In ‘Within a Budding Grove’, the second volume of Proust’s outstanding seven-volume novel ‘In Search of Lost Time’, we continue from where we left of at the end of first volume ‘Swann’s Way’.
The narrator, Marcel, continues to be fascinatingly in love with young Gilberte, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Swann. We also come to know that Mr. Swann is not only married to Odette, whom he called ‘not even his type’ in the first volume, but is even influenced by her now. Such contradictory changes in characters is supposed to be a theme throughout this second volume, where Odette has become a bourgeoise and is having exhaustive numbers of guests throughout the day, and similarly so, Mr. Swann has come to be somewhat status-conscious himself.
Marcel, however, remains ever so earnest to impress both Mr. and Mrs. Swann, who until recently didn’t entertain him, but in the second volume come to embrace him with open arms. Finally, Marcel is not only with his love, young Gilberte, but also at her home among her friends, and with the welcoming approval of her parents. But as Gilberte’s parents become fond of Marcel, she herself loses her fondness for him and begin to dismiss his company. With a trying indifferent approach, Marcel forces himself not to care about Gilberte anymore in hope of winning her affection back, but in trying so, he loses his own for her.
That’s where the first part of ‘Within a Budding Grove’ ends, and part second starts, where Marcel being sick, can only go so far as Balbec for his vacation, and not to Combray. Along with his grandma, they reside at a big hotel by the seaside; and this hotel becomes Proust ‘The Place’ for his minutely detailed study of different French classes staying at the hotel. Unfortunately, this study of 20th century Paris and the class difference among the people becomes the main focus of the second part, in which I remained miserably uninterested and unable to understand.
However, towards the last 100 or so pages, we’re finally introduced to the famous character, Albertine, one of the group of girls at Balbec. In Albertine, Marcel finds something real in comparison to his mostly imaginative love with Gilberte. Finally, the novel sparks a little after the long and tedious middle section – but too little, too late.
On the whole, I found the second volume much too tedious, and boring, and even impulsively unreadable; it was with much difficulty and forced effort that I somehow, lingeringly, finished the second volume. Much of the story I happened to write about above came from the few summaries and reviews that I could find online.
In a recent French movie that I watched ‘Lawrence Anyways’ (much recommended!) Lawrence, a literature teacher, says that critic complain about Proust that ‘he explains and describes too much’; and honestly, I conquer with the critics after reading this volume.
Although I cherished, maybe a bit too much since it was my first encounter with reading the famous Proust himself, the first volume with all my heart; and it was a better novel too as compared to second volume; it was more narrative, beautifully and not tiringly detailed, and it built the story brilliantly. However sadly, the continuation of that story completely fell off track in this volume; it became tedious, the unending pages about classes and alien characters was boring, and even the famous Albertine couldn’t save the novel for me.
I am sad to say that after loving the ‘Swann’s Way’ so much, I disliked ‘Within a Budding Grove’ with the same enormity.
Ratings: 3/5 *** November 28, 2020_