Proust is not about memorizing or interpreting, but rather sharing the experience I have lived through.

Reading Proust requires a high level of attention. It is not a book that can be read at every opportunity. It demands the creation of its own space and the investment of an effort. No matter how much I wanted to read, on an empty day, I could only read a maximum of 60 - 70 pages, and afterwards, my perception dropped incredibly.

Proust's cross-descriptions and analogies are so beautiful that from the very beginning of the book, this was one of the things that impressed me the most. I was amazed not at what he told, but at how he told it. I read the entire book with this amazement, and as I read, my amazement grew.

Proust adds another dimension to what he tells. Although there is no difference at the conscious level, you can sense that what you are reading is different. And at the point where you can sense it, your perception level also changes. Like seeing with the ears and hearing with the eyes.

Reading Proust is, in my opinion, a serious reading experience that requires a certain level of patience. I think that anyone who can read Turkish authors like Yaşar Kemal, Oğuz Atay, and Orhan Pamuk, who require reading patience and provide high literary satisfaction, can read Proust. In my opinion, Proust is at a higher level than these authors, but those who read these authors can try reading Proust. There is nothing to be afraid of. Only patience is required.

Besides the translation, it should be mentioned that Roza Hakmen has done an incredible job. She has translated every complex sentence into Turkish very well. You read it as if you were reading a Turkish book. It has a translation as good as the book itself, and let's say that's our luck.

Before starting to read Proust, there is a perception that one has to go around it and do some reading first, but I don't quite agree with this. Starting to read completely unbiased and independent of others' opinions is a more personal experience and provides a higher level of satisfaction. Besides, this book and this series are not books that can be read once and put aside. After reading it once, you can read other books and articles and then come back and read it again and again.

I was impressed by both the author and the book, but at the same time, I probably didn't understand most of the things he referred to. Of course, the part I understood satisfied me, but I will read it again by researching the things he referred to. One of the most important things that enable the book to be read many times is these references and the detailed descriptions. Because no matter how carefully you read, something will always escape your eyes.

Although it tells about very microscopic things, the fact that it contains every emotion and thought about human beings and life, and explains each of them one by one, adds a special charm to the book. It is a book written 100 years ago, but it has an effect as if it were written tomorrow.

Proust is an author that everyone who loves reading and literature should try at some point. After reading and loving it, you will notice the change and progress in yourself and your reading habits.

The places we have known belong only to the world of space where, for greater convenience, we situate them. They were nothing more than a thin strip in the midst of contiguous impressions that formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is nothing more than the nostalgia for a certain instant; and the houses, the roads, the walks, are fleeting, alas, like the years.

I read this work unfortunately thinking that it would be difficult but very orderly in the style of the 19th century and when I started to turn the pages I realized that the style is very, very different from that of the 19th-century writers. We are, of course, facing something completely different, a different way of telling things, perhaps very typical of the 20th century. But I have hardly read any literary books of that century and that's why it shocked me quite a bit (I haven't even read more than 1 book by Vargas Llosa who I know often likes to jump in time, something I don't like).

It is indeed one of the most difficult books I have read, at least in its first part. The only one that equals it is "War and Peace" by Tolstoy but I think I was a bit more bored with this one by Proust.

The book is divided into three rather irregular parts even in style and size: the first part is "Combray", the second "Swann's Way" and the third "Names of Places".

Now I finally understand why "Swann's Way" is published by some French publishers as a separate book. The first part is super super lyrical and introspective. Too much for me. It is not a story that is told but the sensations that Marcel experienced mainly in his own childhood. I really liked some scenes so intimate and so peculiar of the life of the child, who unfortunately was very sickly, of how he felt very sad when his mother did not stay with him and suffered when Mr. Swann (a great character in the whole novel) came to visit his parents because he knew that his mother would not spend time with him. Despite everything, a lot is told here, the misfortunes of a child, the adults' incomprehension of the children's motivations, the surprise and curiosity to know an adult woman.

The other thing, on the other hand, is full of the child's thoughts above all, about absolutely everything that happens in small episodes. If something is happening with his mother, he does not stop at the action or what it causes him but in the memories that it can bring him, the feeling of anguish compared to another previous event in his life and to the state of nature, the angle of the sun, the shadows, etc., etc. Actions or motivations are not told but the sensations that emerge in the one who tells or in the one who lives the actions that are happening. And that made it quite heavy for me.

The descriptions that accompany the sensations are very primitive, in the sense that they are described just as they can pass through the brain without the need to order them or explain them better. Therefore, when reading what Proust puts, one can imagine from the most natural state of consciousness what he experiences. For this, he uses forms, colors, but not only objectively but in the mixture with the perception of the self. He has some interesting pictures although of little importance for the plot, like this one:

"And in the afternoon, when I returned from my walk, when I already thought that I would soon have to say goodbye to my mother and not see her again, the church tower appeared so soft in the evening light, as if it were placed and sunk like a brown velvet cushion in the pale sky, which had yielded to its pressure, slightly indenting to make room for it and flowing back at the edges; and the chirping of the birds that fluttered around increased its silence, gave more impetus to its needle and clothed it with an ineffable character."

But also those descriptions sometimes seemed artificial and incomprehensible to me like this pair:

"Sometimes across the evening sky passed the white moon like a cloud, furtive, without splendor, like an actress who does not have to act at that time and who, from the stalls, dressed in street clothes, looks for a moment at her colleagues, fading away, hoping that no one will notice her."

"(The bottles) evoked the image of freshness in a more delicious and irritating way than if they were on a set table, letting it appear only fleetingly in the perpetual alliteration between the water without consistency where the hands could not catch it, and the glass without fluidity where the palate could not enjoy it."

As I mentioned, it is a different style, of course, that amazes but I did not end up liking it or being able to fully assimilate it knowing that it slows down and loses a lot of the plot, but of course, one can collect and gather all those sensations and they could have been described in a much simpler way. There, the author reminds us of his childhood times with his aunt, with the maid and above all with the family's relationship with Swan. I really enjoyed how his family, although of a lower level than Swann's, constantly spoke badly of Swann, even trying to humiliate him at times but deep down the aunt felt admiration for him.

The second part, on the other hand, "Swann's Way" begins to explain to us (without finishing, because that is seen in the second book) what had been insinuated (there are many insinuations in the work that you only realize at the end, in the middle, anywhere) at the beginning and goes back in time to when Swann, being young and after having traveled a lot, having relationships with world-class and French political figures, falls into the hands of a "Cocotte" (this was the name given to the gallant women who had many lovers who maintained them, especially during the time of the Second Empire).

"He had not found her lacking in beauty, of course, but rather of a type of beauty that left him indifferent, that inspired him with no desire whatsoever and that even came to cause him a kind of physical repulsion, one of those women like the ones everyone has."

I started to like it a lot because the narrative here is very far from the millimeter pictorial descriptions but at times it is boring because of the plot that takes place between Swann and Odette de Crécy. So while "Combray" I didn't like because it had no plot, "Swann's Way" had a plot but in the end, it kind of fell flat for me. Here we have the classic story often told of a man who, in love, falls into "misery" but this spiced up with a good description of the salons of that time, of the pimps, of the corruption of some people (the Verdurin family) who are happy to have someone important and then completely ruin him. Interested in money, gossip, and importance. But there is also the "good" part in this case represented through Swann's great knowledge, his fine manners, and his talents as a literary and art critic. Swann is a man of the world, not only aristocratic but also very cultivated. He knows so much art that every time he sees a person he compares them to some painting.

But all these talents seem to be submerged when Swann gradually gets sick if we want to say so and the development of jealousy is something very well painted in my opinion by Proust. I have seen many books talking about the same topic. And both to explain the master and the jealousy, the author resorts again and again to his theory throughout the whole book "the influence of sensations on our more reasonable thoughts."

"And all the voluptuous memories that he carried with him when leaving her house were so many sketches, so many "projects" similar to those that a decorator shows us, which allowed Swann to form an idea of the ardent or ecstatic attitudes that she could have with others. So that he came to regret every pleasure he enjoyed by her side, every invented caress whose sweetness he had had the imprudence to point out to her."

As they commented in the group I joined, the composition of the story is often circular. Proust starts from the beginning, goes to the past or the future, and then returns to the same point. This of course disrupts the story but also sometimes slows it down. For example, sometimes an affirmation of a character's character or habit is affirmed almost in the 3/4 parts of the whole book when it has been insinuated since the beginning but we did not have the certainty that it was so. This may please many, particularly me not.

I am sure that this defect would be corrected very well in a movie that I could affirm that I would like more than the book.

But one cannot deny Proust a very fine and refined power of observation and understanding of sensations and thoughts. As a great example, I put this that reads a lot in me haha: "Even from a simply realistic point of view, the countries we desire occupy at each moment much more space in our real life than the country where we actually are."

"People are usually so indifferent to us that when we have deposited in one of them such possibilities of pain and joy for us, that person seems to belong to another universe, is surrounded by poetry, transforms our life into a kind of emotional extension where it will be more or less close to us."

The places we knew do not belong only to the world of space where we locate them for greater convenience. They were merely a thin slice between the continuous impressions that formed our life at that time. The memory of a specific image is nothing but the grief for a specific moment that has passed. And the houses, the streets, the boulevards, all are fugitive, insubstantial! Like the years.

[End of the first book]

The first impression is that this is a masterpiece of classical French literature, which would fit better in the 19th century beside the works of Stendhal, Balzac, and Flaubert. For this reason, it is of particular significance that it belongs to another era, the 20th century.

This is a love story that reminded me a little of "Madame Bovary" and more of "The Red and the Black" (Stendhal). I think the myth of the difficult book is shattered, of course under certain conditions. The volume of the entire work (7 volumes) does not imply the expected - famed - difficulty of reading it. Nevertheless, it is not an ordinary love story that is read by every reader. The first difficulty is the first 30 or 40 pages, with which you enter the "wonderful world" of Marcel Proust.

The author's language, the style he uses, is something original for world literature and is the main reason it is automatically considered a masterpiece. However, this has two sides. The long descriptions, the sentences in a paragraph (in length), could be tiring or superfluous for some readers. On the other hand, it is proven unsurpassed in the art of language, with words and phrases that create a vivid text of rare beauty, to the point where it becomes poetic and reminds of Fernando Pessoa. Amid the plot of the work, the author also leaves his philosophical mark - deep and substantial thoughts.

As for the story, nothing particularly extraordinary happens, nor do the events rush... and I think it wouldn't have been necessary. The author easily gives substance to his characters. The book is divided into three parts, the first and the last which together make up 30% and the second, which is also the main theme. In the first and third parts, the central hero is the young narrator, whose relationship of dependence with his mother (initially) and his innocent love for Swann's daughter are touched upon. In the second part, Swann's obsessive love, his insecurities and passions, and in general the development of his inner world are described. All this in the high society of Paris at the beginning of the century, where the class division is clear.

Undoubtedly, one of the greatest works of the 20th century, and indeed of all eras in general. Certainly, I have not encountered anything similar. However, I think that the way he wrote influenced many of his successors.

You never see it coming. It’s just another day of rainy August. The girl in a checkered uniform and a blue sash, which is dangling down gauchely at one side of her skinny shoulder, is seated tetchily. She is waiting for her father, who is supposed to pick her up at this time. The waiting hall is almost deserted.

Suddenly, she hears a low echo near somewhere. “It’d rain too heavily for the next hour. Your father won’t make it here. He asked me to drop you home. Pick up your bag..” He asks her imperiously, never being diffident for a split second. She follows him to the parking lot and into his car. He asks her to come sit next to him at the front. Too afraid to disregard him, she does so without demur. The car runs slow, and the road seems abandoned by any traffic. He puts his one hand on her shaky leg, moving it up and up in a coarse yet nippy manner, groping her flesh. He reaches her upper thigh. By the time the girl is too stunned to register the slightest of reactions, now, she feels the hot tears welling up in her widened eyes. Her hard sobs come in succession, making her whole body convulse and writhe for breath. Her child mind is yet unable to process what she’s crying for. The spark in the eyes of the man seems to diminish by this annoyance. The asperity of his touch is gone, replaced by a wheedling tone. He tells her it’s just a normal going-over, asks her if she wants to do the same to him, and leads her tiny shaky hand to his lap. The car runs slower, and the girl cries harder, and her hands move where they are told to.

Remembrance of the things past is not always as exquisite and nostalgic as Proust had described. We bury things so deep that we no longer remember there was anything to bury. Our bodies remember. No matter how hard you try to wash away the unpleasant happenings, you can never bleach off the scars, the remnants of the time gone, and the faces, and the sounds, and the scars. But the memories that hang heaviest are the easiest to recall. They hold in their creases the ability to change one's life, organically, forever. Even when you shake them out, they've left permanent wrinkles in the fabric of your soul.

Proust weaves the threads back to his (narrator’s) boyhood, the summer days at Combray, the night meals, his melancholic bouts, his unconventional love for his mother, Françoise the maid at his great Aunt’s, Mr. Swann the second protagonist. All is woven into an unfinished yet compelling story of the early 1900s. "In looking back at his life, the narrator confronts the question of what exactly an individual’s identity consists of. As he tries to understand his life, he realizes that it is inseparable from the lives of others. “Our social personality,” the narrator remarks, “is a creation of the minds of others” (p. 19). Swann’s Way explores this process but also goes beyond it to ask whether there is a core self which is not merely a creation of others’ minds. If there is such a self, the narrator suggests, it awakens in the presence of beauty that endures—for example, as when Swann feels the idealism he has abandoned resurfacing while he listens to Vinteuil’s sonata."

“And sometimes, the wet physicalization of your sorrow isn't enough. Instead, a violent madness stirs in your chest and your head is polluted with a red so angry, your jaw opens to fill the earth with a scream so rare you lose a little of yourself. Your roaring voice trails in pieces, like bullet fragments in flesh, to complete the song that is Loss....”

May 4, 2019

My very first encounter with this translation - I firmly believe that, ultimately, it represents an enhancement over the Moncrieff. (Admittedly, I may be a bit partial as Lydia Davis is my mentor.)

If one toggles back and forth while reading, there is a certain power, directness, and lucidity present here that simply does not exist in other translations of Proust. I will persist in experimenting with alternative translations as I progress through the seven volumes. However, it is evident that the Moncrieff has set a rather high standard.

Now, what about "Swann's Way" itself? There are moments within it that possess such extreme levels of insight and beauty that it is simply impossible to rate it lower than 5 stars. Nevertheless, the meandering nature of the narrative got to me this time around, as did some of the lengthier music/art essays. And most significantly, the really striking anti-lesbian attacks were quite off-putting. It is indeed difficult to maintain focus, but it is supremely worthwhile for the highlights - the mother's kiss, Gilberte in the park, Monsieur Legrandin's rippling ass, and the arrival of automobiles.

And most importantly, if Proust had only ever penned "Swann in Love" (an interpolated novel that constitutes approximately 40% of this volume), he would still be regarded as an all-time great. What a hilarious, lively, and luminous creation! What profound insights into the entire course of love! Or, as he himself would simply put it - how delicious.

You stand before a mirror, or what you assume to be a mirror, as you can see yourself in it quite clearly. However, the image is far from steady. Parts of your face blur, and sections of your body stretch, while all the colors flow like oil. You extend a hand to steady it, and the reflection ripples. Your fingers sink into the surface and touch something cool and curved, an arched web running its backbone beneath. No matter how hard you try, you cannot stop it from moving. Finally, in frustration, you grab at the structure and pull, breaking away a handful of mercury that melts and crystallizes in equal measure. You can see the imprint of your palm in the gripped reflection, but it is no longer your palm. It is the sticky, hot temper tantrum of a summer's day ice cream. It is the wet, exhilarating sting of a high five on a rainy day team win. It is the cold, straining muddle ache of an essay test in the middle of winter, when the classroom heater wasn't working, and you couldn't wait to never have to look at another rhetorical analysis again. You had plans with friends in a far-off parking lot where the snow was deep and the space was wide. Christmas was soon, and your favorite part has always been the tree, a rotundity of green peeking cheerfully beneath its freezing cape of downy white, and an aroma of vibrant life arcing through the chill. Fir trees that made up for their absence in your youth with their riotous spread in adulthood, curled around the small house in Washington, so different from that crowded tenement in Illinois. Sometimes you wonder how you ever got so far.

And do you ever wonder about your brain? That seething mass of electrical spitfire that registers, archives, and retrieves, much like a library, except time is its tricky mistress. Many of the books have lost their pages or have wandered off to the most obscure realms and melded and branched with others. Checking just one out is nearly impossible when half the words on a single tome have nestled among twenty-six and a half different genres, and the sheer act of tugging on a single binding can trigger a reaction as painful and inevitable as an avalanche juggernauting its birth from a single stone.

An occurrence especially common when it comes to memories of friends, of months of amusement dying into years of annoyance and anger and back again. Or of love, that chaotic monster that lies, cheats, and steals from itself in the hope of this feeling it has heard so much about. Or of family, those first traits and trademarks sculpting the fragile nostalgia that will forever set the tone for reminiscence. Also words on a page for the readers, whirling you away into lands unknown that you still see behind your eyelids upon realizing that yes, the light is dying soon on the last page of this latest author who defines your world in ways you can only dream of doing. Also notes on the staffs for the listeners, that motif spanning years and miles on end in repetition, so delicate and small and yet can breach horizons beyond space and time. Also nature, and architecture, and society, aspects of life breathtaking in their sheer existence, threaded through with the constants of color and light.

Do you see them? Those moments, so ephemeral, so deceptive, so futile, forever lost in the mists of some faint promise that you did indeed exist at that point in time, based on a single sliver of remembrance or worse, external evidence that provokes not the slightest responding recollection. How beautiful they can be, and how heartrending, and oftentimes it is hard to distinguish the pleasure from the pain, sprung from both the remembrance and the forgetting. But how wondrous a structure they form, how they run to and fro and back again along the endless walls and arches of the grandest of cathedrals, with nary a pause for the places that have fallen into disrepair and emptiness, for time heals all wounds and what is left must have some kind of importance. For why else would they exist? Why else would we remember?

To attempt to review this now would be like trying to review a book after finishing the first couple of chapters. There is no way to do justice to it, or to even be sure of what one is prattling on about. So seasoned readers, please do excuse any over-eager generalizations or over-enthusiastic missteps.

\\n  

“As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image.”

~ James Joyce, Ulysses


“The Universe is the externalization of the soul.”

~ Emerson

\\n

Poetry in Proust

As one reads this initial book, there is an atmosphere of grandness. Everything is charged with a sense of premonition, as if these are musical notes played in a subdued key, and they will reappear in grander forms later. The stage is being set, themes are being presented, and the reader is invited to an extremely long composition that could last a lifetime if engaged enough. Each paragraph seems self-contained, like understated poetry, like a brilliantly illuminated leaf that outshines the whole tree until the gaze moves to the next, repeating the same magic.

Proust as Teacher

This work has greatness beyond its obvious literary value and aesthetic pleasure. Proust liberates literature by being unapologetically and irrepressibly romantic about everything in life. The narrative runs with undisguised romanticism and wide-eyed enthusiasm for every detail. There is no attempt to tone anything down or show a manly acceptance of life's drollness or a skeptical indifference to its ugliness. Everything is lived to the fullest and described as it should be lived. It feels like a fairyland, with the colors and emotions of Marcel's life fully heightened. Proust teaches us how to live.

\\n  Reading Notes:\\n

Some of the notes that struck me the most and will leave a lasting impact are:


\\n  Proust As Madeleine\\n

The Proust experience opens a portal to one's own childhood, enabling a re-creation of one's entire life. It allows one to embark on the path of one's memories, resurrect childhood paths, and think of fears and flames. Memories come thick and fast as we savor the Madeleine that is Proust.

The Intimate Acts of Creation

\\n  

“Our social personality is a creation of the minds of others”

\\n
The reading serves as a function to recreate our internal world, and Proust also teaches us how we created the external world. We construct the world after dreaming, and the whole structure of society is created anew for each child. We reinvent and propagate it. We discover class and social barriers, understand how we might have been indoctrinated unconsciously, and see how our future path is crystallized. Proust's example calls up a hundred more of our own.

Aesthetic Oneness with Proust

One finds oneself drawn into the world Proust is sketching, and the involvement deepens to an immersion where the ordinary world fades. Under ideal conditions, one might reach a stage where one participates in the love being evoked. But a paradox arises: whose love is this? It cannot be Marcel's or Gilberte's, nor can it be the reader's. It is a peculiar, almost abstract love without an immediate referent or context, left to the reader to actualize. A Sanskrit aesthete would explain that this is an "aesthetic sentiment" that can be evoked by the novel but not exactly caused by it. The evocation of this intense personal experience is the highest function of art, and Proust reaches a rarified level by not only evoking it but also making us aware of how it is done.

\\n  Proust as Meditation\\n

For the reader, there is a breathlessness in everything in Proust as we try to squeeze out meaning from every word and expression. These meanings and themes are charged with special gravity, as we know we have to remember them for the long journey ahead. The possibility of missing a key now and encountering a beautiful door that will not yield later invests a special magic into the reading. It creates a stillness of expectation and anticipation, which can be stifling or as expansive as a zen garden. One might feel lost or in the presence of a literary holy grail. For me, I could not even tolerate the disturbance of my own breathing when reading. It was meditation.

Today, nine months later, I completed, along with reading the preface that accompanies it, the first volume of this magnificent work. In my first note (see below), after having read the first part of it, I wrote that this book requires time and that's why I would try to read it slowly. I think the continuation justified me, although such a rich and dense text tempts me to read it again, even later, from the beginning.

The narrator searches for lost time through an almost supernatural memory, having as an expressive tool a language that balances between realism and poetry, and the reader reconstructs simultaneously his own past while searching for his own lost time, with the pages of the book serving as his own mantles.

Anything more I write here would be unjust to this personal reading journey, so I will suffice to list below three of the many stops as I recorded them during its course.

PS. The translation by Paul Zannas, his notes, the accompanying text in the preface, and the entire care of the edition contribute to a great extent to this important reading experience.

January 19, 2020 – page 166
37.05% "After reading the first part of the first volume, I can safely say that Proust is attempting something very important and interesting here, although the continuous descriptions and the fact that literally nothing happens do not help much in the continuous awakening of the Ideal Reader. Important text, but it requires time, so I decided to read it in parts and intermittently read something else."

April 2, 2020 – page 182
40.63% ""He spoke with difficulty, as if he had a marble in his mouth and this was endearing, because it predicted less a difficulty in language than a psychological virtue, something like a remnant of the innocence of childhood that he had never abandoned. All the consonants that he could not pronounce gave the impression that they were corresponding hardnesses for which he was incapable."

April 5, 2020 – page 330
73.66% "In the 2nd part of the 1st book, "A Love of Swann", the climate, the place, the time, and the central character change; we are in Paris, in years before the birth of the narrator and we follow Swann, who appears very little in the first part, as he goes through all the stages of his love - and jealousy - for Odette. Proust here speaks with extraordinary vividness not only about love but also about music."

“Narratives we have written inside of us, those that make us who we are.” There are certain books that are considered essential for a complete reading experience, much like the seven wonders of the world. You may choose not to visit them, but seeing them somehow makes you a part of their cultural heritage and history. Proust's In Search of Lost Time (ISoLT) is one such cultural landmark. In his obsessive recollection of memories, the writer not only captures the charm and vanity of belle époque life and culture but also explores profound themes of time, memory, reality, and fiction.

This book (series) is often associated with the middle-aged and the old, as the youth are typically in a hurry to meet the future or busy enjoying the moment. Nostalgia, on the other hand, is the reward for those who have lived long enough to feel the need for stock-taking and contemplation on the meaning of it all. As the end nears, memories become all we have. Proust beautifully expresses this in his writing:

“When from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistant, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest...the vast structure of recollection.”

The mind, according to Proust, is free from the constraints of time and space and can travel anywhere, anytime. He creates a marvellous, modern, time-lapse sequence in his writing:

“For it always happened that when I awoke like this, and my mind struggled in an unsuccessful attempt to discover where I was, everything would be moving round me through the darkness: things, places, years...while the unseen walls kept changing, adapting themselves to the shape of each successive room that it remembered, whirling madly through the darkness.”

However, an escape to the past does not prevent one from suffering in the present. Proust writes:

“The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.”

Proust combined his musings on these themes with his deep understanding of the power of art, especially music, to convey meaning and emotions beyond words. Different readers will take different elements from this reading, but what appealed most to me was his astute depiction of psychological states. The child narrator's Oedipal attachment to his mamma, his later realization about love, Swann's step-by-step entrapment in his nightmarish 'love affair', and the portrait of the artist as a child are all rendered with great precision.

Throughout the novel, there are enough hints that M. Swann made an unfortunate alliance in marriage and was shunned by the genteel society of Combray. The largest portion of the book is then devoted to the anatomy of an obsession, which I found both amusing and dismaying. I wonder if it was indeed love or just a power play, self-deception, and vanity. The character of Odette may be odious, but Swann is no angel either. The purpose of this 'Swann in Love' segment may be related to the fact that our child/boy narrator shares Swann's aesthetics in arts and women, perhaps hinting at things to come. I'm worried about him.

Swann's Way is an immersion in aesthetics, with its sensual richness of sight, sound, taste, and touch. The images throughout the book are outstanding, especially in its evocation of Combray with its natural beauty, the church, the pink hawthorns, and the walks. Proust, the art connoisseur, wrote his book like a painting, referencing many artists along the way. I was particularly delighted to see Monet in the renderings of the water lilies, flower fields, and the church steeple.

It was my first introduction to Proust's world, and I was amazed at how similar our worlds are in all their dissimilarity. The typical small town nosey neighbourhood, the sense of community, and the racial bigotry and class differences of those times all resonate with our own experiences. This wasn't a perfect world, but it was a real one, and Proust captures it with great sensitivity and insight.

You don't have to be an aesthete to like this book, although it would help. All you need is a certain sensibility, a love for the language and imagination. And of course, the language itself is a joy to read. Proust's languid, limpid prose with its dulcet tones gives wings to your own reveries, making it likely that you'll find yourself dreaming and getting lost in your own memories. It's a great gift for insomniacs and a must-read for anyone who loves literature.

* The late Christopher Hitchens advised starting Proust in midlife, after one “has shared some of the disillusionments and fears, as well as the delights, that come with this mediocre actuarial accomplishment” and “learned something of how time is rationed, and of how this awful and apparently inexorable dole may conceivably be cheated.”

Rewriting this review since it had been erroneously deleted. It feels rather strange to pen a review on Du côté de chez Swann considering the numerous comments I've posted during the two months of our reading in the GoodReads Group “2013 The Year of Reading Proust”. Having read it in the original French, my quotes are from the Gallimard edition.

Many of my posts have demonstrated my great fascination with Marcel Proust's highly visual writing. Colors, light and its effects, and an abundance of flowers all blend together to form a very pictorial style. I believe this is fundamental to Proust's aesthetics.

COLOR Colors are notoriously challenging to express in language as there is simply no vocabulary to convey their aspect or qualia. We have to rely on things to identify a given tone or hue. Homer's wine-dark sea is a famous example. It's no surprise that Proust, the stylist, would pay meticulous attention to his palette. For anyone who has read this novel, rose will stand out as one of the Narrator's favorite tones. Who can forget la femme en rose? Or the beautiful passage on the hawthorns where their pink shade is eulogized over their alternative white? However, there is another color that I think is more prominent than pink but stands out less singly. The suggestive azur or the mellow céleste or the precious zaphir or the mysterious outre-mer, all form part of that one category of bleu which, in its homogenized state, doesn't imprint itself as prominently on our internal retinas as the lovely-sounding rose. Mauve or violet, the nineteenth-century color par excellence, often in combination with white, also figures prominently in Proust. The Narrator comments twice on his fascination with the mauve ribbons, sealed with white wax, with which Gilberte presents him Bergotte's Racine notes (467).

When colors need the support of a thing for their own definition, the thing will also color the described object. What if a green is a vert-chou or cabbage green rather than a treasured émeraude? Or if instead of just yellow it is doré or as yellowish as a coquille d’oeuf? Do you picture them differently? The object so described then not only has a chromatic trait but also acquires a common or a precious extra quality. Proust is also aware of the most difficult colors to render artificially, those with an iridescent quality found in the rainbow and the tail of the peacock. They both fascinated the theoreticians in the Middle Ages. The latter appropriately appears in the beautiful passage on the Combray gothic church and its stained glass windows. While the full rainbow colors Vinteuil's violin sonata when it emerges again in full score and sound, far from the Verdurins home where the piece was played in a reduced format.

Like a painter, when Proust selects his colors, he is very aware of how they affect each other. He has his Narrator observing une image..... s’embellit et bénéficie du reflet des couleurs étrangères qui par hasard l’entourent dans notre rêverie. And again, it is the color projected in the mind that stays in one's memory, as the Narrator acknowledges that for him, the black eyes of the blonde Gilberte are azur (p. 167). Furthermore, if color lives in one's imagination, it can easily connect with other sensations such as sound. The last syllable of the name Guermantes acquires a distinct orange in the Narrator's consciousness. We are treading right into the World of Synesthesia.

LIGHT But of course, there is no color without light. Some of the most beautiful passages deal with the sensation de la splendeur de la lumière. The description of the Combray church alluded to above is one of the most brilliant episodes in which light shines. As he favors the Gothic sections of the church over the Romanesque, the narrator adroitly selects light as it filters through the stained glass. As an informal pupil of Emile Mâle and a longstanding admirer of medieval architecture, Proust knew well that the high vaults and elevated arches were built in their aspiration to receive divine illumination. Both theologians and masons devised together a new kind of temple that would make it possible for godly wisdom to enlighten the earthly followers.

The divine source of illumination for Proust is, however, Art. And the Narrator's first attempt at writing takes place as he observes the effect of sunset on the three belfries in Martinville and as, in his enchantment, they appear to him as three flowers in a painting (p. 214). Proust pays attention to all kinds of lights. Even artificial light, and in particular electricity in its modernity, is contrasted with the gas lighting of earlier times. But unsurprisingly, it is natural light, both from the sun and from the moon, that irradiates most resplendently from his text. I have collected many of these passages. Here is one of the nicest:

  Le soleil ne se couchait pas encore… sa lumière qui s’abaissait et touchait la fenêtre, était arrêtée entre les grands rideaux et les embrasses, divisée, ramifiée, filtrée, et, incrustant de petits morceaux d’or le bois de citronnier de la commode, illuminait obliquement la chambre avec la délicatesse qu’elle prend dans les sous-bois (p 158-9).

The moon, less bright, invites for somewhat more veiled meanings. His clairs de lune clothe scenes with lyricism, as in:

  Le clair de lune, qui doublant et reculant chaque chose par l’extension devant elle de son reflet, plus dense et concret qu’elle-même, avait à la fois aminci et agrandi le paysage comme un plan replié jusque-là, qu’on développe”( p. 44)

But moonlight can get dangerously close to kitsch as the aesthete Swann begins his descent into hellish vulgarity and he associates it with his visits at the rue de la Pérousse. And as the clair de lune illuminates love scenes, it also seems to ignite homosexual sparks, as in the foreboding dinner of the young Narrator at Legrandin's, or later as Odette admits to some lesbian toying: “Elle m’a assuré qu’il n’y avait jamais eu un clair de lune pareil. Je lui ai dit “Cette blague!”.. je savais bien où elle voulait en venir”.

LE REGARD And when there is light, looking or regarder is possible. And Proust liked to look. He makes his Narrator a voyeur several times, in some instances as part of effective theatrical devices, but also in scenes that acquire the quality of a spectacle that goes beyond the strictly dramatic needs. Out of the two occasions in which the Narrator is spying at Vinteuil's home, the second provides the impressionable youth with his first knowledge of sadisme, an inclination that we suspect will haunt him later in life and in the novel.

For looking is a way of possessing. And le regard or the gaze (as Lacan later examined) objectifies that which it captivates. The eyes of Mme de Guermantes enjoy freedom and independence as disengaged beings as they set out to explore what is there to be observed and, maybe, appropriated.

  “…ô merveilleuse indépendance des regards humains retenus au visage par une corde si lâche, si longue, si extensible, qu’ils peuvent se promener seuls loin de lui.....ses regards....comme un rayon de soleil qui....me sembla conscient. (p.207).

Eyes are often exalted as their close name to jewels (yeux-joyeux) suggests. It is thanks to its last syllable that the name of the town Bayeux acquires brilliancy sa noble dentelle rougeâtre et dont le faîte était illuminé par le vieil or de sa dernière syllabe (p. 451).

FLOWERS The pictorial can also be achieved without mentioning either colors or light. Flowers are bright chromatic alternatives. And as the literary Proust mentions the exemplary flora in Balzac's writing, he must have set himself to plant more buds in his literary garden. I reckon that Proust's botany is the most varied collection in French literature. But the beauty does not emerge from the simple numbers (I have counted over forty different flowers) and their charming names. He is very picky for his cultivated bouquet and why he has chosen each specimen, “boutons d’or gardent un poétique éclat d’orient”.

In this first volume, his very many flowers form different beds in different sections (les deux côtés ont des différentes fleurs). The most florid is found in the Méséglise area, where the capucines, bluets, primevères, pensées, giroflées, and of course, the legendary aubépines, blossom. On the Guermantes path, the fluvial landscape conjures up the water-lilies and other aquatic plants. Later, Odette's boudoir and clothes call for the oriental, exotic, and seductive chrysanthèmes and the teasing catleyas, even if they also emit whiffs of vulgarity, which irritate Swann. And finally, some cities such as Parma are embodied in its Stendhalian violets or Florence in its Fleur de Lys (the latter is also a literary echo of Anatole France's Le Lys Rouge).

Flowers form part of Proust's vibrant palette. But thanks to their fragrance, they acquire an additional depth. They symbolize. The hawthorns become the Narrator's escaping childhood, the cattleyas promise heaven to Swann, and the trapped water lilies are a perfect demonstration of captivity. They can, however, also have a perverse side. Images of dissipate women conjure up venomous flowers intermingled with precious jewelry à la Gustave Moreau.

THE PAINTERLY Reading Du côté gives the impression that Proust paints his novel with his pen on a panel. And I am not just referring to the very rich catalog of paintings that has led Erik Karpeles to produce his beautiful book Paintings in Proust: A Visual Companion to In Search of Lost Time. I am referring to Proust's way of looking and of writing.

Already his young Narrator is presented as a painter when he is observing his mother's face as he tries to find the precise location where he wants to daub his kiss as if her face were a canvas. Some descriptions read like a transcribed text from an extant but unidentified painting. The depiction of the asparagus seems a conscious choice to paint Manet's version but with text. Similarly, the passages describing the Guermantes pond and the aquatic plants unavoidably conjure up Monet's water-lily series. Or the effects of light on the Parisian streets and balconies reflect Pissarro's city views. I do not think that it is the reader's doing to abstract these images from the text, but that it is the author who is craftily and specifically imaging his text for his viewers.

Pictorial conceptions abound, as when the Narrator examines the glass cabinets in the Hotel room in Balbec, on which une telle partie du tableau changeant de la mer, se reflétait, déroulant une frise de claires marines. (P. 445). Or, when the Narrator conceives the town of Florence as if it were an early medieval fresco in which there are two panels: in one, under an architectural canopy, there is a curtain of sunlight, while in the other he sees himself in the near future as he visits the town and crosses Ponte Vecchio, which inevitably is covered with “jonquilles, de narcisses et d’anémones”.

Light can be so powerful in this work that it can even surpass the two-dimensions of the strictly pictorial and reach full plasticity as it becomes a sculptor:

  Je traversais des futaies où la lumière du matin, qui leur imposait des divisions nouvelles, émondait les arbres, mariait ensemble les tiges diverses et composait des bouquets. Elle attirait adroitement à elle deux arbres; s'aidant du ciseau puissant du rayon et de l'ombre, elle retranchait à chacun une moitié de son tronc et de ses branches et, tressant ensemble les deux moitiés qui restaient, en faisait soit un seul pilier d'ombre que délimitait l'ensoleillement d'alentour, soit un seul fantôme de clarté dont un réseau d'ombre noire cernait le factice et tremblant contour (p. 491).

We see that in this novel, the Narrator understands his world through representation. Art dresses and transforms reality. And this provides an aspect of Proust's aesthetics. We see this poignantly in Swann's ability to find parallels between paintings and people to the extent that not until he has wrapped the slightly vulgar Odette in Botticelli's refined attire does he fall in love with her.

Du côté de chez Swann comes across as a meditation on the representational powers of the mind. Whether we read about passionate and obsessive feelings, or memories of time foregone, or sensitivities to the natural world or observations on society circles, these are all phenomena that live necessarily inside someone's mind, “…mais tous les sentiments que nous font éprouver la joie ou l’infortune d’un personnage réel ne se produisent en nous que par l’intermédiaire d’une image de cette joie ou de cette infortune”.

But for this mental representation, images are needed. And these have to be rich images, with resplendent colors, with sun- and moon-light, with evocative and fragrant flowers, and with a pictorial vivacity, if they are to be precious, effective and… memorable. Language, however, is not the best medium to render the visual. And yet Proust astoundingly succeeds in creating a literary palette which displays chromatisms in full blossom and projects all shades of luminosity. Art is the guiding illumination that has made Proust the Abbé Suger of Literature.

Even until now, my heart desires to start and read it again...

But I think I should move on to the next volume.

--

I really want to write something about it. However, at the same time, it is very difficult to write about such a book.

So many words have been said about it. It is such a great work that it is hard for me to say something about it. But at least I am expressing my own feelings. :)

It is a masterpiece. A peerless masterpiece that delves into your deepest emotions, emotions that you may not even be aware of for a long time. It opens them up and brings out their essence. And it makes you acquainted with their texture and flavor.

Reading "In Search of Lost Time" has been, for me, more than just reading one volume of a book (since I just finished the first volume). It has been an experience of living. Seeing the world more deeply. And paying more attention to the moments. It is difficult for me to describe it. Maybe you should read it yourself and see how artistically Proust accomplishes this.

When I think about it, my feeling is like the play of light and shadow on the leaves of trees, the feeling of clouds and the sweetness of a warm beverage. But at the same time, it is incomparable to anything else...

**"Proust's Multifaceted World: Seeing, Thinking, and Feeling"**

What follows is a collection of thoughts and notes that I have finally transcribed from post-its, napkin doodlings, margin scribbles, and ideas floating around in my brain for weeks. Please forgive its faults and incompleteness. I hope there is something in it of sense to be retrieved.

**I. Seeing**

A couple of years ago, I started to experience a change in my sight. It wasn't drastic, but it had its side effects. Instead of seeing ordinary objects, I sometimes saw strange and wonderful things. This led me to think about how de Lint and other urban fantasists build their fictional worlds. It also made me compare my experiences to Proust's writing. Proust's descriptions of the world are so detailed and vivid that they feel like high-definition pictures. He uses his senses to see the world in an extraordinary way, and his writing takes us on a journey through his memories and feelings.

**II. Thinking**

Proust's ability to see the world from such a unique perspective comes from his powerful intellect. Despite his airs and graces, he has a remarkably subtle and nimble mind. His writing is a stream of consciousness, but it is also highly analytical and observant. He weaves together his descriptions of the world with his thoughts and ideas, creating a larger picture that is both beautiful and profound. Proust's social commentary is also sharp and insightful, rivaling that of Jane Austen. He sees the world around him with a critical eye and is not afraid to point out its flaws.

**III. Feeling**

The key to Proust's story is his incredible capacity to feel the world around him. His eyes and mind may be brilliant, but it is his feelings that drive his writing. Once he starts feeling something, he cannot stop until he has worked through it completely. This "intrusion" of feeling into his thoughts and writing gives his work its power and depth. The most famous example of this is the taste of the madeleine, which triggers a flood of memories and emotions in the narrator. Proust's descriptions of love and grief are also exquisite, leading the reader through the various stages of these intense emotions.

**Epilogue**

In conclusion, Marcel Proust is writing his way out of a fast-moving river, using his writing as a way to free himself and take another step forward. In doing so, he descends into the darkest and brightest parts of himself and finds the world. That world, it turns out, is a poem, recited with desperate care and breathing life into every word. Proust's work is a testament to the power of the human spirit and the ability to find beauty and meaning in even the most difficult of circumstances.