Genre: Classic
Published: 1913 (pages 508)
Marcel Proust – deeply
admired and fondly adored, a beloved classical author, whom almost all, from the
readers to the authors, from the philosophers to the literary people, hugely
respect and cherish. Although not as popular and immediately known as some of
the other classical writers, like Tolstoy, Dickens, Woolf, Kafka, and others,
whom one gets familiar with through their widely spread influence and
popularism as soon as one builds interest in literary reading – Proust,
nonetheless, once we come to know him, is enormously read, accepted, praised
and quoted in all fields of literature, by almost every author who’s had read
him.
If not the best, Proust
is one of the best authors there ever was – not to mention, one of the most
peculiar ones too. His long (twice as long as War and Peace of Tolstoy),
wholesome, and joyously fulfilling novel In Search of Lost Time based on
seven volumes, is thereby considered one of the best novels of all time, if not
‘the best’. But it’s not just claiming a novel as the best of all time based on
the enthusiastic joy and fulfillment one gets from reading it, which is what I thought
when Alain de Botton, a fascinating studier of Proust, claimed it as ‘the best’
– In Search of Lost Time (aka Remembrance
of Things Past) is novel so overwhelmingly replete and provenly great that,
after reading it (even just one volume) one doesn’t only feel justified, but
understands too, that this novel, indeed, might be the best of all time.
But let’s review Swann’s Way (V1) and see what makes this novel so
exceptionally great, and Proust such a beloved author.
The first volume of In
Search of Lost Time is based on three parts and tells two related stories.
Part one, Combray, takes us to this place where the narrator
lived in his childhood years, in one major, never-ending act of remembrance. In
this act of remembrance, as the narrator recalls his past life, we come to know
about his weakening love for his mother, and for her goodnight kisses, about
his peculiar aunts and servants and the stories around them, about M. Swann,
his unliked wife, and his influence on the narrator’s family; our narrator’s
inclination to become a writer, and the fond memories of reading his favorite
author Bergotte, and his evening walks with his family across two different
paths.
Part two, Swann in
Love, shifts the story to M. Swann, a friend of the narrator’s
grandparents, and Swann’s emotionally moving love story with the charming
Odette. We read about the early days how the young Swann fell in love with
Odette, whom she found fascinatingly different from others. And how, when one
day, having not found her at the same place, Swann madly searches to find
Odette all over Paris, and when they finally meet that evening, his love was
reciprocated by Odette, and he was introduced to her parents Vendurins. But
inevitable as it is, soon things turn sour, when Odette coldly starts to ignore
our dear Swann, and he becomes filled with jealousy, doubts, and tormenting
pangs of unrequited love. Ultimately, doubts, along with some evidences, gets
the better of Swann and when he confronts Odette to bring out the hidden truths
behind her terrible lies, he finds about her infidelity and is tragically
heart-broken. Time passes, Swann’s suffering diminishes and soon afterwards, he
exclaims to have experienced the greatest love for a woman who was not even his
‘type’.
In the rather short third
Part, Place-Names: The Name, we return back to the narrator’s
retelling of his early life. Here, another love story is told, as our young
narrator, finds himself falling for Gilberte, Swann and Odette’s daughter. And
in this, however short, account of narrator’s young love story, we find traces
of the same emotions, those experienced between Swann and Odette.
Themes of memory and
time, of love and loss, and of art and its impact on our lives, are ever so
present throughout this first volume. In this beautiful act of service to
oneself, Proust aims to recapture, and thereby relive, the things of past. And
in this fascinating project, time loses its linearity and becomes recurrent
through the power of living memories, love is expressed through such powerfully
honest experiences that it resonates with everyone who has ever loved and ached
in love, and provides a heartfelt experience to those who haven’t yet. Art,
too, is present in all of its form: in paintings, in places, in literature, and
in the narrator’s memory and his assessment of his life in retrospect. Of
Combray, and narrator’s vivid memories of his life there with his family, the
two love stories and its resounding power to bring out the once-felt emotions
to their original intensity, and the ever-going remembrance of life and in
reliving it once again – Swann’s Way is appealing in every way, and
potent with its prolific prose and ambition, to be read, favorited, lived
through, and quoted at every possible occasion.
This first volume has the
same ‘classical’ features like other great works of classic literature: the
stylish prose, the fancy conversations, difficult to pronounce names, a thick
size, and overall, the ability to make a reader fall in love with literature
and its earlier form. But what’s so uniquely appealing about Proust is his
personality and his successful attempt to write a patiently long,
autobiographical novel. Proust, we come to know as we read about him, and
through reading the first volume of his novel, was a sentimentally peculiar
person; a sensitive being deeply in touch with his feelings and his
overwhelmingly capacity to feel. Yet nonetheless, artful enough to present his
vulnerability with such profound details and sympathetic honesty that shall
move the reader internally, and fill him with a fulfilling joy of having read
something so true, so transparent, like being inside the author and
experiencing the same things over again. Proust isn’t shy or uncomfortable
about his uneasy character, about his vulnerabilities, about his almost
torturesome capacity to feel – but is instead bravely artful enough to direct
all of what makes him unique, even if miserably so, into a novel that is sentimentally
prolific, grandiosely complete, and invaluably effortless.
There are no gaps in Swann’s
Way, no lazy writing, no missed emotions, no overlooked detail, and no
hiding from one’s own experiences, whether beautiful, horrific, or anything in
between. Proust’s arresting memory lets nothing escape, and his admirable
patience of capturing one’s thoughts and writing it down in such beautiful and
moving prose is nothing short of a literary genius. While one might feel
overwhelmed at times to read such detailedly rich and powerfully honest
accounts of the narrator’s memory, putting oneself in the Proust’s shoes, it
dawns on the reader how unthinkably enormous a task it would have been for the
writer, Proust himself, to write with such with patience and truthfulness – yet
all the more enjoyable, too, since he wrote seven volumes of it.
Seven volumes are a lot
to read, even for the most avid readers. I remember reading a humorous sarcasm
about the length of this novel in the fascinating book How Proust can change
your life by Alain de Botton, that one has to have broken a leg in order to
find the time to read In Search of Lost Times, since Proust has the
patience of writing about the struggle of the narrator’s falling asleep in over
30 pages. And it is true – Proust will not miss out on the details, will write
everything he can recall, and will do so in beautiful and profound prose.
Although not everything would be of keen interest to the reader in the 508
pages-long first volume, let alone in all the seven volumes, the experience of
reading this novel along with its tendency to produce the purest form of joy
that comes from reading is something that would compel the reader to keep on
reading, one page after another, and second volume after the first, and so on –
while wishing to never run out of such a blissful experience of reading.
My praise for the novel:
“Proust’s arresting
memory lets nothing escape, and his admirable patience of capturing one’s
thoughts and writing it down in such beautiful and moving prose is nothing
short of a literary genius. Adorably profound!”
Ratings:
5/5 *****
July
16, 2020