was rereading the montcrief translation this morning and came upon this exchange between Swann and Odette. How ridiculous! I laughed out loud. I created a reddit account and wanted to share it.

"He smiled and went on: "Just as you like. It doesn't really matter, but it's a pity that you can't give me the name. If I were able to form an idea of the person it would prevent my ever thinking of her again. I say it for your sake, because then I shouldn't bother you any more about it. It's so calming to be able to form a clear picture of things in one's mind. What is really terrible is what one can't imagine. But you've been so sweet to me; I don't want to tire you. I do thank you with all my heart for all the good you've done me. I've quite finished now. Only one word more: How long ago?"

To which Odette responds, "Oh, Charles, can't you see you're killing me?" p. 519

I'm sure there's a connection between this and the later bouts with Albertine. I also cannot help but wonder whether 'can't you see you're killing me' is purposeful.

Hello everyone, I am looking for a definitive list or playlist of all the music referenced in “In Search of Lost Time”, if possible with a reference to the passage the pieces come from, in a similar way to the Visual Companion of Paintings

I’m halfway through Swann’s Way so when looking through Spotify at various “Proust and Music” playlists, I can’t tell whether these are actually referenced in the book(/s) or if they are pieces which are just meant to evoke the mood of Proust’s writing

Any help would be much appreciated! Thank you :)

If there is something that irtitates me about the Recherche is how so many important things are mentioned in passing or even subordinate clauses, like characters dying or Msr. de Charlus molesting a nine year old boy. Saniette being bullied by Monsieur Verdurin so much that He has a stroke resulting in His death afterwards left me devastated and it was mentioned in a footnote!

But then, Proust seemed to be self aware of this If you think of the Duchess of Guermantes' reaction when Swann laconically tells her that He is terminally ill and she is absolutely distraught and irritated by her husband skimming over it as If it's nothing. She is a kindred Spirit for the Reader in that moment but it only happens once in the entire novel.

Hi all,

I’m reading for the first time. I’m loving Swann’s Way so far. I’m reading the Lydia Davis translation and really enjoying it. I like how close she hews to his words.

If that’s what I enjoy, which translations do you recommend for the subsequent volumes?

I’ve been reflecting on a passage from Le Temps Retrouvé and noticed a potential issue in the way it has been translated into English.

The original French is as follows:

"Mais, comme Elstir Chardin, on ne peut refaire ce qu’on aime qu’en le renonçant."

Here are two English translations that seem problematic to me:

Stephen Hudson's translation: "As Elstir said of Chardin, one can only recreate what one loves by repudiating it."

Andreas Mayor and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D. J. Enright: "But—as Elstir had found with Chardin—you can make a new version of what you love only by first renouncing it."

In both cases, there seems to be an implication of a 'hierarchical' relationship or direct influence between Elstir and Chardin. However, in the original French, this relationship is not necessarily implied. The phrase "comme Elstir Chardin" could simply mean "like Elstir or Chardin," treating them as two separate examples of artists who embody the same principle of renouncing what they love in order to recreate it.

This is how it's interpreted, for exemple in the German translation by Bernd Jürgen Fischer: "Aber man kann, wie Elstir Chardin, das, was man liebt, nur wiedererschaffen, indem man sich von ihm lossagt" and the Spanish translation by Consuelo Berges: "Pero, como Elstir Chardin, sólo renunciando a ello se puede rehacer lo que se ama" (both using the literal form of the original, 'Elstir Chardin' without commas.) or in the Portuguese translation by Lúcia Miguel Pereira: "Mas, como Elstir, como Chardin, sabia que só renunciando ao que se ama consegue-se refazê-lo." ("like Elstir , like Chardin"). In those versions, there are no suggestion of a direct relationship between the two artists—just a comparison of two figures who exemplify the same artistic philosophy.

The italian translation, by Giovanni Raboni, come a little closer to the English ones: "Ma, come Elstir con Chardin, si può rifare ciò che si ama solo rinunciandovi." ("like Elstir with Chardin").

Does anyone else find these English (and Italian) translations misleading? Shouldn’t the English versions be more aligned with the idea that Proust is simply using both Elstir and Chardin as independent examples, rather than suggesting that Elstir learned something from Chardin? Do you have other translations of this passage into English for us to compare?

I'm sorry for the long post and thank you!

I read ISOLT several years ago so my memory is not clear - but there was a quote somewhere that had to do with “ if you look back in time and are not embarrassed about who you were/ or what you did- then you have not grown or changed “. I know I’m butchering it- but does anyone know what I’m talking about? Would love to find it.

Hi guys, I read the Penguin translation of In Search of Lost Time in 2006 and I remember a scene - and I hope I haven’t imagined this - when he is talking about being older and he is on a train next to a young girl and says something like ‘i was so close I could have bitten her. We were millimeters apart but separated by impossibility…’

Could anyone tell me where this is? Or give me the exact quote?

Hopefully it isn’t just my imagination and I would greatly appreciate any help.

I'm listening to the audiobook and the start has a political discussion. Could someone please explain further the context surrounding this? Is there anything of interest I should know about this? Thanks!

In other words, how do you feel he advanced and improved on the psychological and satirical novel type?

Or did he simply switch out God with a agnostic Beauty?

Just some of my thoughts:

• Instead of the double face of Dostoevsky's characters, Proust gave us the multi-infinite-face.
• Proust added the third dimension of time and memory giving us a much truer representation of the state of things.
• I still found Dostoevsky's satire funnier - notably in Demons.
• Psychological insight is very tough for me to compare - both are quite endless, but instinct says Dostoevsky.
• And obviously the prose, in which Prousts work is very much alive, sparking our imaginations; while Dostoevsky's is very matter of fact.

As I bid farewell to writing on Proust, I look back to a day in 1962 when I reached his death, and seemed not only to be bereaved but to die myself. A biographer's relationship with his subject is perhaps the deepest in his own experience outside the family, and he who writes more lives than one more deaths than one must die. Further still is the week in 1947 when I first encountered a volume of Proust's letters, found to my astonishment that it revealed a world that belonged to the raw material of his novel, and resolved to write his life with the intention or hope of experiencing it myself, and of discovering what A la Recherche meant to himself. Remotest, but still most vivid of all, is the moment sixty years ago in 1928, when I opened in our midland city public library a blue-and-gold-spined book mysteriously called Swann's Way, and found myself walking with the Narrator, an adolescent of my own age, among the cornfields and appletrees of the Meseglise Way. I have walked there ever since, as so many others have and many more will.

George D. Painter, Introduction to the 1988 edition of his biography on Proust

[The] qualities of non-fiction are useful to remember when we realize how many qualities of fiction the longest of all novels does not possess. It has, for example, no structure worth speaking of, and probably would not have attained to one even if Proust had been given another ten years to work on it. Characters would still have shown up twenty years too young at the last party, or twenty years too old, or simply still alive when they should have been dead. Devotees who say that Á la recherche du temps perdu reminds them of a cathedral should be asked what cathedral they mean. It reminds me of a sandcastle that the tide reached before its obsessed constructor could finish it; but he knew that would happen, or else why build it on a beach?

Clive James, Cultural Amnesia (2007) p578

I read Proust for the first time recently and powered through it in under 4 months. I am not saying this to brag but to emphasise that I didn’t read it slowly and digest every line, more that I read it quite quickly and imagine there was a lot that i didn’t take in.

Four things I’ve noticed about myself after reading Proust…

1. I seem to write longer sentence now and get a kick out of trying to emulate Proust in work emails - truly insufferable I know.

2. I am having a lot more Proustian moments in my day to day, so many childhood and teenage memories bubbling up, which is great.

3. I am able to enjoy the smaller things in life more.

4. I am noticing my fleeting thoughts and expressing them properly which I think is making me a nicer person…

I’m not saying I’m a completely new and improved person (see point 1) but I was wondering if others found any changes in themselves after reading Proust?

Basiclly I want to read "In search of lost time" ,I've read the first volume and absolutely loved it ,but now I feel preety paranoid over that I will lose something very importrant through translation so I have 3 options:

Continue to read in my native language (polish) in translation of Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński

Start reading it in english translation, though here I also worry about translation and I assume that C. K. Scott Moncrief is better translator than Żeleński but I dont know

Most extreme which probably will not work is to learn French and read original

Thanks for answers in advance and sorry for my questionable english

I am 16 years old

Does anyone know which existing translation of Le temps retrouvé William C. Carter is revising for the Yale edition, or if perhaps he will write a new one himself?

It's an odd question to ask since I'm only on Volume 2. 😉

I am currently rereading Swann's Way for the second time, and find my reading sessions getting shorter every day, needing more breaks, as I try to deal with the evolution of Swann's increasing dependency and his utterly desparate way of interacting with Odette. The intensity of his obsession, his counterproductive way of dealing with it... I truly find him unbearable. It's brilliantly done, it's so frustrating and so relatable at the same time, and that's why it is so triggering probably. But I just want to slap this man in the face. every. single. page.

Have you been completely annoyed with Swann at this stage as well, or does this say more about my personal psychological makeup, some Jungian way of hating in Swann what I cannot accept in myself?

What parts of In Search of Lost Time did you find psychologically confronting / triggering in this way, if any?

So i have just read Bergotte's death scene and it might easily be one of the best things that i have ever read in a book. Such brilliance, such underlying hopefulness. The reception of Vermeer's painting, the reception of the little patch of yellow wall being a masterpiece in its own right, and the best thing: the narrator's thoughts regarding afterlife. This Part of the Recherche is it's own. Little patch of yellow wall. Even though someone dies, it's so uplifting and beautiful.

I was absolutely blown away.

This is a 2022 lecture by Prof. Antoine Compagnon, Professor Emeritus at Le Collège de France. He argues that the best thing about reading is getting lost in a book, getting lost with the author, and then finding your own understanding as you continue reading. As Compagnon says, Proust has become an icon who is now read through the prism of the numerous interpretations that have encrusted À la recherche du temps perdu over the decades; we must decanonize not just Proust's novel but other classical novels as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RLo7Tk0CcQ

I compared the first page of the older translation, which was on project Gutenberg to the page of the Kindle edition which they’re selling for $49 on Amazon and I couldn’t see any differences at least in the first page. I’m also actually having a problem finding a different translation. I can only find one translation on the first page that uses the phrase the scales from my eyes which seems to be a fairly Archaic expression. Google books also has the same translation for free. If the point of doing a new translation was to modernize the book, its certainly not modernized.

I'm reading In Search of Lost Time, and really enjoying it. But I'm a slow reader, I have terrible memory, and I've been taking breaks (I started three years ago, and I'm now at the beginning of "The Guermantes Way").

This leads to me often being confused about who a character is, or about what's happened earlier. My edition (Everyman's Library) has very short summaries at the end of each volume, but they're not enough sometimes. I've only been able to find plot summaries online for Swann's Way, but none of the later volumes.

So my question is: do you have recommendations for where I can find brief plot and character summaries to refresh my memory while reading? Either websites or books work. I'm not looking for analysis, but wouldn't mind it.

Is there a Proust discord?

A theme has struck me is how La berma and Gilberte, to a degree, seem linked in the Narrators mind...

La Berma is a great actress The Narrator first mentions in Swanns way.

But if the thought of actors weighed so upon me, if the sight of Maubant, coming out one afternoon from the Théâtre-Français, had plunged me in the throes and sufferings of hopeless love, how much more did the name of a 'star,' blazing outside the doors of a theatre, how much more, seen through the window of a brougham which passed me in the street, the hair over her forehead abloom with roses, did the face of a woman who, I would think, was perhaps an actress, leave with me a lasting disturbance, a futile and painful effort to form a picture of her private life.I classified, in order of talent, the most distinguished: Sarah Bernhardt, Berma, Bartet, Madeleine Brohan, Jeanne Samary; but I was interested in them

The other character of interest, Gilberte Swann, The Narrators first love...

I was so madly in love with Gilberte that if, on our way, I caught sight of their old butler taking the dog out, my emotion would bring me to a standstill, I would fasten on his white whiskers eyes that melted with passion. And Françoise would rouse me with: "What's wrong with you now, child?" and we would continue on our way until we reached their gate, where a porter, different from every other porter in the world, and saturated, even to the braid on his livery, with the same melancholy charm that I had felt to be latent in the name of Gilberte, looked at me as though he knew that I was one of those whose natural unworthiness would for ever prevent them from penetrating into the mysteries of the life inside, which it was his duty to guard, and over which the ground-floor windows appeared conscious of being protectingly closed, with far less resemblance, between the nobly sweeping arches of their muslin curtains, to any other windows in the world than to Gilberte's glancing eyes.

Soon, to me, Gilberte and La Berma seem to become intertwined in a sense in The Narrators mind. Gilberte gives him a gift and pamphlet of the play La Berma stars in.

... One day, we had gone with Gilberte to the stall of our own special vendor, who was always particularly nice to us, since it was to her that M. Swann used to send for his gingerbread, of which, for reasons of health (he suffered from a racial eczema, and from the constipation of the prophets), he consumed a great quantity,—Gilberte pointed out to me with a laugh two little boys who were like the little artist and the little naturalist in the children's storybooks. For one of them would not have a red stick of rock because he preferred the purple, while the other, with tears in his eyes, refused a plum which his nurse was buying for him, because, as he finally explained in passionate tones: "I want the other plum; it's got a worm in it!" I purchased two ha'penny marbles. With admiring eyes I saw, luminous and imprisoned in a bowl by themselves, the agate marbles which seemed precious to me because they were as fair and smiling as little girls, and because they cost five-pence each. Gilberte, who was given a great deal more pocket money than I ever had, asked me which I thought the prettiest. They were as transparent, as liquid-seeming as life itself. I would not have had her sacrifice a single one of them. I should have liked her to be able to buy them, to liberate them all. Still, I pointed out one that had the same colour as her eyes. Gilberte took it, turned it about until it shone with a ray of gold, fondled it, paid its ransom, but at once handed me her captive, saying: "Take it; it is for you, I give it to you, keep it to remind yourself of me." Another time, being still obsessed by the desire to hear Berma in classic drama, I had asked her whether she had not a copy of a pamphlet in which Bergotte spoke of Racine, and which was now out of print. She had told me to let her know the exact title of it, and that evening I had sent her a little telegram, writing on its envelope the name, Gilberte Swann, which I had so often traced in my exercise-books. Next day she brought me in a parcel tied with pink bows and sealed with white wax, the pamphlet, a copy of which she had managed to find. "You see, it is what you asked me for," she said, taking from her muff the telegram that I had sent her.

This continues into Volume 2 where The Narrator, from my perspective, seems to conflate his deep appreciation of La Bermas artistry with his concept of what being loved by Gilberte would feel like. Additionally we see some of the first manifestations of romantic jealousy within him, a frustration about the inability to possess someone, a frustration at that person being loved and having a history with others at all. This theme occurs most intenesly with Albertine, but this seems to be the start of it.

Volume 2, modern library Moncrieff edition pages 27-29

But at the same time all my pleasure had ceased; in vain might I strain towards Berma eyes, ears, mind, so as not to let one morsel escape me of the reasons which she would furnish for my admiring her, I did not succeed in gathering a single one. I could not even, as I could with her companions, distinguish in her diction and in her playing intelligent intonations, beautiful gestures. I listened to her as though I were reading Phèdre, or as though Phaedra herself had at that moment uttered the words that I was hearing, without its appearing that Berma's talent had added anything at all to them. I could have wished, so as to be able to explore them fully, so as to attempt to discover what it was in them that was beautiful, to arrest, to immobilise for a time before my senses every intonation of the artist's voice, every expression of her features; at least I did attempt, by dint of my mental agility in having, before a line came, my attention ready and tuned to catch it, not to waste upon preparations any morsel of the precious time that each word, each gesture occupied, and, thanks to the intensity of my observation, to manage to penetrate as far into them as if I had had whole hours to spend upon them, by myself. But how short their duration was! Scarcely had a sound been received by my ear than it was displaced there by another. In one scene, where Berma stands motionless for a moment, her arm raised to the level of a face bathed, by some piece of stagecraft, in a greenish light, before a back-cloth painted to represent the sea, the whole house broke out in applause; but already the actress had moved, and the picture that I should have liked to study existed no longer. I told my grandmother that I could not see very well; she handed me her glasses. Only, when one believes in the reality of a thing, making it visible by artificial means is not quite the same as feeling that it is close at hand. I thought now that it was no longer Berma at whom I was looking, but her image in a magnifying glass. I put the glasses down, but then possibly the image that my eye received of her, diminished by distance, was no more exact; which of the two Bermas was the real? As for her speech to Hippolyte, I had counted enormously upon that, since, to judge by the ingenious significance which her companions were disclosing to me at every moment in less beautiful parts, she would certainly render it with intonations more surprising than any which, when reading the play at home, I had contrived to imagine; but she did not attain to the heights which Œnone or Aricie would naturally have reached, she planed down into a uniform flow of melody the whole of a passage in which there were mingled together contradictions so striking that the least intelligent of tragic actresses, even the pupils of an academy could not have missed their effect; besides which, she ran through the speech so rapidly that it was only when she had come to the last line that my mind became aware of the deliberate monotony which she had imposed on it throughout.

82-85

On our way home Françoise made me stop at the corner of the Rue Royale, before an open air stall from which she selected for her own stock of presents photographs of Pius IX and Raspail, while for myself I purchased one of Berma. The innumerable admiration which that artist excited gave an air almost of poverty to this one face that she had to respond with, unalterable and precarious as are the garments of people who have not a "change", this face on which she must continually expose to view only the tiny dimple upon her upper lip, the arch of her eyebrows, a few other physical peculiarities always the same, which, when it came to that, were at the mercy of a burn or a blow. This face, moreover, could not in itself have seemed to me beautiful, but it gave me the idea, and consequently the desire to kiss it by reason of all the kisses that it must have received, for which, from its page in the album, it seemed still to be appealing with that coquettishly tender gaze, that artificially ingenuous smile. For our Berma must indeed have felt for many young men those longings which she confessed under cover of the personality of Phaedra, longings of which everything, even the glamour of her name which enhanced her beauty and prolonged her youth, must render the gratification so easy to her. Night was falling; I stopped before a column of playbills, on which was posted that of the piece in which she was to appear on January I. A moist and gentle breeze was blowing. It was a time of day and year that I knew; I suddenly felt a presentiment that New Year's Day was not a day different from the rest, that it was not the first day of a new world, in which I might, by a chance that had never yet occurred, that was still intact, make Gilberte's acquaintance afresh, as at the Creation of the World, as though the past had no longer any existence, as though there had been obliterated, with the indications which I might have preserved for my future guidance, the disappointments which she had sometimes brought me; a new world in which nothing should subsist from the old—save one thing, my desire that Gilberte should love me. I realised that if my heart hoped for such a reconstruction, round about it, of a universe that had not satisfied it before, it was because my heart had not altered, and I told myself that there was no reason why Gilberte's should have altered either; I felt that this new friendship was the same, just as there is no boundary ditch between their fore-runners and those new years which our desire for them, without being able to reach and so to modify them, invests, unknown to themselves, with distinctive names. I might dedicate this new year, if I chose, to Gilberte, and as one bases a religious system upon the blind laws of nature, endeavour to stamp New Year's Day with the particular image that I had formed of it; but in vain, I felt that it was not aware that people called it New Year's Day, that it was passing in a wintry dusk in a manner that was not novel to me; in the gentle breeze that floated about the column of playbills I had recognised, I had felt reappear the eternal, the universal substance, the familiar moisture, the unheeding fluidity of the old days and years.

I returned to the house. I had spent the New Year's Day of old men, who differ on that day from their juniors, not because people have ceased to give them presents but because they themselves have ceased to believe in the New Year. Presents I had indeed received, but not that present which alone could bring me pleasure, namely a line from Gilberte. I was young still, none the less, since I had been able to write her one, by means of which I hoped, in telling her of my solitary dreams of love and longing, to arouse similar dreams in her. The sadness of men who have grown old lies in their no longer even thinking of writing such letters, the futility of which their experience has shewn.
After I was in bed, the noises of the street, unduly prolonged upon this festive evening, kept me awake. I thought of all the people who were ending the night in pleasure, of the lover, the troop, it might be, of debauchees who would be going to meet Berma at the stage-door after the play that I had seen announced for this evening. I was not even able, so as to calm the agitation which that idea engendered in me during my sleepless night, to assure myself that Berma was not, perhaps, thinking about love, since the lines that she was reciting, which she had long and carefully rehearsed, reminded her at every moment that love is an exquisite thing, as of course she already knew, and knew so well that she displayed its familiar pangs—only enriched with a new violence and an unsuspected sweetness—to her astonished audience; and yet each of them had felt those pangs himself. I lighted my candle again, to look once more upon her face. At the thought that it was, no doubt, at that very moment being caressed by those men whom I could not prevent from giving to Berma and receiving from her joys superhuman but vague, I felt an emotion more cruel than voluptuous, a longing that was aggravated presently by the sound of a horn, as one hears it on the nights of the Lenten carnival and often of other public holidays, which, because it then lacks all poetry, is more saddening, coming from a toy squeaker, than "at evening, in the depth of the woods." At that moment, a message from Gilberte would perhaps not have been what I wanted. Our desires cut across one another's paths, and in this confused existence it is but rarely that a piece of good fortune coincides with the desire that clamoured for it.

By the time we're in Volume 3, Guermantes way, his feelings have totally shifted. No longer in love with Gilberte, it follows that The Narrator begins to see La Berma differently. An aspect of his dislike for Gilberte that is most interesting to me is The Narrator finding her childish in various manners, drawn far more to the Duchess Guermentes, along with Albertine and her friends. On my first read, the way The Narrator described Gilberte after this shift confused me immensely. It almost like they are suddenly not the same age range, thats how differently he sees her.
While La Berma represents more than just this connection to Gilberte (and this reading of the situation), I think its interesting that critical lens The Narrator La Berma has come to view her through is expressed similar in focus on illusions connected to his youth. A feeling of outgrowing and perceiving some insurmountable inadequacy within something. This idea and accompanying feeling of alienation occurs repeatedly throughout the book.

pages 50-52

But now, because the act of _Phèdre_ in which Berma was playing was due to start, the Princess came to the front of the box; whereupon, as if she herself were a theatrical production, in the zone of light which she traversed, I saw not only the colour but the material of her adornments change. And in the box, dry now, emerging, a part no longer of the watery realm, the Princess, ceasing to be a Nereid, appeared turbanned in white and blue like some marvellous tragic actress dressed for the part of Zaïre, or perhaps of Orosmane; finally, when she had taken her place in the front row I saw that the soft halcyon's nest which tenderly shielded the rosy nacre of her cheeks was—downy, dazzling, velvety, an immense bird of paradise.

But now my gaze was diverted from the Princesse de Guermantes's box by a little woman who came in, ill-dressed, plain, her eyes ablaze with indignation, followed by two young men, and sat down a few places from me. At length the curtain went up. I could not help being saddened by the reflexion that there remained now no trace of my old disposition, at the period when, so as to miss nothing of the extraordinary phenomenon which I would have gone to the ends of the earth to see, I kept my mind prepared, like the sensitive plates which astronomers take out to Africa, to the West Indies, to make and record an exact observation of a comet or an eclipse; when I trembled for fear lest some cloud (a fit of ill humour on the artist's part or an incident in the audience) should prevent the spectacle from presenting itself with the maximum of intensity; when I should not have believed that I was watching it in the most perfect conditions had I not gone to the very theatre which was consecrated to it like an altar, in which I then felt to be still a part of it, though an accessory part only, the officials with their white carnations, appointed by her, the vaulted balcony covering a pit filled with a shabbily dressed crowd, the women selling programmes that had her photograph, the chestnut trees in the square outside, all those companions, those confidants of my impressions of those days which seemed to me to be inseparable from them. _Phèdre_, the 'Declaration Scene,' Berma, had had then for me a sort of absolute existence. Standing aloof from the world of current experience they existed by themselves, I must go to meet them, I should penetrate what I could of them, and if I opened my eyes and soul to their fullest extent I should still absorb but a very little of them. But how pleasant life seemed to me: the triviality of the form of it that I myself was leading mattered nothing, no more than the time we spend on dressing, on getting ready to go out, since, transcending it, there existed in an absolute form, good and difficult to approach, impossible to possess in their entirety, those more solid realities, _Phèdre_ and the way in which Berma spoke her part. Steeped in these dreams of perfection in the dramatic art (a strong dose of which anyone who had at that time subjected my mind to analysis at any moment of the day or even the night would have been able to prepare from it), I was like a battery that accumulates and stores up electricity. And a time had come when, ill as I was, even if I had believed that I should die of it, I should still have been compelled to go and hear Berma. But now, like a hill which from a distance seems a patch of azure sky, but, as we draw nearer, returns to its place in our ordinary field of vision, all this had left the world of the absolute and was no more than a thing like other things, of which I took cognisance because I was there, the actors were people of the same substance as the people I knew, trying to speak in the best possible way these lines of _Phèdre_, which themselves no longer formed a sublime and individual essence, distinct from everything else, but were simply more or less effective lines ready to slip back into the vast corpus of French poetry, of which they were merely a part. I felt a discouragement that was all the more profound in that, if the object of my headstrong and active desire no longer existed, the same tendencies, on the other hand, to indulge in a perpetual dream, which varied from year to year but led me always to sudden impulses, regardless of danger, still persisted. The day on which I rose from my bed of sickness and set out to see, in some country house or other, a picture by Elstir or a mediaeval tapestry, was so like the day on which I ought to have started for Venice, or that on which I did go to hear Berma, or start for Balbec, that I felt before going that the immediate object of my sacrifice would, after a little while, leave me cold, that then I might pass close by the place without stopping even to look at that picture, those tapestries for which I would at this moment risk so many sleepless nights, so many hours of pain. I discerned in the instability of its object the vanity of my effort, and at the same time its vastness, which I had not before noticed, like a neurasthenic whose exhaustion we double by pointing out to him that he is exhausted

57-59

My own impression, to tell the truth, though more pleasant than on the earlier occasion, was not really different. Only, I no longer put it to the test of a pre-existent, abstract and false idea of dramatic genius, and I understood now that dramatic genius was precisely this. It had just occurred to me that if I had not derived any pleasure from my first hearing of Berma, it was because, as earlier still when I used to meet Gilberte in the Champs-Elysées, I had come to her with too strong a desire. Between my two disappointments there was perhaps not only this resemblance, but another more profound. The impression given us by a person or a work (or a rendering, for that matter) of marked individuality is peculiar to that person or work. We have brought to it the ideas of 'beauty,' 'breadth of style,' 'pathos' and so forth which we might, failing anything better, have had the illusion of discovering in the commonplace show of a 'correct' face or talent, but our critical spirit has before it the insistent challenge of a form of which it possesses no intellectual equivalent, in which it must detect and isolate the unknown element. It hears a shrill sound, an oddly interrogative intonation. It asks itself: "Is that good? Is what I am feeling just now admiration? Is that richness of colouring, nobility, strength?**" And what answers it again is a shrill voice, a curiously questioning tone, the despotic impression caused by a person whom one does not know, wholly material, in which there is no room left for 'breadth of interpretation.' And for this reason it is the really beautiful works that, if we listen to them with sincerity, must disappoint us most keenly,because in the storehouse of our ideas there is none that corresponds to an individual impression.

This marks a break in how La Berma, and to a certain degree acting as a whole, is viewed by The Narrator. It recalls an attitude Swann portrayed earlier in Vol 1,. So, in another way in addition to the more overt ones,The Narrator in his age comes to similar conclusions as Swann.

I dared not accept such an offer, but bombarded Swann with questions about his friend. "Can you tell me, please, who is his favourite actor?"

"Actor? No, I can't say. But I do know this: there's not a man on the stage whom he thinks equal to Berma; he puts her above everyone. Have you seen her?"

"No, sir, my parents do not allow me to go to the theatre."

"That is a pity. You should insist. Berma in Phèdre, in the Cid; well, she's only an actress, if you like, but you know that I don't believe very much in the 'hierarchy' of the arts."

Additionally, Gilberte has loses a luster that is never entirely rekindled to the heights of Vol 1

This marks a break in how La Berma, and to a certain degree acting as a whole, is viewed by The Narrator. It recalls an attitude Swann portrayed earlier in Vol 1, about a sort of 'hierarchy' of the arts. Similarly, Gilberte has lost a luster that is never entirely rekindled to the heights of Vol 1.
Frequently in Remembrance of Things Past do characters seem to have epiphanies after a performance, whether from it, or events that follow the performance. The one with Swann and the Sonata is the most known, but this one jumped out to me as pretty interesting too. While no character in remembrance is just one thing or interpretation, I found this connection between these two interesting.

This post is mainly about reading Balzac-- moderators, please delete if inappropriate for this forum.

I suspect readers of Proust would find Balzac a cake-walk, so I am just throwing this out there...

Anyone interested in joining our small online book club to read and discuss Balzac's Lost Illusions? We presently have three almost no active members (apart from Yours Truly--must be Balzac as a book choice!!) , and would welcome a couple more readers. We have started a discussion thread on a Forumotion platform. At some point--likely late in September--we will also have a meetup by way of Zoom to chat about the book. If practicable, we will try to plan a Zoom meetup time that takes into account your time zone (we are PST), or just forget about the Zoom chat, and join us for the online book chat component.

If this is of interest, post a comment below, or let me know by private message, and I will send along the forum link,

cheers

I just finished Swann’s Way and am taking a break by dashing off two quick ones (Amerika trans. Harman, Madame Bovary trans. Davis) and building up my to-read pile before I start Volume 2. I wanted to ask the group what you think of these Proust-related titles. Yay, nay, maybe say why? I got recommendations for some titles in a previous post; I include them here in case some would like to say a few (more) words. If you have any other recommendations, I would love to know. Thanks!

PREVIOUSLY RECOMMENDED

Eric Karpeles, Paintings in Proust. Probably by far the most highly recommended.

David Ellison, A Reader’s Guide to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. I got this. Read the introduction and the chapter on Swann's Way. I like it.

Malcolm Bowie, Proust Among the Stars

Patrick Alexander, Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time: A Reader's Guide to The Remembrance of Things Past

BIOGRAPHIES AND SUCH

William C. Carter, Marcel Proust: A Life. I took a gamble on this.

Jean-Yves Tadié, Marcel Proust: A Life

George D. Painter, Marcel Proust: A Biography

Benjamin Taylor, Proust: The Search. Recommended by the Reading Proust guy.

Céleste Albaret, Monsieur Proust. Really curious about this and the next two. 

Marcel Proust trans. Lydia Davis, Letters to His Neighbor

William C. Carter, Proust in Love. Is there a lot of overlap with the Carter bio?

ISoLT BUT NOT

Stéphane Heuet and Arthur Goldhammer, Swann’s Way: A Graphic Novel

Stéphane Heuet and Laura Marris, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower: A Graphic Novel

PROUST BUT NOT ISoLT

Marcel Proust trans. Joachim Neugroschel, The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust

ISoLT READING GUIDES

Roger Shattuck, Proust’s Way: A Field Guide to In Search of Lost Time

OTHERS

Christopher Prendergast, Living and Dying with Marcel Proust

Józef Czapski trans. Eric Karpeles, Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp. The names of the author and translator got me curious.

Roger Shattuck, Marcel Proust. I don’t even know what this is about; maybe a bio? Won a National Book Award.

EDIT

Thank you all for your wonderful comments and additions to the above list. I have a stack of books coming in the mail—including a first edition first printing of Jean Santeuil*! Of course, I will not be reading a lot of them until later; I'm only about to start* In the Shadow and for now would like to stick, as it were, to the straight and narrow (and long, very long). But I won't be able to stop myself from skimming them all. If no one objects, perhaps in another post I can redo this list with new titles and quick comments from myself and you all. Cheers.

That is all.

Does anyone know any interactive online courses for In Search of Lost Time? I read it once but I want to read it again. I can start in Nov 2024.

While I was reading volume six (translated as "The Fugitive" in my edition) I was struck by the potential Proust had as a songwriter, specifically within the "golden country" genre. So I cut out some of my favorite passages and rearranged them into a country song. In honor of Moncrieff's original title (as well as its sweet old school country chops), I titled it "The Sweet Cheat Gone" and I hope you enjoy it!

I've just begun Sodom and Gomorrah, and I've completely forgotten who M de Breaut is, and I'm confused about prince Von.

I remember Von being a vicious anti Semite, but the narrator says to Oriane that he is a dreyfusard on page 83 (John Sturrock translation)

I can't seem to find anything about the character online

Have I got him confused with someone else or is the narrator taking the piss.

Thanks