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Title: In Search of Lost Time Volume IIWithin a Budding Grove by C.K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, Marcel Proust ISBN: 0-375-75219-6 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 03 November, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The second volume in Proust's astonishing masterpiece
Comment: Upon finishing WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE, the reader will have been introduced to virtually all the major characters in IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME. Most importantly for later volumes, we meet and get to know Albertine, Robert de Saint-Loup, the painter Elstir, the diplomat Norpois, and Madame de Villeparasis, as well as a deepened acquaintance with such characters as Gilberte Swann, Madame Swann, and the extravagantly bizarre Baron de Charlus.
Proust's extraordinary genius is evident on every page of this amazing book. One could point to any of a few dozen moments to illustrate this. What is amazing to me about Proust is how he can take an amazingly everyday event, and build it to proportions as great as any battle scene in WAR AND PEACE. For instance, at the end of "Madame Swann at Home," the narrator recounts the times he would wait at the Arc de Triomphe to take a walk with Madame Swann and her entourage. The ensuing eight or nine pages, which merely recount the group walking through Paris, become as majestic and epic as any scene in Homer or Virgil or Tolstoy. No scene would seem to contain less potential for greatness, yet Proust is able to make it something truly unique and beautiful. Or, to take another incident, have there been many incidents in literature as filled with passion and emotion and suspense as the Narrator's first attempt to kiss Albertine? In a mere two pages, Proust is about to pack a surreal amount of dramatic (and comic) action.
Although famous for containing at least part of both of the narrator's great love affairs, I find this novel even more fascinating for the extraordinary detailing of the myriad of social and class distinctions to be found in the seemingly infinitely varied French society. The great theme throughout the book, even when not specifically mentioned, is snobbism, and Proust owns the subject of snobbery as Homer owns that of war. Proust reveals snobbery primarily proceeding from those slightly lower on the social ladder. Ironically, he reveals those at the top guilty not of snobbery but of insolence and disdain, while not even his servant Françoise is innocent of being a snob. The tensions in the novel become particularly acute given the changes that were taking place in French society at the time. This theme is not restricted to this novel alone. It featured in SWANN'S WAY, especially in the attitudes of the Verdurin "faithful" and will be a major theme of ensuing volumes, especially THE GUERMANTES WAY.
The section of the novel recounting his getting to know Elstir contains perhaps my favorite passage in all of Proust, where Elstir, upon the narrator's learning something unflattering of Elstir's past, tells him that no one has not done things that they would not love to expunge, but that no one ought to despise this, because this is the only way one can truly become wise. "We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one can else can make for us, which no one can spare, us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." This is not merely the opinion of Proust's character: it could stand as the central meaning of the novel as a whole.
Rating: 5
Summary: Open up the floodgates, freedom reigns supreme
Comment: Volume 2 of Marcel Proust's 4000+ page masterpiece, "In Search of Lost Time", is, if it's possible, an even greater book than the first volume. I read Volume 1, "Swann's Way", with the kind of astonishment and joy generally reserved for Tolstoy and Maugham, constantly amazed at Proust's (via Moncrieff, Kilmartin, & Enright) ability to deepen sensation and memory to almost religious proportions, and when I finished I thought, "There's no way he can keep this level of beauty up for another 5 volumes." Judging from Volume 2, I was dead wrong.
Proust published "Swann's Way" in 1913, and waited 6 years to publish Volume 2, "Within a Budding Grove"; I presume that in the interim he reorganized his ideas, deciding to expand his novel and explore his themes in greater detail. This volume is much more leisurely and intricately paced than the first, as Proust masterfully tells us of the end of his relationship with Gilberte, his relocation to Balbec, and the beginning of his relationship with Albertine. The slow dying of love, the vaguely confusing experience of a new dwelling as it gradually becomes a home, watching beautiful young girls (the "budding grove" of the title) enjoying their beauty and youth as they walk down a city street...these things and more are plumbed and ruminated upon, with Proust's typically intricate and gorgeous language.
These books, if the first two are any guide, are like nothing ever attempted in the history of literature. Rather than dealing with WHAT happened, Proust settles himself in for the long haul to try and understand WHY it happened; to quote Christopher Hitchens, Proust "exposes and clarifies the springs of human motivation...with a transparency unexampled except in Shakespeare or George Eliot." But I don't think Bill nor George ever dug this deep; Marcel Proust is absolutely one of a kind, and he's not easy to read in this world of flash-images and expressways. He takes his time. Though he was dying with every labored breath (he didn't live to see the entire novel published), Proust was in no hurry to finish. His thoughts, like his sentences, have multiple branches. Follow them and you'll cherish the experience like it was your own.
Moving on to Volume 3.....
Rating: 5
Summary: *****
Comment: Beautiful writing, and brilliant observations and well-drawn characters. Some caveats are the often labyrinthine sentences and multi-page paragraphs. Most people read SWANN'S WAY and no further, so those who make it through the 2nd volume might praise it excessively out of a slight superiority complex. Also, "Marcel" is also a little bitchy in his tone, and his "happiest when I'm alone" philosophy is kind of sad and self-absorbed, and his visiting whore houses is jolting after you've been reading graceful sentences and events. And some of his anthropological and psychological observations are trite and nothing most readers haven't concluded for themselves, and Proust sounds like he believes he's letting you in on some insights of which you're undoubtedly ignorant. But, yes, many of his insights are brilliant and eye-opening. And the sentences that are over-loaded actually are the exception, and the rest are doubtless among the most beautiful sentences ever written. Proust must have been extremely introspective to have thought so extensively about the most minute of moments...and good for us he was, since we get to enjoy the fruits of his introspection in this book. The humor that comes across is delightful, too. Proust has one thing you can't learn in any MFA creative writing program, and that is CHARM!
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Title: In Search of Lost Time : Proust 6-pack by Marcel Proust ISBN: 0812969642 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 03 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $75.00 |
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Title: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, Lydia Davis, Christopher Prendergast ISBN: 067003245X Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 11 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: In Search of Lost Time Volume IVSodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust ISBN: 0375753109 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 16 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: In Search of Lost Time Volume VThe Captive & The Fugitive by C.K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, Marcel Proust ISBN: 0375753117 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 16 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: In Search of Lost Time Volume VITime Regained by Andreas Mayor, Terence Kilmartin, Marcel Proust ISBN: 0375753125 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 16 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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