In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past (French: À la recherche du temps perdu) is a semi-autobiographical novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is popularly known for its extended length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine". Still widely referred to in English as Remembrance of Things Past, the title In Search of Lost Time, a more accurate rendering of the French, has gained in usage since D.J. Enright's 1992 revision of the earlier translation by C.K. Scott-Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. Swann's Way is the first volume.
From the French novelist, essayist, critic, and one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century: the first volume of his monumental masterpiece, one of the most sensitive renderings of childhood in fiction and a brilliant meditation on the recreation of the past through art and memory. Swann’s Way is the most frequently read part of Proust’s epic novel, Remembrance of Things Past (also known as In Search of Lost Time). It introduces subjects that resonate throughout the entire work, including the narrator’s love for Swann’s daughter Gilberte, Swann’s jealous passion for Odette, and the rise of the nouveaux-riches Verdurins. Proust’s narrator vividly recalls his childhood in Paris and Combray, most famously in a fraught evocation of his mother’s good-night kiss and in the iconic scene where the taste of a madeleine dipped in tea brings back a flood of memory.
The first volume of Proust's seven-part novel "In Search of Lost Time," is one of the most entertaining reading experiences and arguably one of the finest novel of the twentieth century. Being Proust's most prominent work. A mature, unnamed man recalls the details of his commonplace, idyllic existence as a sensitive and intuitive boy in Combray. Telling the story through his younger mind in a beautiful dream like prose the narrator tells of the romance of his country neighbor Monsieur Swann. The narrator tells of his hopeless infatuation with Swann's little daughter, Gilberte. Within this fragmented narrative the important themes of memory, time and art are woven skillfully though the story.
Sodom and Gomorrah opens a new phase of In Search of Lost Time. While watching the pollination of the Duchess de Guer-mantes’s orchid, the narrator secretly observes a sexual encounter between two men. “Flower and plant have no conscious will,” Samuel Beckett wrote of Proust’s representation of sexuality. “They are shameless, exposing their genitals. And so in a sense are Proust’s men and women . . . shameless. There is no question of right and wrong.” For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).
Swann's Way, published in 1913, is the first part of Proust's seven-part novel A la Recherche du temps perdu. The author's expansion, revision and correction of the work were cut short by his death in 1922, and sixty-six years later editors are still producing variants of the last three volumes based on working notebooks. The novel's structure was compared by its author to that of a cathedral, and its status is that of one of the greatest literary landmarks of the twentieth century. Sheila Stern's study begins with a summary of the whole novel and goes on to give an account of the activity of reading as part of its subject-matter. Two chapters are devoted to Swann's Way itself, with close attention to the opening pages, and to such topics as memory, time, imagery and names. The book's reception in various Western literatures is discussed, and there is a guide to further reading.
In its centennial year, Marcel Proust’s masterpiece of literary imagination is available in a Norton Critical Edition. Marcel Proust’s seven-volume masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time (A la recherche du temps perdu), has inspired many superlatives, among them “the greatest novel ever written” and “the greatest novel of the first half of the twentieth century.” Swann’s Way, the first volume of the Recherche and the most widely read and taught of all the volumes, is the ideal introduction to Proust’s inventive genius. This Norton Critical Edition is based on C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation, which introduced the English-speaking world to Proust and was published during the author’s lifetime. It is accompanied by Susanna Lee’s introduction, note on the text, and explanatory annotations. Marcel Proust was forty-two years old when Swann’s Way was published, but its foundational ideas and general shape had been evolving for decades. “Contexts” includes a 1912 reader’s report of the manuscript that exemplifies publishers’ complicated reactions to Proust’s new form of writing. Also included are three important post-publication reviews of the novel, by Elie-Joseph Bois, Lucien Daudet, and Paul Souday, as well as André Arnyvelde’s 1913 interview with Proust. The fourteen critical essays and interpretations of Swann’s Way in this volume speak to the novel’s many facets—from the musical to the artistic to its representations of Judaism and homosexuality. Contributors include Gérard Genette, whose “Metonymy in Proust” appears here in English translation for the first time, along with Gilles Deleuze, Roger Shattuck, Claudia Brodsky, Julia Kristeva, Margaret E. Gray, and Alain de Botton, among others. The edition also includes a Chronology of Proust’s Life and Work, a Selected Chronology of French Literature from 1870 to 1929, and a Selected Bibliography.
For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say "I'm going to sleep." And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed...
Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.
In Swann’s Way, the themes of Proust’s masterpiece are introduced, and the narrator’s childhood in Paris and Combray is recalled, most memorably in the evocation of the famous maternal good-night kiss. The recollection of the narrator’s love for Swann’s daughter Gilberte leads to an account of Swann’s passion for Odette and the rise of the nouveaux riches Verdurins. For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).
