which is not in the public domain and so too expensive for me. There's an informative “General Editor's Preface” at the beginning of “The Way by Swann's”. I'd expect it would be included within the free sample available for kindle.

Interessanter, wenn auch etwas schwerer lesbarer Stoff, für den man viel Zeit einplanen muss. Einziges Problem war die Bestellung des gesammelten Werkes, da man diese nicht zusammen bestellen kann. Man muss die Einzelbände zusammensuchen und aufpassen, dass man wirklich die verschiedenen Bände kauft und nicht versehentlich eine gleiche Ausgabe nur mit einem anderen Cover. Würde ich das gesammelte Werk beurteilen, gäbe es dafür einen Punktabzug. Da ich aber jeden Band einzeln bewerte, kann ich dabei keinen Punkt abziehen. Würde auch dem großartigen Inhalt nicht gerecht werden!

If you love literature, you'll love this!

FINDING TIME AGAIN (translated by and edited by CHRISTOPHER PRENDERGAST) --one part of the SIX VOLUME NOVEL --IN SERACH OF LOST TIME is a MASTERPIECE from one of the greatest novelists of 20 th CENTURY --MARCEL PROUST. His other five novels in the same series are also masterpieces and all the six novels in the series must be read to comprehend the works of THE MASTER NOVELIST of the 20th CENTURY. However, the language of this TRANSLATION by a team of translators under GENERAL EDITOR-- CHRISTOPHER PRENDERGAST is flat and pedantic and does not come anywhere near the TRANSLATION OF ALL THE SIX NOVELS by C.K. SCOTT MONCRIEFF and TERENCE KILMARTIN and also published by PENGUIN BOOKS in THREE VOLUMES in 1983 titled as REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST. My journey of remembering MARCEL PROUST began in 1984 and continues till date. This is my personal opinion that TRANSLATION by MONCRIEFF and KILMARTIN captures the flavour of the ORIGINAL FRENCH LANGUAGE and STYLE OF MARCEL PROUST.I purchased this six volume set of translations by different translations under the general editorship of CHRISTOPHER PRENDERGAST only to RE--READ MARCEL PROUST as translated in a new format by various translators and how the language of these translators COMPARES WITH MONCRIEFF and KILMARTIN. Anyhow, it is a good attempt to keep memory of great work of LITERATURE alive and EVERY BOOK LOVER of LITERATURE, SHOULD and MUST READ these SIX NOVELS BY MARCEL PROUST under the series "IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME" as well as THREE VOLUME SERIES "REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST". After all , THE SIX NOVEL/S in present translation as well as MONCRIEFF/KILMARTIN TRANSLATION are a MASTERPIECE BY one of the greatest NOVELIST of 20th century--MARCEL PROUST!!!!!!! This review applies to other five novels in the series IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME also!!!BEST WISHES TO MR.CHRISTOPHER PRENDERGAST and his team of TRANSLATORS for making THIS MASTERPIECE OF LITERATURE titled IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME available in six volume format!!!!!!-

The paperback quality is very poor. There's yellowing of pages all over and seems like a very old or a second hand copy.